Citizen Soldiers [Condensed] Read online

  So tankers tried going over or through the embankments, but the hedgerows were almost impassable obstacles to the American M-4 Sher-man tank. The Sherman wasn't powerful enough to break through the cementlike base, and when it climbed up the embankment, at the apex it exposed its unarmoured belly to German panzer fausts. Further, coordination between tankers and infantry was almost impossible during battle, as they had no easy or reliable way to communicate with one another.

  Lieutenant Sidney Salomon of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, one of the D-Day heroes, found that out on June 7. He was leading the remnants of his battalion, which had come ashore at Omaha and been involved in a daylong firefight on D-Day, westward along the coastal road that led to Pointe-du-Hoc. Three companies of the 2nd Rangers had taken the German emplacement there and destroyed the coastal guns, but they were under severe attack and had taken severe casualties. Salomon was in a hurry to get to them.

  But his column began taking well-placed artillery shells. Salomon could see a Norman church, its steeple the only high point around. He was certain the Germans had an observer spotting for their artillery in that steeple. Behind Salomon a Sherman tank chugged up. Salomon wanted it to blast that steeple, but he couldn't get the crew's attention, not even when he knocked on the side of the tank with the butt of his carbine. "So I ultimately stood in the middle of the road directly in front of the tank, waving my arms and pointing in the direction of the church. That produced results. After a couple of shots from the cannon and several bursts from the .50-calibre machine gun, the artillery spotter was no more."

  Salomon's daring feat notwithstanding, it was obvious that the army was going to have to work out a better system for tank-infantry communication than having junior officers jump up and down in front of tanks. Until that was done, the tanks would play a minor supporting role to the infantry-following the GIs into the next field as the infantry overran it. So as the infantry lurched forward in the Cotentin, following frontal assaults straight into the enemy's kill zones, the tankers began experimenting with ways to utilize their weapons in the hedgerows.

  BEGINNING AT daylight on June 7, each side had begun to rush reinforcements to the front. The Americans came in on a tight schedule, long since worked out, with fresh divisions almost daily. The Germans came in by bits and pieces because they were improvising, having been caught with no plans for reinforcing Normandy. Further, the Allied air forces had badly hampered German movement from the start.

  The German air force (the Luftwaffe) and the German navy were seldom to be seen, but still the Germans managed to have an effect on Allied landings through mines and beach obstacles. The most spectacular German success came at dawn on June 7.

  The transport USS Susan B. Anthony was moving into her off-loading position off Utah Beach. Sergeant Jim Finn was down in the hold, along with hundreds of others in the 90th Infantry Division, set to enter the battle after the ship dropped anchor. Landing craft began coming alongside, and the men started climbing up onto the transport's deck, preparing to descend the rope ladders. Finn and the others were loaded down with rifles, grenades, extra clips, BARs (Browning automatic rifles), tripods, mortar bases and tubes, gas masks, leather boots, helmets, life jackets, toilet articles, baggy pants stuffed with cigarettes, and more.

  "There was a massive 'boom!'" Finn recalled. "She shook. All communications were knocked out. All electricity was out. Everything on the ship went black."

  The Susan B. Anthony, one of the largest transport ships, had hit a mine. She was sinking and burning. Panic in the hold was to be expected, but as Finn recalled, the officers took charge and restored calm. Then, "We were instructed to remove our helmets, remove our impregnated clothing, remove all excess equipment. Many of the fellows took off their shoes." They scrambled onto the deck.

  A fire-fighting boat had pulled alongside and was putting streams of water onto the fire. Landing craft began pulling to the side of the ship. Men threw rope ladders over the side, and within two hours all hands were safely off-minutes before the ship sank.

  Sergeant Finn and his platoon went into Utah Beach a couple of hours late and barefoot, with no helmets, no rifles, no ammo, no food. But they were there, and by scrounging along the beach they were soon able to equip themselves from dead and wounded men. Thanks to the fire-fighting boat-one of the many specialized craft in the armada-even the loss of the ship hardly slowed the disembarking process. The US, Royal, and Canadian navies ruled the English Channel, which made the uninterrupted flow of men and supplies from England to France possible. The fire-fighting boat that saved the men on Susan B. Anthony showed what a superb job the three navies were doing.

