Authors: Anthony G Williams
THE FORESIGHT WAR (48 page)
The intelligence officer went on to outline the plan of attack.
There was a long, tense pause after he had finished, as the gathered staff officers absorbed the plan, turned it over in their minds to see if it felt right, then began to work out the implications for their units.
Some hands began to rise.
The officer nodded at one.
‘What about diversionary attacks?
Are we landing anywhere else at the same time – Denmark, Italy or southern France, for instance?’
‘We’re going to some lengths to keep the Germans guessing about that one.
More to the point, Stalin will be launching a major offensive before D-day with all of his remaining reserves.
The German forces in the east will be thoroughly pinned down by the time we land.’
Harold noted with wry amusement that the intelligence officer had neatly avoided answering the question. These staff officers didn’t need to know about the plans for other areas, so they weren’t being told.
He reflected on the wide range of elaborate deception plans, particularly focused on the Pas-de-Calais, which Don had insisted on calling Operation Overlord.
‘Too obvious,’ the others had groaned, ‘
Your
opposite number would never fall for that! It’s just as bad as calling the main operation Sledgehammer – he’s bound to remember that was the name of a plan for a 1942 raid on France.’
Still, some of the plans were rather more than just deceptions.
As the questions petered out, the naval officer called for attention.
This was obviously the bit where he was planning to send them off in a state of optimism, tempered by a note of caution; oh hell, Harold silently berated himself, I’ve been to too many of these!
‘In total, we have well over two million men gathered for the attack; that’s over thirty divisions, with a very high proportion of them armoured or mechanised.
We will be launching our attack with ten divisions, half in the first wave, half already afloat and waiting to follow on.
The Germans are spread thinly along the coast, so when we land it will be with overwhelming force.’
He paused for effect.
‘The important thing to remember is this: a successful landing is obviously absolutely crucial, but nevertheless the landing will be the easiest part.
Everything has been planned and there is an excellent chance of the plan working smoothly.
The moment the landing has taken place, the uncertainties of war begin to take effect.
We do not know exactly how the Germans will respond, but it will be violently.
The difficult part will be to deal with their counter-attacks and press on with the exploitation phase of our attack while keeping our troops supplied with materials, food and fuel.’
And replacements for the casualties, thought Harold, there will be plenty of them.
A fine drizzle was drifting down as Harold left the building.
He turned up his collar and walked down the driveway to the waiting car, the moisture beading on his face, trickling down his cheeks.
I hope that’s not an omen, he thought.
There will be tears enough before this is over.
For a moment he paused, visualising the immensity of what they were about to do.
Millions of men, countless weapons, all poised to throw themselves across the water at a fierce and unrelenting enemy.
He shuddered; the risks were appalling and even success would demand a high price.
He walked more slowly, feeling suddenly depressed.
So much could go wrong; there was so much still to do!
Early
Summer
1943
The USAAC pilot tried to ignore the constant howling of the wind through the numerous holes in the B-25’s fuselage.
At least, he thought, it had blown away the smell of high-explosive from the cannon shells which had detonated inside his plane.
One of the gunners had not survived the onslaught from the
Me
262 jet but the rest of his crew was surprisingly unhurt.
He pondered once again the brutal randomness of war; the sheer chance which meant that one man lived while the man next to him died, like some decimation lottery.
Still, it looked as if the rest of the crew were going to make it back from this one.
The shadow of a ‘little friend’ flickered briefly across the canopy, the P-51 keeping close watch on its battered charge as it struggled wearily across the Channel.
The raid had been risky from the start. The target, as so often these days, was a railway junction and marshalling yard, a key point on a supply route from Germany into France.
Of course, the Germans knew it was a key point as well, so it was surrounded by the predictable layers of flak.
The P-47 boys had gone in first as usual, shooting up every flak gun they could find, but the bigger guns were protected by smaller ones and he guessed that more than one of the tough fighter-bombers would have fallen prey to the deadly quad 20 mm or twin 30 mm cannon.
Despite their efforts, the bomb run had been nerve-jangling, the deadly flare of the big, high-velocity tracer shells flashing just past the plane several times.
Art, his young new bombardier, had kept his nerve and planted the bombs squarely over the target and the pilot had thankfully hauled the big Mitchell round, careful to keep station with the rest of his formation, and headed for home.
They were just beginning to relax when the jet bounced them in one fast, raking pass, 30 mm cannon shells hammering the bomber for a terrifying fraction of a second before the plane disappeared, barely glimpsed as it sped away from the defending fighters.
Now all the pilot could do was wait and watch the gauges, hoping that nothing vital had been hit and they would make it back to base.
He thought for a moment about what else had been going on over the deadly skies of Europe.
He knew from his friends in other units that the Allied pressure on the Luftwaffe was relentless.
Some units specialised in knocking out bridges with guided bombs – a nerve-racking task to hold the plane steady through the eruption of flak, while the bombardier steered the bomb home – and others hit radar stations or bombed the ports harbouring the deadly U-boats and E-boats, but the most dangerous task was taking the battle to the enemy.
