05-25 D-Day question of the day

I've been to Normandy, and saw a lot of things, but as I was young and green, I really had no idea what I was seeing; just the vague notion that I was standing in the presence of something pleasing to God.

I have a whole lot of questions about D-Day, and guess I'll ask them one each day, until June 6.

The first one is the beaches on Normandy. There were five of them, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, and Utah. The British and Canadians dealt with the first three, the Americans with the following two.

Omaha Beach is generally considered the roughest place to have been; it was a really close-run thing, and just as likely to fail as to succeed.

Would it not have been more practical to land on the other four beaches, avoiding Omaha Beach altogether, and then squeezing that gap between the beaches, as if a pimple?

After I posted the "Citizen Soldiers" bit, I remembered another fascinating book by Cmdr.Rear Adm. Edward Ellsberg titled "The Far Shore".

How would the invasion have gone without the "Mulberry" harbor and breakwaters? That damned near happened except for an unsung American, Capt. Dayton Clark.

As the Mulberrys and Phoenix caissons were being built, they were shipped up coast to an isolated area and sunk, waiting to be re-floated just before the invasion and towed to the beaches. This guy kept telling anybody who would listen that the approach the British Army was taking wouldn't work - damned near got court-martialed because he kept at it when he was told to shut up.

Ellsberg, who was working on another project, was finally given the task to check it out. He was an old salvage expert and knew the ropes. Good God, Clark was right! The Brits had some Dutch tugs refitted with massive pumps to do the refloating. The only thing was, the pumps were sewage pumps taken from London and were meant to MOVE water along horizontally, not pump it UP from sunken hulls.

Long story short, Ellsberg backed Clark up and suggested the U.S. Navy take over. Churchill came down just days before the invasion, took a look, and yanked the army's Royal Engineers off the project and gave it to the Royal Navy (national pride), who saved the day. It was a near thing.

An interesting sidelight is that they also towed over the stripped down old WWI battleship "Centurion" with 80 guys on board. They brought her in, lined her up and scuttled her under heavy shore fire. The Germans were ecstatic as they thought they had sunk a battleship with a heavy loss of life as "less than 100 were seen abandoning ship".

There was also a grim epitaph for some of the crews of the tugs and "bombardons" (steel floating breakwaters) that were towed over. Many were attacked by E-boats. Ellsberg says they found one floating adrift, blood-spattered, without the tug and with no one aboard.

I doubt many people know what a near disaster that part of the invasion was.

One thing that has always interested me was walking past the Freya system as I stared at that infamous house that is shown in almost every movie about Normandy, but I still very much appreciate the fact that of all the people in the world that the French could have chosen to represent the Normans in the museum in Caen was none other than Charleston Heston. He was the one who they felt was the most perfect exmaple of someone with Norman characteristics! The actual museum for D-Day is not to be missed in any tour!

From what I’ve read and from talking to a friend of mine who went in with the first wave at Utah beach, the current carried the landing force over a mile to the south of the intended landing area. As a result the landing occurred at a relatively unopposed portion of the beach. My friend said the worst part of Normandy for him was cutting down dead paratroopers from trees and such. He was wounded 3 times during his time in Europe.

I believe the strategy was to push inland in a straight line, having cover from the flanks. (An attack from the flank is THE most effective way to defeat a troop column.)

The time it would have taken to do a scissor maneuver (pinch) would have give the German reserves inland, time to advance on the coast and would have exposed the troops on their flank while they took those beaches.

Our 101st Airborne Division was already scattered inland to capture critical bridges and roads, which helped split up the German defenses.

But the biggest help for our side was the German Command’s incompetent system, based on an Oligarchic chain of command. (Everything went through Hitler himself.) This was our greatest advantage and the miracle we had hoped and prayed for.

I just read a biography of Lucian Truscott Jr., who was along as an observer at Dieppe. It was indeed a disaster, and squandered many well trained men.

The most important thing in war is to learn as much as possible from the mistakes you make. The learning from mistakes at Dieppe was used to help assure successful landings in North Africa, where Truscott was Patton’s deputy.

Some of the Canadians who came back became the nucleus of the First Special Service Force assembled by LTC Fredricks (Later MG), which benefited greatly from the Candian’s experience. They took part in the amphibious retaking of Dutch Harbor, and had later operations in Italy. Many of the US soldiers left went to the 45th Division. Major General Fredricks went on to found US Special Forces as Commander of the Military Assistance Group to Greece.

One interesting thing I discovered was trying to find accurate descriptions and books about the battle/massacre at Dieppe(although while I was there in ‘94 the local citizens were extremely rude).There are or were very few books out in 1994 about Dieppe although that may have changed by now. The cemetary itself is extremely impressive and the forces faced an impossible task, while the response to action to collect the troops from the British side was nothing short of miraculous!

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