Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (38 page)

AFTER THE LONG WAIT
, the moment came suddenly. As George Goodspeed remembered it, “One morning we were told to pack our sea bags, stack them in a building, and take with us what we actually needed.” Army platoon commanders were told to ensure that all the men were “freshly bathed, shaved, and wearing warm underclothing.” Some filled their pockets with candy bars, uncertain when they would have another chance to eat a regular meal. Divided into “boat teams” of 220 men each—roughly the capacity of an LCI(L)—they were loaded into trucks that drove them to the harbors, where they lined up on the quay. At 171 different sites all over
England and Scotland, some 176,000 men, more than 20,000 vehicles, and uncounted tons of equipment was embarked into thousands of transports and landing craft. Harried junior officers bearing clipboards sought to ensure that every soldier, vehicle, and crate was brought to the correct site, placed on the proper vessel, and stowed in the necessary order.
⁷

Of course, the Allies had been preparing for this moment for more than a year, and part of that preparation involved the construction of more than two hundred special embarkation platforms, known as “hards”: broad, paved ramps that sloped down from the roadway into and well below the waterline, giant cousins to the small launching ramps used by pleasure boaters today. To construct these hards, the area was first graded into a gently sloping beach, then covered with thousands of pre-formed reinforced concrete rectangles weighing 350 pounds apiece. Laid out across the loading area, these giant concrete tiles formed a pattern that resembled a segmented Hershey bar, which led some to refer to them as “chocolate.” The hards were more useful than conventional piers for loading the landing ships because several LSTs and LCTs at a time could nose up to them and drop their ramps right onto the chocolate, allowing the tanks, trucks, and jeeps to make their way down the concrete slope and up the ship’s ramp into the hold.
⁸

Of the five invasion forces, the 865 ships of Moon’s Force U had the longest voyage, from the West Country of England to the assembly area south of the Isle of Wight, so they would be the first of the five groups to leave port. The ships began to embark the men and equipment of Major General Raymond “Tubby” Barton’s 4th Infantry Division at ports along the south coast of Devon from Salcombe to Torquay on Thursday, June 1. The character of a ship’s cargo varied depending on its specific assignment, but a typical LST might carry twenty tanks, twenty trucks, a dozen jeeps with trailers or artillery pieces, plus some 350 officers and men who were assigned to vertical racks of bunks running along the port side of the ship. Officially, their scheduled departure time was 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 3, though some vessels began to depart as early as noon that day.

Further up the Channel at Weymouth and Portland, the amphibs of Hall’s Force O also began to load up, though they were not scheduled to
depart until 7:00 a.m. on June 4. Hall’s fifteen large transport ships, two dozen LSTs, thirty-seven LCI(L)s, and more than 140 LCTs took on board men of Major General Clarence Huebner’s 1st Infantry Division, plus two Regimental Combat Teams (the 115th and 116th) of the 29th Division. In some cases the loading process reunited Navy crews with infantry units they had carried during one or more of the many rehearsals. A sailor on LST-498 at Weymouth peering over the bow to watch the soldiers marching up the ramp noticed the patches on the men’s shoulders that marked them as belonging to the 29th Division. It was somehow comforting to him that they were boarding old comrades, though he also felt that it was different this time. “Everybody knew what was up,” he insisted.
⁹

Still further east, at Southampton, Portsmouth, and Newhaven, British LSTs boarded the Tommies of the British Second Army, for the invasions of Sword and Gold Beaches, and men of the Canadian Third Division, who would assail Juno Beach. The British soldiers were outfitted with studded boots, and many of them found walking on the steel decks of an LCT or LST a precarious undertaking. The shiploads varied only slightly from the American LSTs. LST-543, for example, part of Force J, for Juno Beach, took on sixty-six vehicles that included both light and heavy trucks, two artillery pieces, and twelve tracked armored vehicles known as Bren gun carriers, plus 354 Canadian officers and men. Other LSTs swallowed up some of the big 40-ton Churchill tanks that had steel treads which scarred up the decks of the LCTs “like they were sand papered.”
¹⁰