  AT OMAHA, too, reinforcements began coming into the beach before the sun rose. Twenty-year-old Lieutenant Charles Stockell, a forward observer (FO) in the 1st Division, was one of the first ashore that day. Stockell kept a diary. He recorded that he came in below Vierville, that the skipper of the LCI (landing craft infantry) feared the underwater beach obstacles and mines and thus forced him to get off in chest-deep water, that he saw equipment littering the beach, and then: "The first dead Americans I see are two GIs, one with both feet blown off, arms wrapped about each other in a comradely death embrace." He was struck by the thought that "dead men everywhere look pathetic and lonely."

  Stockell didn't get very far inland that morning. The front line, in fact, was less than a quarter of a mile from the edge of the bluff at Omaha, along a series of hedgerows outside Colleville. That was as far inland as Captain Joseph Dawson, CO of G Company, 16th Regiment, 1st Division, had got on D-Day-and Dawson had been the first American to reach the top of the bluff. On June 7 he was fighting to secure his position outside Colleville, discovering in the process that he had a whole lot to learn about hedgerows.

  The 175th Regiment of the 29th Division came in on schedule at 0630, June 7, but two kilometres east of its intended target, the Vierville exit through the Atlantic Wall. In a loose formation the regiment began to march to the exit, through the debris of the previous day's battle. To . Captain Robert Miller the beach "looked like something out of Dante's Inferno."

  Continual sniper fire zinged down. "But even worse," according to Lieutenant J. Milnor Roberts, an aide to the corps commander, "they were stepping over the bodies of the guys who had been killed the day before and the guys were wearing that 29th Division patch; the other fellows, brand-new, were walking over the dead bodies. By the time they got down where they were to go inland, they were really spooked."

  But so were their opponents. Lieutenant Colonel Fritz Ziegelmann of the 352nd Division was one of the first German officers to bring reinforcements into the battle. At about the same time the American 175th Regiment was swinging up towards Vierville, Ziegelmann was entering Widerstandsnest 76, one of the few surviving resistance nests on Omaha. "The view from WN 76 will remain in my memory for ever," he wrote after the war. "Ships of all sorts stood close together on the beach and in the water, broadly echeloned in depth. And the entire conglomeration remained there intact without any real interference from the German side!"

  A runner brought him a set of secret American orders captured from an officer, which showed the entire Omaha invasion plan. "I must say that in my entire military life, I have never been so impressed," Ziegelmann wrote, adding that he knew at that moment that Germany was going to lose this war.

  AT DAWN, all along the plateau above the bluff at Omaha, GIs shook themselves awake, did their business, ate some rations, smoked cigarettes, got into some kind of formation, and prepared to move out to broaden the beachhead. But in the hedgerows, individuals got lost, squads got lost. German sniper fire came from all directions. The Norman farm homes and barns, made of stone and surrounded by stone walls, made excellent fortresses. Probing attacks brought forth a stream of bullets from the Germans.

  Brigadier General Norman "Dutch" Cota, assistant division commander of the 29th, came upon a group of infantry pinned down by some Germans in a farmhouse. He asked the captain in command w
hy his men were making no effort to take the building.

  "Sir, the Germans are in there, shooting at us," the captain replied.

  "Well, I'll tell you what, Captain," said Cota, unbuckling two grenades from his jacket. "You and your men start shooting at them. I'll take a squad of men, and you and your men watch carefully. I'll show you how to take a house with Germans in it."

  Cota led his squad around a hedge to get as close as possible to the house. Suddenly he gave a whoop and raced forward, the squad following, yelling like wild men. As they tossed grenades into the windows, Cota and another man kicked in the front door, tossed a couple of grenades inside, waited for the explosions, then dashed into the house. The surviving Germans inside were streaming out the back door, running for their lives.

