Normandy, Part II - The Beaches

D-Day (6 June 1944 - 0630 [aka H-Hour]):

The Germans knew an Allied invasion was coming, but they were out-flanked, out-witted and in some cases out of luck on D-Day.

Fake invasion plans washed-up on an Allied corpse in France. General Patton gave a glorious and well-publicized speech in Dover surrounded by his "Ghost Army" (aka First US Army Group [FUSAG]), fueling German suspicions that Patton would lead the invasion, and that invasion would begin in Calais.

Rough weather on the English Channel convinced the Germans that--wherever it began--an invasion wasn't imminent. So General Rommel went home to Germany for his wife's 50th birthday, coincidentally on D-Day itself.

German troops weren't trained to engage the Panzer units without the authority of either their General or their Führer--the latter took a sleeping pill the night before and couldn't be disturbed.  

In preparation for the invasion, the French Resistance gave the Allies German troop levels, ammunition dumps, fortifications, and the location of German guns. They also pulled down phone lines, blew up train tracks and were otherwise annoying to the Germans both before and during the invasion.

At 0630 on June 6th, 1944 it all came together in the largest amphibious assault the world has ever known. French Commandos invaded Juno Beach with the Canadians. The British and Australians invaded Gold and Sword Beaches, and the Americans took Utah and Omaha beachheads.



The kids say I've been obsessed with D-Day since we visited the Normandy and that may be true, but in truth, I was half-way there before we arrived, and I'm pretty sure any person would be obsessed with Operation Overlord (wickedly cool name) after visiting the beaches where the land invasion began. 

Although some beaches now host resorts, swimmers, and sail-driven beach craft, there are still landing areas that look no different now than they did the day after D-Day.  Pointe du Hoc is one of those places.

Pointe du Hoc:

Pointe du Hoc is the highest point between Omaha and Utah Beaches, and was the focus of a US Ranger operation early on D-Day in order to both deprive the Germans of this vantage point, and destroy six German guns capable of firing upon invading Allied troops. 

Pointe du Hoc is still littered with craters from Allied bombs which carpeted the area hours before the Rangers landed on the beach; scaled the side of a 90 foot cliff; and threw incendiary grenades into the pill box machine gun nests at the top.  There are still burn marks on the pill box ceilings and the area is considered a cemetery since remains are assumed to be present in the craters. 

This sounds pretty gross, but it didn't keep the kids from running up and down the craters yelling, "Yay!" or running from opposite sides, and colliding at the bottom.  When we corrected them--albeit halfheartedly since other people's kids were similarly disrespectful and no one seemed to care--the boy reminded us that if there were human remains at the bottom of the craters, they were from the wrong side of the war, so there was really no reason to show restraint.  I'm not saying we necessarily agreed with the boy, but just let me say it was hard to be indignant on a German soldiers' behalf after seeing Mauthausen. So, we forgot our humanity and gave the kids free reign to run and explore Pointe du Hoc craters, bunkers, and pill boxes, and, sadly, they had a marvelous time.   

Half of the Rangers' mission was to disable six large guns on Pointe du Hoc, and you can almost hear them cursing when they found the gun mounts empty.  In fact, I believe I cursed even though we never expected to find the guns (we read ahead).  Now, before you blame the French Resistance for not telling the Rangers the guns were gone, you should know that they did tell us, but the message never made it to the Rangers. It should also be noted that the French made the invasion of Pointe du Hoc possible by providing needed reconnaissance (I wonder how you say that word in French...) using the measurements and observations of a blind man (a piano tuner, in fact) who walked around the fortification freely since the Germans didn't find him threatening.  (I promise I'm not making this stuff up.)  We also need to thank the London Fire Brigade for lending us some ladders to get up the cliff (also a true story).

Most of all, we need to thank the 200 elite US Rangers (2nd Ranger Battalion) as well as their leader, Colonel Rudder, and the British Commandos who trained the Rangers because unlike the German forces, the Rangers were trained to act with minimal direction, modify their strategy as circumstances changed, and complete the mission even if the reality looked nothing like the plan. And the reality of Pointe du Hoc looked nothing like the plan or the map, and this is not a slight against the blind man. 

Now, I've never run onto a beach while someone shot at me. I've also never climbed up a cliff while bullets rained down on my head, knowing I had 30 minutes to make it to the top before the tide drowned me, but I know enough to know it wouldn't be the job for me. I also know that once making it to the top of the cliff and disabling a gun nest or two, I'd call it a day instead of following tire tracks a half-mile inland to find the guns missing from their mounts. Now, if I did find the guns, I'd go back to the beach once I noticed their proximity (100 yards) to German troops of overwhelming numbers. To be sure, I don't see myself sneaking up to those guns and using incendiary (aka thermite) grenades to fuse the traversing mechanisms the way First Sergeant Leonard Lommell did. I agree that this was the right thing to do. I just don't see myself doing it. Now, before you call me a coward (which I am) you should know the Rangers were running out of ammunition. (And did I mention the cliff and the gun nests?!)  I'm also going to throw my daughter under the bus and tell you that she has PTSD from the tent blowing over in Switzerland. So bravery clearly does not run in our family (no offense to my big brother who may be reading this.  He's much braver than we.  Much, much braver. [Hopefully, this will save me from a serious noogie at Christmas time]). 