At all of these sites, vessels had to be combat loaded, which meant not only that the items that would be needed first had to be loaded last, but also that the tanks and trucks had to be backed in, reversing gingerly up the ramps so that they would all be facing forward when the LSTs reached the target beaches. Then each vehicle had to be carefully positioned to ensure that everything fit and that the weight distribution would leave the ship on an even keel. Once that was done, crewmen crawled under the vehicles to secure them to the deck with chains so that they did not careen about and smash into one another during the expected rough crossing.

The whole process of loading, positioning, and securing the vehicles, plus boarding the men and assigning them to their respective billets, took
about two and a half hours for each ship. When that was completed, a two-man team of officers, one each from the Army and Navy, certified that the load was both complete and accurate. The LST captain signaled his readiness to the port captain by flag hoist, and upon receiving clearance, he ordered the ramp raised and the bow doors closed, then backed the packed vessel out into the harbor, where it dropped anchor at a previously assigned position. As soon as it cleared the hard, another LST came in to take its place. Once a loaded ship was at anchor, no further communication with the shore was permitted.
¹¹

By June 2, it had become evident to all that this was no mere rehearsal. Not only was it simply too large for an exercise, but in addition almost everyone noted that during all the previous exercises the weather had been at least tolerable. More than once when the Channel was rough, a rehearsal had been postponed until the weather moderated. Now, despite whitecaps in the Channel and a strong gusting wind, the work never paused. On the other hand, the weather was so bad that some wondered if a crossing was even possible. The fully laden LSTs, riding low in the water, rolled dizzyingly even in the protected harbors, and many of the embarked soldiers were already puking over the side. On board LST-530, Armond Barth was sure “we weren’t going anywhere.”
¹²

Loading the smaller LCTs took less time simply because they could hold only four or five vehicles each, though the process was prolonged because there were so many of them—142 of them in Moon’s force alone. Like the bigger LSTs, they were packed to the thwarts. George Hackett watched with growing alarm as his vessel settled lower and lower in the water while the Sherman tanks and “deuce and a half” Dodge trucks backed slowly into the well deck. By the time the skipper pulled up the ramp, the vessel rode so low in the water that Hackett wondered if it might not be swamped by the four-foot Channel swells.
¹³

Unlike the big LSTs, which would remain offshore during the initial assault, the LCTs would actually run right up onto the beaches just behind the first wave, and given the uncertainties of amphibious landings, it was not impossible that they could be stranded there. Because of that, the LCT crewmen were issued shoulder arms, though what they got were World
War I–vintage .30 caliber bolt-action rifles still packed in greasy cosmoline, a box of ammunition, an eight-inch knife, and a helmet. The prospect of having to do battle with the Wehrmacht with such weapons was sobering. The LCT crewmen were also required to wear special chemically treated overalls that were supposed to protect them from a gas attack. Upon donning them, many sailors wondered if poison gas might not be preferable. The treated clothing smelled like rotten eggs, and the stench was so powerful that some sailors gagged. “These clothes covered all of our bodies from the neck down,” a sailor recalled, “and they were hot as hell, itchy, and the odor was unbearable.” The treated material did not breathe at all, and one sailor described it “like walking around in a steam bath all day and in a suit of ice at night.” Even the sailors’ traditional white hats were dyed blue, presumably to make them less visible at sea, though many of the sailors resented having to sacrifice this particular tradition to some planner’s notion of security.
¹⁴