  Cota returned to the captain. "You've seen how to take a house," said the general, out of breath. "Do you understand? Do you know how to do it now?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I won't be around to do it for you again," Cota said. "I can't do it for everybody."

  Normandy was a soldier's battle. It belonged to the riflemen, machine gunners, mortarmen, tankers, and artillerymen who were on the front lines. There was no room for manoeuvre. There was no opportunity for subtlety. There was a simplicity to the fighting-for the Germans, to hold; for the Americans, to attack.

  Where they would hold or attack required no decision-making. It was 'always the next village or field. The real decision making came at the battalion, company, and platoon level: where to place mines, barbed wire, machine-gun pits, where to dig foxholes-or where and how to attack them.

  The direction of the attack had been set by preinvasion decision-making. For the 1st and 29th divisions that meant south from Omaha towards St. Lo. For the 101st Airborne that meant east, into Carentan, for a linkup with Omaha. For the 82nd Airborne that meant west from Ste. Mere-Eglise, to provide manoeuvre room in the Cotentin. For the 4th and 90th divisions that meant west from Utah, to the Gulf of St. Malo.

  The objective of all this was to secure the port of Cherbourg and to create a beachhead sufficiently large to absorb the incoming American reinforcements and serve as a base for an offensive through France. So strong a magnet was Cherbourg that the initial American offensive already in Normandy headed west, away from Germany.

  Eisenhower and his high command were obsessed with ports. Only a large, fully operating port could satisfy supply needs, or so Eisenhower assumed. Therefore the planning emphasis had been on Cherbourg, and Le Havre next, with the climax coming at Antwerp. Only with these ports in operation could Eisenhower be assured of the supplies a final fifty-division offensive into Germany would require. Especially Antwerp.

  The Germans assumed that the Allies could not supply divisions in combat over an open beach. The Allies tended to agree. Experience had not been encouraging. Churchill was so certain it couldn't be done he insisted on putting a very large share of the national effort into building two experimental artificial harbours. The harbours were moderately successful: their contribution to the total tonnage unloaded over the Normandy beaches was about fifteen per cent.

  But as it turned out, it was the LSTs (landing ship tank), supported by the myriad of specialized landing craft, that did the most carrying and unloading LSTs at every beach, their great jaws yawning open, disgorging tanks and trucks and jeeps and bulldozers and guns and mountains of rations and ammunition, thousands of jerry cans filled with gasoline, crates of radios and telephones, typewriters, and forms, and all else that men at war require. The LSTs did what no one had thought possible. The LST was in fact the Allies' secret weapon.

  Through June the Germans continued in the face of all evidence to believe LSTs could not supply the Allied divisions already ashore, and therefore Operation Overlord was a feint, with the real attack scheduled for the Pas-de-Calais later in the summer. A continuing campaign of misinformation put out by SHAEF reinforced this German fixed idea. So through the month, Hitler kept his panzer divisions north and east of the Seine River.

  Hitler had recognized that his only hope for victory lay on the Western Front. His armies could not defeat the Red Army, but they might defeat the British and Americans, so discouraging Stalin that he would make a settlement. But after correctly seeing the critical theatre, Hitler completely failed to see the critical battlefield. He continued to look to the Pas-de-Calais as the site where he would drive the invaders back into the sea, and consequently kept his main striking power there. To every plea by the commanders in Normandy for panzer divisions in northwestern France to come to their aid, Hitler said no. In so saying, he sealed his fate. He suffered the worst humiliation of all-he had been outwitted.

  THE MISSION of the 101st Airborne Division was to take Carentan and thus link Omaha and Utah into a continuous beachhead. One of the critical actions was led by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, CO of the 3rd Battalion, 502nd PIR. Cole was 29, an army brat, and a 1939 West Point graduate, born and trained to lead. On D-Day he had gathered up seventy-five men, moved out to Utah Beach, and was at the dune line to welcome men from the 4th Division coming ashore. From June 7 on he had been involved in the attack on Carentan. The climax came on June 11.

