Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (37 page)

On an official level, Stark ordered an “immediate investigation” of the events in Lyme Bay, and the ensuing report cited several failures that could be taken as lessons. The first was obvious: American-British communications had failed. The existence of an independent command for the C in C Plymouth, as distinct from the operational command, had made possible the kind of confusion that led to the absence of HMS
Scimitar
. Another failure was that almost everyone involved with Exercise Tiger had conceived of it as another rehearsal and had behaved accordingly. There had been so many practice landings that the sailors and soldiers—even the officers—had trouble making the mental adjustment to actual combat. Despite the tracer fire in the night and even the exploding torpedoes, many clung to the idea that this was a rehearsal right up to the moment they found themselves in the water.
⁵¹

Like Kirk, many of the Americans blamed the British, especially Leatham. But in the U.S. Navy, responsibility for every event belongs, rightly or wrongly, to the commanding officer. An old saw in the U.S. Navy was that you could delegate authority, but you could not delegate responsibility. Though Moon might properly have been held accountable for his questionable decision to postpone the practice landing on Slapton Sands on the morning of April 27, he had had no hand at all in the circumstances that led to the disaster in Lyme Bay in the early morning hours of April 28. Nevertheless, he was the man in overall command, and so it did not surprise him when he received an order to report on board Kirk’s flagship, the heavy cruiser
Augusta
. Instead of Kirk, however, Moon found Kirk’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Arthur Struble, waiting for him.

Though Moon was close to Hall (who was godfather to Moon’s son), he had an awkward relationship with Struble. For one thing, Struble had graduated a year ahead of Moon at the academy and resented the fact that Moon had a fleet command while he had a staff position. When Moon arrived in Struble’s cabin on the
Augusta
, Struble was standing with his back to the hatchway, looking out a porthole, and he did not immediately turn around to acknowledge Moon’s arrival. Some moments passed in awkward silence. When a British submarine passed within Struble’s vision with a broom lashed to its periscope to signal that it had made a clean sweep, he muttered, “Well, I see somebody did his duty.” Only then did he turn to face Moon and, with a cold expression, ask, “All right, Moon, what happened?” Moon offered a full oral report of the events as he understood them, but the atmosphere in the room remained chilly. Struble responded only that Admiral King in Washington was not going to be pleased. Eventually Moon made his escape and returned to his flagship, no doubt determined to work even harder.
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NOT QUITE A WEEK LATER
, on May 3, the Allies began a series of exercises, called Fabius, that lasted for six days. Hall’s Force O carried elements of Gerow’s V Corps from Portland and Weymouth to Slapton Sands, and the British conducted full-scale landings of Dempsey’s Second British Army on the beaches east of Portsmouth. This time there was no interference from the enemy—indeed, few problems of any kind. Ramsay, watching the British landings from Vian’s flagship, the cruiser
Scylla
, was “very favorably impressed.” Despite lingering concerns over what he perceived as Kirk’s “wilful stupidity” about the E-boat threat, Ramsay informed Eisenhower that the Neptune force was ready.
⁵³

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that it was as ready as could reasonably have been expected given the circumstances. The destroyer squadron that King had dispatched after the debacle of Exercise Tiger was still en route, and although May 1944 was the most prolific month of the entire war for LST production, only a few of the new LSTs made it from the shipyards on the Ohio River, down the Mississippi, and across the Atlantic in time to join the Neptune force. Moreover, those that
did arrive had novice crews with no amphibious training whatsoever. A handful of veterans were transferred into them from other landing craft to provide some experienced leadership, but the rest were neophytes, “literally jumping from boot camp to combat,” in the words of one. For the new arrivals, the assault on the beaches of Normandy would be the first beach landing of any kind they had ever made. Nevertheless, the operation could be put off no longer. As one LCT skipper put it, “Our training was about as good as could be done given the shortness of time available,” adding, “What we lacked in expertise, we made up for in enthusiasm.” It remained to be seen if that would be enough.
⁵⁴

At the last full-scale briefing, held at St. Paul’s School on May 15, all of the principal commanders from Eisenhower on down delivered detailed oral summaries of the forthcoming operation. It was a star-studded audience filled with admirals, generals, and air vice marshals as well as the prime minister and King George himself. On the stage was a giant three-dimensional map of the target beaches, angled so the audience could see it, and as each of the principal commanders spoke, he walked around the map pointing out the key sites. In spite of himself, Churchill was impressed. When at last it was his turn, he gave what Eisenhower called “one of his typical fighting speeches,” but then the prime minister added this: “Gentlemen, I am hardening toward this enterprise.” Eisenhower was taken aback. It was as if Churchill was only then becoming reconciled to the operation that had dominated Allied planning for a full year.
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On May 28, Ramsay sent an order to all hands: “Carry out Operation Neptune.” In response, battleships and cruisers set out from ports in Northern Ireland and Scotland, landing ships and landing craft moved along the Channel coast to their assigned ports, and trucks filled to capacity with soldiers in full kit made their way in an endless stream along the narrow roads of southern England to ports of embarkation from Falmouth in Cornwall to Newhaven in East Sussex.

D-Day was eight days away.