The LCT officers also wore the malodorous gas outfits. Their orders instructed them to ensure that they had a full supply of “foul weather gear, rain gear, combat boots, overshoes, gloves, [and] mittens.” As a result, they looked more like well-padded North Sea fishermen than naval officers—and smelled like them, too. The briefing officers on shore had impressed upon them that this gear could save their lives, but it was somewhat embarrassing during the subsequent crossing when a U.S. Navy LCT passed a Royal Navy ship and the Americans saw that the British had not bothered with any of this. With characteristic sangfroid, the Royal Navy officers were wearing double-breasted service dress blue uniforms with white officer’s caps. A bit chagrinned, perhaps, many of the Americans discarded their smelly gas suits as soon as they could. Once the LCTs were loaded, they, too, backed away from the hards one by one to anchor in the outer harbor, their open cargo holds covered by camouflage nets to make it more difficult for enemy aircraft to determine if they were full or empty.
¹⁵

The huge 492-foot attack transport ships that could carry fifteen hundred soldiers at a time were too big to come into the hards and anchored further out. To board them, soldiers with sixty-pound packs strapped to
their backs and M-1 rifles slung over their shoulders trooped aboard the LCTs at the hards, and after a brisk ride across the wind-tossed harbor they climbed up cargo nets hung over the side. Several days later, on the other side of the English Channel, they would reverse the process, climbing down those nets into the LCTs or the smaller Higgins boats to make their way to the invasion beaches.
¹⁶

For many of the embarked soldiers, the on-board waiting was worse than waiting in the sausage camps. Even more than the big LSTs, the smaller LCTs bounced around energetically in the blustery weather, rising and swooping with the wind and waves. Keyed up by the prospect of imminent action, the soldiers and crewmen now had to endure a period of unknown duration waiting for the “go” order. There was little to do but to look around the harbor, exchange small talk with their buddies, and think about the forthcoming operation. On a number of ships, chaplains held religious services, which were well attended. On his flagship, the
Bayfield
, Moon authorized showing a film to help pass the time, and the soldiers sat down to watch George Sanders and Herbert Marshall in
The Moon and Sixpence
, a 1942 drama about a middle-aged stockbroker who, like Paul Gauguin, settles on a South Sea island to paint and go native. This naturally led some sailors to make jokes about the old man showing a movie about himself and his salary.
¹⁷

At least there was plenty to eat. This was especially true on the big attack transport ships and the LSTs, both of which were well equipped with galleys designed to feed hundreds of men at a time. On some of the LSTs, the cooks served up a full steak dinner on June 3. While it was much appreciated, a number of men wondered at the symbolism. Was this the last meal of the condemned man? The fare was more Spartan on the LCTs. Each LCT had been stocked with fifteen days’ of food, but much of it consisted of K rations, which came in small cardboard boxes containing a can of meat or cheese, four crackers, some malted milk balls, a pack of coffee, four cigarettes, and a candy bar. It was not uncommon for a soldier to put the cigarettes in his pocket, eat the candy bar, and throw the rest away. Slightly more tolerable were C rations, which included a canned entree of hash or stew. Curtis Hansen, on LST-315, tried
to heat up a can of stew from a C ration pack by placing it on the engine manifold. That worked just fine, but such was the state of his constitution that when he took the first bite, his stomach rebelled, and he threw up over the side.
¹⁸

Some tried to sleep, though with so many men on board, space to stretch out was at a premium. A few soldiers “hot-bunked” in the available racks. Others climbed into the back of the trucks and sought to find room amidst the crates and equipment, ignoring the fact that much of it consisted of ammunition. Still others climbed on top of the trucks, making a hammock out of the swale of canvas between the metal supports. They found that if they wriggled down deep enough in the truck’s canvas top, it would block the wind and the stinging sea spray. Then it began to rain. To escape it, they sought refuge below deck. That proved to be a problem for some of the nonswimmers on board, who, suspicious of being at sea at all, had inflated their inner-tube-style life vests as soon as the LCT backed away from the hard. Now they discovered that they were unable to go below because the hatches on an LCT were not wide enough to accommodate a man wearing an inflated life preserver. Before very long, almost everyone on board was, in the words of one, “wet and miserable.”
¹⁹