  Cole was leading some 250 men down a long, exposed causeway. At the far end was a bridge over the Douve River. Beyond that bridge was the linkup point with units from the 29th coming from Omaha. The causeway was a metre or so above the marshes on either side. On the far side of the inland marsh, about 150 metres away, there was a hedgerow occupied by the Germans.

  Once Cole was fully committed along the causeway, the German machine guns, rifles, and mortars along the hedgerow opened fire. Cole's battalion took a couple of dozen casualties. The survivors huddled against the bank on the far side of the causeway.

  They should have kept moving. But the hardest lesson to teach in training, the most difficult rule to follow in combat, is to keep moving when fired on. Every instinct makes a soldier want to hug the ground. Cole's men did, and over the next hour the Germans dropped mortars on the battalion. The GIs were pinned down.

  Then Cole could take no more and took command. He passed out an order seldom heard in World War II: "Fix bayonets!"

  Up and down the line he could hear the click of bayonets being fitted to rifle barrels. Cole's pulse was racing. He pulled his .45 pistol, jumped onto the causeway, shouted a command so loud he could be heard above the din of the battle-"Charge!"-turned towards the hedgerow, and began plunging through the marsh.

  His men watched, fearful, excited, impressed, inspired. First, single figures rose and began to follow Cole. Then small groups of two and three. 'Then whole squads started running forward, flashing the cold steel of their bayonets. The men began to roar as they charged, their own version of the Rebel Yell.

  The Germans fired and cut down some, but not enough. Cole's men got to the hedgerow, plunged into the dugouts and trenches, thrusting, drawing blood and screams, causing death. Those Germans who dodged the bayonets fled to the rear. Paratroopers took them under fire and dropped a dozen or more.

  Cole stood there shaking, exhausted, elated. Around him the men began to cheer. After the cheering subsided. Cole got his men down the causeway and over the bridge to the far side of the Douve River. There, the following day, Omaha and Utah linked up.

  THROUGHOUT First Army, young men made many discoveries in the first few days of combat-about war, about themselves, about others. They quickly learned such basics as keep down or die, to dig deep and stay quiet, to distinguish incoming from outgoing artillery, to recognize that fear is inevitable but can be managed, and many more things they had been told in training but things that can only be truly learned by doing- in the reality of combat.

  Captain John Colby caught one of the essences of combat, the sense of total immediacy: "At this point we had been in combat six days. It seemed like a year. In combat, one lives in the now and does not think much about yesterday or tomorrow."

  Colby discovered that there was no telling
who would break or when. His battalion commander had run away from combat in his first day of action, and his company CO was a complete bust. On June 12 the company got caught in a combined mortar-artillery barrage. The men couldn't move forward, they couldn't fall back, and they couldn't stay where they were-or so it appeared to the CO, who therefore had no order to give and was speechless.

  Colby went up to him to ask for orders. The CO shook his head and pointed to his throat. Colby asked him if he could make it back to the aid station on his own, "and he leapt to his feet and took off. I never saw him again."

  Another thing Colby learned in his first week in combat was "Artillery does not fire for ever. It just seems like that when you get caught in it. The guns overheat or the ammunition runs low, and it stops. It stops for a while, anyway."

  He was amazed to discover how small he could make his body. If you get caught in the open in a shelling, he advised, "the best thing to do is drop to the ground and crawl into your steel helmet. One's body tends to shrink a great deal when shells come in. I am sure I have gotten as much as eighty per cent of my body under my helmet when caught under shellfire."

  About themselves, the most important thing a majority of the GIs discovered was that they were not cowards. They hadn't thought so, they had fervently hoped it would not be so, but they couldn't be sure until tested.

  After a few days in combat most of them knew they were good soldiers. They had neither run away nor collapsed into a pathetic mass of quivering jelly (their worst fear, even greater than the fear of being afraid).

  They were learning about others. A common experience: the guy who talked toughest, bragged most, excelled in manoeuvres, everyone's pick to be the top soldier in the company, was the first to break, while the soft-talking kid who was hardly noticed in camp was the standout in combat. These are the cliches of war novels precisely because they are true. They also learned that while combat brought out the best in some men, it unleashed the worst in others-and the distinction wasn't always clear.