I
T WAS HAPPENING AT LAST
, and all over England people could sense it. As hard as Allied leaders tried to conceal the timing of the invasion, the acceleration of events at the end of May created an almost palpable sense of anticipation. On May 26, one resident of southern England recorded in his diary, “England is expectant, almost hushed.” The weighted stillness did not last. Within days, there was hectic, even frenetic, activity at each of the 171 embarkation ports located along the southern coast, up on the Bristol Channel, in the Thames estuary, and as far north as Scotland. Much of the equipment and supplies for the invasion had been prepositioned near these ports, and locals had grown used to seeing camouflaged piles of military hardware and car parks filled with military vehicles. That proved to be only the beginning, however, for as the day of departure drew near, vehicles began moving shoreward in long caravans along Britain’s narrow roads. They did so mostly at night to keep hidden from German reconnaissance aircraft, but they could not be concealed from the local population. A resident of Dorset recalled, “Our nights echoed to
the ceaseless clatter of heavy tanks lumbering down the Bournemouth-Southampton Road.” Aware that something special was happening, people in the small villages came down to the road to watch, flashing the V-for-victory sign as the tanks and trucks rolled past.
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Just after midnight on June 2, Seaman George Hackett was sleeping in his tent near Dartmouth when he was awakened by the commanding officer of LCT Flotilla 17 and told to get the jeep. The CO had to go to Torquay, east of Dartmouth, to meet with the other commanders for a briefing. As he drove the lieutenant through the dark with his headlights partially obscured by black tape, Hackett became aware of “a strange sound” that filled the air. It was a kind of deep, persistent drone, and it grew louder as he drove, until the very air seemed to throb with it. When he joined the main road south, he realized its source: hundreds of diesel trucks were on the move, one after another in an endless caravan, all heading south. As he joined that caravan, Hackett speculated that this was probably happening all along the Channel coast, at Falmouth, Plymouth, Exmouth, and elsewhere, creating “a hum throughout the country.”
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At the same time, hundreds of amphibious ships assembled at the embarkation sites. They, too, moved mostly at night, and as furtively as possible, though near-absolute Allied command of the air made them relatively secure from enemy discovery. Once on site, most of the ships’ officers attended briefing sessions ashore. Those commanding the LCTs and LCIs in the Dart River received their briefing on the large parquet quarterdeck of the Britannia Royal Naval College. After listening to the details of the operation, they were told what they should expect during the invasion. It was a pretty grim recital. The first menace was the mines, and the skippers were cautioned to take special care to stay within the swept lanes, passages eight hundred yards wide marked by red and green dan buoys, as they crossed the Channel. In addition, they were told that “strong and persistent attacks by enemy E-boats and submarines are to be expected,” as well as “heavy and persistent enemy air attacks with bombs, glider bombs, aerial mines, and possibly torpedoes.” Finally, it was possible—perhaps even likely—that the Germans would use poison gas. The briefing officer concluded that they should not worry, however, because the Allies had a comfortable margin of
superiority and could absorb very heavy casualties and still succeed. That last bit of information was probably less comforting than the briefer intended.
³

Some had more reason to worry than most. That certainly included the men who would go in first to clear the mines and obstacles on the assault beaches. In the U.S. Navy these men belonged to Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDUs); in the Royal Navy they were part of the Landing Craft Obstacle Clearing Units (LCOCUs). In either service, their jobs were among the most perilous in the entire operation. Just behind them would come the men of the Special Engineer Brigades, whose job it was to construct passages through the cleared minefields using bulldozers, road graders, and tractors landed from the LCTs. Then there were the beach masters who acted as traffic cops, supervising the landing and off-loading of the vessels bringing the infantry and the tanks ashore. At one of the preinvasion briefings, a designated beach master in the audience asked about how he was to get food and drinking water during his extended stay ashore. “Not to worry,” the briefer replied matter-of-factly. “If any of you beach officers are still alive after the invasion, we’ll take care of you and find a way to supply you.”
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The marshaling areas around the Channel ports were known as “sausage camps” because their locations were indicated on the maps by sausage-shaped symbols. To disguise the military buildup, the trucks, tanks, and jeeps were parked, whenever possible, in wooded areas where they could not be easily identified from the air. Forested areas from Cornwall to East Sussex soon filled up with a wide variety of camouflaged vehicles and equipment. Even the woods around the athletic fields at the British Naval Academy at Dartmouth were crowded with parked vehicles. That caused a bit of a flutter when some of the old guard protested that driving tanks over the cricket pitch was just too much. Surely some things were sacred! As diplomatically as possible, local commanders explained that painful sacrifices were necessary to ensure victory.
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Though the buildup was unceasing, those who arrived first in the marshaling areas confronted the old story of “hurry up and wait”—and the waiting was agonizing. Robert Miller, a member of the 149th Combat
Engineer Brigade, scheduled to go ashore in the first wave, recalled that time “hung heavy” on him and the rest of his team. Like many others, he wondered what his fate would be on the other side of the Channel. “We made pacts with our best buddies,” he recalled, “to contact each other’s family after the war,” should they be killed, and to tell them how they had died. Others repeatedly, even compulsively, cleaned their rifles and checked and double-checked their equipment. Members of the demolition teams carefully measured out two-pound explosive charges and put them into Navy socks, tying off the ends so they could be quickly affixed to the obstructions ashore. Given that half a million men were now crowding up to the embarkation sites, much of their time was spent standing in long chow lines. The sailors were weary of waiting, too. Ensign Curtis Hansen of LST-315 recalled, “We were tired of the training and of the boredom, and wanted to get it over with no matter what the outcome personally would be.”
⁶

Even now, at nearly the last minute, there were some jitters within the high command. Leigh-Mallory went to Eisenhower to urge the cancellation of the air drop behind the beaches. Given the uncertain weather and the difficult terrain, he was convinced that the casualty rates among the paratroopers would be unacceptable. It was one more burden for Ike to shoulder as he queried others at SHAEF about the impact such a cancellation would have. In the end, he told Leigh-Mallory that the air drop would take place as planned, and that he—Eisenhower—would accept the responsibility.