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Posted on 12/28/2003 5:40:52 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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 "'Hitler built a fortress around Europe - but he forgot to put a roof on it'. " ~ Franklin D Roosevelt The attack on the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 and the unexpectedly strong resistance put up by the Red Army forced the German High Command to transfer increasing numbers of troops away from the Western front, considerably weakening it in the process. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, fears of an Anglo-American landing intensified, and in the same month, Hitler reinforced his system of defence by ordering the construction of the Atlantic Wall. This gigantic project, entrusted to the Todt Organization, was begun in 1942 but had still not been completed by 1944, despite the efforts of Field-Marshal Rommel, who had been made responsible for the entire sector between the Netherlands and the Loire at the end of 1943.  The project involved building 15,000 structures along the entire coast of the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic. This required the labour of 450,000 workers (both voluntary and impressed) and the use of 11 million tonnes of concrete and 1 million tonnes of steel for the reinforcing rods. Despite the image that German propaganda sought to project, the “Wall” was not a continuous obstacle. It could basically be said to be composed of four types of structure: the fortresses, the coastal batteries, the close beach defences and the obstacles erected either on the beaches themselves or inland. Many remains of the Atlantic Wall – more or less well-preserved – can still be seen today along the coast of Normandy.  More than 700,000 men were massed behind the “Wall”. In Lower Normandy, the German Army had the equivalent of between seven and eight divisions. The fortresses Ever since the Anglo-Canadian raid on Dieppe in August 1942, the Germans had been convinced that the Allies would try to capture a port during their next landing attempt, in order to ensure the swift arrival of the men, equipment and supplies they would need. Accordingly, all the major ports along Europe’s western coastline were turned into veritable fortresses (Festungen), bristling with large-calibre guns intended to repulse any invasion fleet. The Seine bay sector was thus framed by the two fortresses of Cherbourg and Le Havre.  The Cherbourg Fortress, commanded by General Karl von Schlieben, extended along a 30-kilometre stretch of sea front on either side of the city, from Jardeheu in the west to Cape Levi in the east. There were no fewer than a dozen heavy batteries here, with a total of more than forty guns of a calibre ranging from 105 to 240 mm. The city and port were dotted with numerous blockhouses, antitank walls and anti-aircraft artillery positions.  Coastal artillery batteries Between the fortresses, the Germans constructed coastal artillery batteries, under the control of either the army or the navy. Spaced several kilometres apart, they were designed to fire out to sea and ward off any invasion fleet. They were equipped with guns (usually with a calibre of betweetn 100 and 155 mm) which were generally grouped in fours or, more rarely, in sixes.  In all, there were more than twenty main batteries along the coasts of the Seine Bay between Le Havre and Cherbourg. Each of these was protected by a defensive perimeter ringed with minefields and a network of barbed wire, with machine-gun, mortar and anti-aircraft gun positions, connected by trenches.  Originally placed in open concrete pits, the guns proved vulnerable to Allied aerial bombardments, which had considerably increased in frequency since 1943. In order to protect them, Rommel ordered them to be placed in thick concrete casemates. This operation was far from complete by the spring of 1944, and as a precaution, some guns were discreetly removed from their emplacements and hidden inland.  On D-Day, the German coastal batteries offered only feeble resistance to the Allied ships, which overcame them without too much difficulty. Close Beach Defences The Widerstandnesten (“nests of resistance”) located within the immediate vicinity of the shore, on cliffs, dunes or sea walls, were lighter structures than the coastal batteries. They were intended to provide close defence of the beaches against assault troops.  They generally comprised one or two casemates housing medium-calibre guns (50, 75 or 88mm), positioned so as to rake the shore, Tobruks (concrete pits embedded in the ground and fitted with a circular lid where an infantryman could be posted) and mortar, machine-gun and anti-aircraft-gun positions, all connected by a network of trenches.  By the spring of 1944, there were no fewer than 200 Widerstandnesten along the coasts of the Seine Bay. There were, for example around fifteen along the six-kilometre stretch of beach between Vierville and Colleville (future Omaha Beach sector).  These close defences caused far more losses among Allied troops on June 6th 1944 than the coastal batteries. Beach and inland defences In December 1943, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel was ordered by Hitler to inspect the Atlantic Wall. In January 1944, he was placed in command of Army Group B, responsible for defending the northeastern coasts of Europe, from the Loire to the Netherlands, i.e. the sector most directly under threat from an Allied invasion. In Rommel’s opinion, the decisive battle would take place on the beaches, so with his customary zeal, he made every effort to plug the gaps he had identified in the Atlantic Wall and gave a fresh impetus to its construction. He ordered the artillery batteries to be protected by casemates, increased the number of close coastal defences and spiked the beaches with obstacles designed to stop any advancing assault barges and blow them up. The dunes were crammed with mines, while defences were also established inland, to counter any attack from the rear by airborne troops.  