He grimaced as recalled the graphic description of one visiting pilot who had – understandably – been consuming more alcohol than was good for him.
The P-47s had gone in first to hit the fighter bases, aiming to knock out as many jets as possible before they could get off the ground.
The Luftwaffe was intolerant of such enterprise so there was the usual barrage of flak.
Then the medium and heavy bombers went in – it hardly mattered what the target was – they were there as bait.
As the jets climbed to attack, they were met by diving P-51 escort fighters, pilots frantically calculating distances, angles and relative speeds in the hope that when they pulled up onto the tails of the jets they would, for a few seconds, be able to hold them in their gunsights.
As the jets approached the bombers, other escorts hurled themselves into their path, desperate to distract them if not shoot them down.
Some did not survive.
The four MK 108 cannon carried by the
Me
262 were not good dog-fighting weapons – their muzzle velocity was too low – but any fighter unlucky enough to occupy the same airspace as a burst from those weapons would simply disintegrate.
The air battle was soon over, the jets heading for home as their fuel ran low.
As they shaped up to land at low speed, they were at their most vulnerable and more Allied fighters swooped on them, battling through the defending Fw 190s sent up specifically to guard against this tactic.
The war against the Luftwaffe was one of grinding attrition, the pilot reflected.
Both sides were taking heavy losses.
He knew that ultimately the Allies would win this particular battle – America was producing so many planes and training so many pilots that Germany would run out of both long before them – but that was of little comfort to the crews, many of them just teenagers, who went out day after day, knowing that each time they went out, the odds were stacked more heavily against them.
A green patchwork quilt slowly materialised below him, the landscape blooming with the life of early summer.
They would make it back, this time.
The guard wrapped his coat more tightly around him, silently cursing the strong, cool, north-easterly breeze.
The unseasonably hot weekend they had just enjoyed make the change in the weather all the less welcome.
He stared gloomily out over the sea.
From his elevated position, the choppy surface broke the reflection of the full moon into shimmering fragments.
No sign of the invading armada, he thought sarcastically.
However, he knew better than to deviate from the orders of his commanding officer so he stayed at his post, trying not to think of his
comrades
sound asleep in the comfort of their bunker.
He turned around and glared back at the spider’s web of the radar dish gleaming in the moonlight, feeling suddenly vulnerable.
He had heard the gossip that many of the gun batteries along the coast were dummies, left as decoys while the real guns were moved back.
His own position was too good to leave, commanding as it did the approaches to a vulnerable stretch of coastline.
He looked around again, feeling uneasy.
Not long before, Allied aircraft had cruised invisibly past not far away.
He had heard no bombs and the FlaK batteries had held their fire, not wanting to reveal their positions until it really mattered.
Now the night was still again.
The guard stomped his feet and marched around a little to warm up, slinging the heavy weight of the StG.40 onto his other shoulder for a change.
He tried not to keep looking at the luminous hands on his watch as they crawled interminably towards the time when he would be relieved.
He heard a quiet quacking noise in the dark and looked towards it, puzzled.
What was a duck doing up here, making a noise at this time of night?
The noise came again and he walked slowly towards it, pleased for even the most trivial diversion to relieve his boredom.
Perhaps he could capture a prize for tomorrow’s dinner.
The sergeant watched him coming, put down his ‘Duck, Bakelite’ which the SAS paratroopers used to locate each other, and waited.
As the guard approached, a dark form rose up behind him, there was a brief gleam of steel,
then
only one man stood.
The small team, who had practised for months the skill of landing their steerable black-silk parachutes precisely onto a target lit only by moonlight, moved swiftly into co-ordinated action.
The charges were placed at critical points around the radar station.
The team melted back into the night.
They would be long gone by the time the explosives detonated.
The pilot gazed through the windscreen of the glider at the tow-rope pointing towards the vague shape of the Albemarle transport ahead of him. For now, he had little to do but wait until the tow-plane’s crew advised him that they were close enough to the target for him to cast off. Then, he would need to steer the big Horsa down to the landing ground, to deliver its cargo of two dozen troops and their equipment where it was needed. He thought for a moment about the paratroop planes which had preceded them, and wondered how they had got on. One of his friends had the job of dropping dummy parachutists away from the landing zones, designed to let loose with a barrage of fireworks to simulate gunfire as soon as they hit the ground. He smiled at the thought of the panic among the German commanders as they received frantic messages about paratroop landings scattered halfway across Europe.
Landing by glider was better, the pilot reflected, as the troops all landed together and were immediately ready to fight as a unit instead of spending minutes, or even hours, just locating each other. But some targets had no suitable landing grounds, so parachutes were the only way of getting the troops to them with the silence needed for surprise. At least, there was no excuse for not finding the right landing place, as all of the transports had been fitted as a rush job (as if someone had only just remembered it, he thought) with the highly accurate Oboe navigation system normally used for blind bombing.
While he waited for the signal, he focused for the hundredth time on reviewing the reconnaissance photographs of his destination: the narrow strip of land between the
The signal flashed in the cockpit and the pilot pulled the lever to release the tow. Minutes later, the moonlight gleaming on the twin waterways led him in to a precise landing by the