So, although "Operation Overlord" is probably the coolest name ever given a military endeavor and the title "Supreme Allied Commander" is at least as cool as "Holy Roman Emperor" (whisper:  it's actually cooler but I don't want to get yelled at by the Medieval Lobby), I deserve association with neither.  I'm not fishing for compliments here.  It's something I've come to accept and freely admit.  In any event, they stopped giving out titles like "Holy Roman Emperor" a long time before I was born.  So, maybe one can't really reach one's full courageous potential until these titles are dangled like a carrot in front of one's nose, but I doubt it.  This sort of bravery comes naturally and the US Rangers just had it.

The point of Pointe du Hoc 

The monument to the Rangers at the top of the point.

 The German pill box at the top of the point.

Looking down the beach from the pill box.  The Rangers would have climbed over the nearest ledge.

Craters around a gun emplacement at Pointe du Hoc.  The girl counted 67 craters before she became tired.  We also found that one would need to stand in a 6" x10' area in some places to avoid getting hit by the bombs that fell before the invasion, not to mention the shrapnel.  So, the Germans who survived the bombardment outside the bunkers were either very lucky, or very skinny.

A nearly busted bunker

An empty gun emplacement.

View from inside the gun emplacement

I promise I won't go into this much detail for Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches.  First, because you probably know more about them than I do, and, second, because--with the exception of the anti-ship debris in the water of Omaha Beach (see below picture)--the state of the beaches doesn't evoke scenes of battle as clearly as Pointe du Hoc or as clearly as the Hollywood movies you've already seen.  In fact, The Longest Day (a term coined by General Rommel) is a lot closer to reality than you expect from a John Wayne movie (No offense to John Wayne, but the movie where he pretends to be an American Indian [braids and all] is madness!).

What I will say is that it's hard to imagine sailing from the US to England two years before the invasion on a flimsy ship which was quickly riveted together (my grandfather's words) with the knowledge that a U-boat attack would sink the ship quicker than your drills showed you could make it above decks (also my grandfather's words).  Add sea-sickness.  Add not enough shelter in England for two million US troops, so you're bunking with the locals (this part actually sounds alright).  Add fighting with the British troops at local dance halls because they say you're "Over sexed, overpaid, and over here," and you counter that they're "Under sexed, underpaid, and under Eisenhower" (actually, that sounds kind of fun too).  Add numerous drills where real people die (see below monument to 946 men lost during a mock invasion the April before D-Day [many drown after falling off of Jacob's Ladders wearing heavy equipment]).  Add waiting in staging camps for days before being briefed on Operation Overlord and on intelligence provided by the French Resistance and aerial reconnaissance flights.  Add embarking from England in high seas.  Add decks filled with the sick and the product of their sickness.  Add fears of U-boat attacks on the English Channel. Add non-sick troops on deck marveling at the number of Allied bombers above them and Allied Bombers marveling at the number of ships below.  Add transferring to Higgins Boats in high seas and the threat of falling overboard.  Add more sea sickness.  Add landing on a beach a kilometer away from the spot you're meant to land.  Add men in heavy equipment drowning when dropped too far from the beach.  Add barbed wire, 88mm German guns, land mines, and trenches.  Add anti-tank defenses, fixed fortifications, and general confusion.  Add limited communication with the ships and, therefore, no hope of relief via ship fire power.  Add waves of men running into previous waves pinned-down on the beach by "walls of lead" in front of them.  And I believe you have a rough outline of what the invading Allied troops experienced on and before D-Day.

There were 200 deaths at Utah Beach (the beach where Teddy Roosevelt's son landed); 340 were lost at Juno; 1,000 lost on Sword; 1,000 lost on Gold; and 2,000 lost on Omaha Beach.

(Above and Below):  Utah Beach

(Above and Below):  Monuments at Utah Beach

1st Engineer Special Brigade Monument at Utah Beach

Memorial within a German bunker at Utah Beach.  Picture of General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr on the right.  He landed with the troops on D-Day carrying only a cane and purportedly stating, "Let's start the war from here."  He died of a heart attack about a month after the landing, and he is buried at the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. 

A Sherman Tank pointing inland from Utah Beach

(Above and Below):  The American Cemetery at Omaha Beach

(Above and Below):  The British Cemetery at Bayeux.

The British Cemetery at Bayeux.

Memorial park near the British Cemetery at Bayeux.

If you visit Normandy and you're frustrated by the missing weaponry at Pointe du Hoc, there is one place where you can see what German guns looked like on D-Day.  This place is Longues-sur-Mer.

A perfectly preserved gun at Longues-sur-Mer.

A not-so-lucky gun at Longues-sur-Mer.

Eisenhower prepared his resignation before D-Day in case the invasion proved a failure. Visiting Normandy beaches reminds one that because of the efforts of our grandparents and the grandparents of our allies, that letter of resignation was never deemed necessary.  

© 2012 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill