Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (52 page)

From the beginning, however, Bradley had worried that a U-boat torpedo or Luftwaffe bomb might blow an ammunition ship to kingdom come and thereby interrupt the delivery of ordnance to his men. A few weeks before the invasion, therefore, he had approached Kirk with the idea of acquiring several car ferries and filling them up with what were called “units of fire”—prepackaged containers of bullets, machine gun belts, bazooka rockets, and artillery shells. The car ferries could be towed across the Channel, Bradley explained, and deposited onto the beach at high tide, where they would serve as permanent ammunition depots. They would still be subject to a lucky shot by long-range German artillery, but at least they could not be sunk. As a result of that conversation, in the days after the initial landings several LCIs towed eight ammunition barges across the Channel and landed them on the invasion beaches just past midnight on June 8. In at least one case a beach master strenuously objected to the placement of the barges, but once they were well and firmly aground it was too late to reposition them.
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The Allied beaches were relatively secure from air attack during the daytime, when Allied planes ruled the skies, though one bold German plane did manage to land a 550-pound phosphorus bomb on HMS
Bulolo
, the headquarters ship for Force G. The more serious danger was at night, when German bombers flew regularly over the beaches dropping flares (to illuminate the targets), bombs, and mines. Though these Luftwaffe raids were less ferocious than the Allied planners had feared, the Germans did have several weapons that, had they been employed in large numbers, might have changed the course of the battle. One was the pressure-sensitive oyster mine, for which the Allies had no effective countermeasure. German planes dropped these into the waters off the Normandy beaches in their nightly raids, and while those mines claimed several ships, there were simply not enough of them to halt the invasion.

Another weapon with the potential to change the course of history was the rocket-propelled Henschel H.S. 293 radio-guided aerial bomb, the forerunner of air-launched guided missiles. German bombers could carry two of these, one under each wing, and launch them miles away, guiding them into the target by radio signals. The Allies were aware of the threat and had developed a countermeasure. When a ship recognized the tone emitted by these radio-guided bombs, it sent out a one-word warning to the fleet: “Vermin!” Thus alerted, the ships employed radio jammers designed to throw the bomb off its course. This was generally effective, though several radio-guided bombs did find their mark. The brand-new
Sumner
-class destroyer USS
Meredith
may have been a victim of such a weapon. At an hour past midnight on June 7–8, the
Meredith
was rocked by “a violent explosion” that “appeared to lift her up and throw her forward.” She began to list to starboard almost immediately and, dead in the water, drifted shoreward. With the main deck awash, her captain, Commander George Knuepfer, ordered abandon ship. Curiously, though, the
Meredith
did not sink, and the next morning two salvage tugs began to tow her back to England. En route there, she was rocked by a near miss from a 2,000-pound bomb that shook the ship so violently she broke in half. She went to the bottom having suffered the loss of thirty-five killed and another twenty-seven wounded.
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A third German anti-ship weapon, one of an especially desperate character, was the so-called human torpedo. A pilot drove a modified torpedo on the surface that carried another torpedo, this one with a warhead, slung underneath. It was not a suicide weapon; the pilot would release the torpedo at a ship and then turn away. The Germans deployed forty-seven of these off the Normandy beaches, but they succeeded in sinking only three minesweepers. Of course, there were also losses from more conventional weapons. Only a few hours after the
Meredith
was hit, a mine exploded under the USS
Glennon
(DD-620), and when the destroyer escort USS
Rich
(DE-695) came to her aid, she, too, hit a mine. Both vessels were lost.

During the nightly air attacks, gunners on the Allied ships responded with a fury. There were literally thousands of anti-aircraft guns in the Allied armada, and, confident that planes flying at night were almost certainly hostile, whenever the gunners heard the sound of aircraft overhead, they simply aimed skyward and pulled the trigger. So much flak was hurled into the night skies that spent rounds fell back to earth as if it were raining bullets. Admiral Bryant, on USS
Texas
, recalled that “shrapnel fell on our decks like snow.” Inevitably, some of that spent ordnance inflicted casualties on Allied sailors. One Seabee on a rhino ferry felt a slight thump on the collar of his life vest, followed by a fierce burning sensation all down his front. Ripping open his life vest, he saw that a spent tracer round had entered his collar and burned an ugly welt all the way down his chest. Soon enough, orders came down that the relatively inexperienced gunners on the amphibious ships should hold their fire, not only to reduce friendly-fire incidents but also because all those tracer rounds going up into the sky actually assisted the Germans in locating Allied shipping. It proved much safer simply to darken ship and hold fire. As one sailor put it, “We hid.”
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Off Utah Beach, Moon ordered the gunners on the
Bayfield
not to fire at all lest they expose their position. Nevertheless, one night when a German bomber got closer and closer, the gunners could not restrain themselves. When they opened up, the pilot of the bomber followed the line of tracer fire to land a 500-pound bomb only fifty yards off the stern of the
Bayfield
. The big ship “shook like a rag doll.” Men were knocked to the deck and clouds of dust fell from the overheads. Moon himself was bounced around
on the bridge, and he was furious about the lack of fire discipline. According to one witness, “angry words were spoken to the captain.”
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Another threat was the E-boats out of Le Havre and Cherbourg. For the most part, these were easily fended off, though one of them did manage to put a torpedo into the USS
Nelson
(DD-623) on June 12, and two LSTs (314 and 376) were torpedoed and sunk, presumably by E-boats. Due to these threats from air and sea, the men on the Allied ships offshore remained at general quarters around the clock throughout the first week. Stewards carried coffee, soup, and sandwiches to the men at their stations, and only one man at a time was allowed to visit the head. When there was a lull, half the men were allowed to sleep on the deck near their stations, but no one was to go below.
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THINGS BEGAN TO IMPROVE
on D-Day plus four—that is, June 10. Ramsay concluded that Omaha Beach was now sufficiently secure that the LSTs could begin to go ashore without having to discharge their cargoes onto the LCTs or rhinos. Because Moon had authorized LSTs to run up onto the beach on the afternoon of June 7, the tonnage delivered to Utah Beach exceeded the totals for Omaha Beach on both June 8 and 9. Now, with the LSTs going ashore on Omaha Beach as well, the totals there quickly mounted. Offloading was relatively swift for those LSTs loaded solely with vehicles because they could discharge their tanks and trucks and retract again before the retreating tide stranded them. Those LSTs carrying cargo, however, took much longer to unload, and in most cases that meant remaining on the beach, thoroughly aground, throughout a full tide cycle—a process known as “drying out.” If the big flat-bottomed LSTs came ashore near the high-water mark, the retreating tide left them sitting so high up on the beach that crewmembers could walk all the way around the ship without getting their feet wet. Even the smaller LCTs occasionally had to “dry out” on the beach, and more than a few LCT crews actually sought a “dry load” so that after they landed, they could remain on the beach and get eight to ten hours of rest before going back to work.
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For the LST crewmembers, the biggest inconvenience during these dryingout periods was that because the ship’s generator required a constant
circulation of water, there was no electricity on board. Rather than just sit it out, sailors often went ashore to assist in the unloading of their own or other vessels, or even to do a little sightseeing or souvenir collecting. In at least one case, some crewmen tried to organize a baseball game, though they had to call it off when the ball rolled under the ship. Of course, Omaha Beach was still a dangerous place. On one occasion when an artillery shell whistled overhead, some sailors from LST-75 who had been sent ashore to help unload a nearby LCT took shelter against the cliff. They were standing there when the beach master came over to ask them what they were supposed to be doing. They explained about unloading the LCT, and the beach master told them: “Well then, get the hell over there and unload it, or pick up one of these rifles and get up the hill and start shooting them damn Germans.” Given that choice, they decided the stevedore work was preferable.
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The beach masters were the choreographers of the Allied supply effort, and it was difficult work. They and the Navy signalmen who worked with them stayed on the beach for weeks, living in foxholes with canvas roofs or inside wrecked ships, and surviving on cold K rations while directing traffic both offshore and on the beach. A few skippers resented their authority, especially when, after maneuvering for hours, they finally found a likely landing spot only to be ordered away from it by a beach master. One LCT skipper later described his initial reaction to receiving such an order: “Hey, this is my ship and you aren’t going to tell me what to do.” He kept that view to himself, however, and did as he was told. There was additional friction when American skippers sought to land on a British beach. While most Americans found British speech patterns amusing, at least one ground his teeth with annoyance when a British beach master told him: “Skipper, don’t come in there…. Over here, old chap.”
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On the other hand, there could be advantages to landing on a British beach. When Ensign Don Irwin landed LCT-614 on Gold Beach, the beach master invited him and his exec over to his “headquarters” while the vessel was being unloaded. Those headquarters turned out to be a wrecked British LCT. It was a place for the beach master to rest when he could, and to sleep whenever possible. It was also stocked with, among other things, British
rum. After his American visitors climbed aboard, the beach master poured out three generous tumblers and handed them around. The two Americans sipped cautiously and found the rum alarmingly potent. Irwin felt it burn “like a red hot poker all the way down.” Not wanting to be thought either unappreciative or unmanly, he waited until the beach master turned away, then poured the contents over the side. Afterward, he wondered if that explained why so many of the British beach masters seemed to have such a “ruddy glow.”
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Other sailors sought to effect repairs to their wrecked and stranded vessels. Many of the Higgins and Mike boats that had been shot up during the initial landings were so full of holes that they looked like sieves. To effect repairs, each vessel came equipped with a sack of tapered wooden plugs, and the crewmen began hammering these into the holes from the outside, leaving half-inch-long stubs sticking out. By the time they finished, one sailor thought “the old boat looked like it was growing something.”
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Food was a problem for many. The sailors had each been issued K rations when they left England, though many had simply tossed them over the side after extracting the cigarettes and the candy bars. Now, after several days on the beach, even K rations sounded pretty good. They soon learned that while most of the small boats were out of food, the larger LSTs and transports were still well stocked, and some of them, at least, were willing to share. One of the Royal Navy LSTs was, in effect, a floating bakery; when smaller vessels came alongside, the British tars handed over a few loaves of bread. Once the word got around, there was nearly always a long queue of small boats nearby, though at least one U.S. Navy sailor complained that “the bread was so hard you could hardly chew it.”
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Those boat crews that had been stranded on the beach and were unable to visit well-stocked ships offshore had to improvise. On June 9, a crewmember from a grounded Mike boat stumbled across a wooden crate filled with cans of beef and chicken stew. He alerted his shipmates, and they dug a shallow pit in the sand, used diesel fuel to start a fire, and heated the cans on top of a .50 caliber machine gun sight, which they used as a grate. Not all crews were so fortunate, and some simply went without. One boat’s crew survived for two days on nothing but canned tomato juice.
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Once the LSTs had been emptied, they retracted during the next high tide and headed back across the Channel in convoys to take on another load. In a representative example, LST-543 discharged its cargo on D-Day, came back across the Channel on June 7, loaded up again at Southampton on the eighth, delivered that cargo on the tenth, recrossed the Channel on the thirteenth, and made another delivery on the fifteenth. It was exhausting work. At ten knots, a round trip from Spithead to Normandy took eighteen hours. That meant that to sustain this schedule, the ships had to be constantly steaming, loading, or unloading. Most LSTs made at least forty or fifty such round trips, and one crewmember was sure that his ship had made the crossing “at least a hundred times.” No wonder they looked forward to drying out. Inevitably, confusion crept into this frenetic schedule, but when it did, the ships and their crews simply muddled through. As an example of that, Admiral Morison tells the story of an American LCI that off-loaded at Utah Beach, then returned to Portsmouth for more. Once it had loaded up, however, no orders were forthcoming, so on his own the skipper joined an outbound British convoy. As the ship left the Solent, a signal station on shore flashed the message “Where do you think you are going?” to which the skipper replied, “I don’t know.” After a short pause, the response came: “Proceed.”
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