Minefields A fervent believer in the massive use of mines as part of his defensive system, Rommel had the shores along the Channel and the North Sea crammed with them. By June 1944, between five and six million of them had been buried in the dunes, as well as inland, out of a planned twenty million.  The most common variety, the Teller mine, weighed 9 kilos and contained 5 kilos of TNT. It was triggered when a pressure of approximately 150 kilos was exerted on the detonator, which was located in the centre of the lid. The resulting explosion could destroy a wheeled vehicle or smash the tracks of a tank and immobilize it.  Teller mines, like the one we can see here, fixed to the top of a stake, were also used on beach obstacles, to destroy incoming Allied landing barges. After the war, it took years of work, carried out in particularly hazardous conditions by french volunteers and German prisoners of war, to rid the coast of these deadly weapons. Beach obstacles Field-Marshal Rommel’s strategy consisted in blocking the Allied landing forces on the beaches. In order to achieve this, he decided to cram the coast with vast numbers of obstacles designed to hamper the approach of the assault barges. His fertile imagination dreamed up a whole assortment of devilish traps against which the barges would crash, become impaled, be torn apart or explode, including “Czech hedgehogs”, “nutcrackers”, “Belgian gates” and "tetrahedra”.  The beach exits were also blocked by trenches and antitank walls or “dragon’s teeth”. These obstacles proved more or less effective in the different sectors. As they had been positioned by the Germans to stave off an attack at high tide, the Allies chose to attack at half tide, and this enabled them to escape some of the dangers. However, on certain beaches, such as Omaha and Juno, they were unable to avoid them and consequently sustained heavy losses.  Defence against airborne troops Imagining - not without reason - that the Allied landings would be accompanied by the dropping of airborne troops, Rommel took a series of measures to try and counter this possibility. In order to prevent gliders from landing, he had large stakes planted in the fields - the famous Rommel’s asparagus.These stakes were sometimes linked together by strands of barbed wire nailed to their tops.  In the early months of 1944, large numbers of villagers were requisitioned to help the German troops fell trees, strip them of their branches and plant the famous “Rommel’s Asparagus” – jobs they often performed as slowly as possible, never hesitating to sabotage their work by planting the posts too shallowly in the ground.  He also gave orders for several low-lying inland areas to be flooded, such as the Aure valley and above all the Dives marshes, east of the Orne, and the Douve and Merderet marshes in the Cotentin Peninsula. In the night of June 5th-6th, a number of British and American parachutists did indeed drown in these traps, tangled up in their harnesses and weighed down by their equipment. The German army in Normandy In November 1943, as the prospect of an Allied landing became increasingly likely, Hitler decided to strengthen the German forces stationed in the West. Accordingly, the number of divisions in France, Belgium and the Netherlands was increased from around thirty in 1942 to nearly sixty by the spring of 1944. Most of them were massed behind the coastline extending from Brittany to the Pas-de-Calais and were placed under the orders of Field-Marshal Rommel, who commanded Army Group B.  The 21st Panzer Division was the only armoured unit to be stationed near the coast. Unlike most of the general officers, Rommel certainly did not exclude the possibility of an assault on the coast of Lower Normandy, where he stationed the 91st, 243rd, 352nd, 709th, 711th and 716th infantry divisions, together with the 6th Parachute Regiment, the 30th Mobile Brigade and the Buniatchenko Russian Brigade. More or less confident about the worth of these troops, and realizing that he was almost totally lacking in aviation, Rommel wanted to be sure that he could rapidly call on armoured divisions to repulse the invasion, as he was convinced that the ultimate outcome of the battle would be decided in the first few hours.   The Atlantic Wall was a system of fortifications built by Nazi Germany which extended along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe, from Norway to the Spanish border. Not a wall in the true sense of the word, the Atlantic Wall was rather a series of German batteries built at strategic locations which were intended to thwart any potential amphibious invasions by destroying them while still at sea and to allow Germany to defend the coast of Europe with as few men as possible. The German fortifications at Longues-sur-Mer are a classic example of the pattern that was used for the Atlantic Wall. Longues-sur-Mer In general, the batteries which made up the Atlantic Wall followed a particular pattern. Along the shoreline a large command post or control bunker was built for the purposes of observation along the beach. At Longues-sur-Mer, the control bunker had two levels -- an upper observation deck and a lower level which housed the map room, radio room, officers' room, and range-finder room. The range finder was used to calculate the distances from the guns to the enemy targets and messages from the officers in the control bunker were relayed to the soldiers in the casemates by field telephone.  Four casemates were built inland, behind the control bunker; in the case of Longues-sur-Mer, the casemates were placed 300 meters behind the control bunker. Each casemate was 15m long, 10m wide, and 6m high; the walls were 6'6" thick and incorporated 600 cubic meters of concrete and four tons of steel reinforcement. Each casement also housed a large gun. The types and sizes of these guns varied from location to location, but at Longues, the guns were 152-mm German naval guns with a barrel 8m long, a firing range of approximately 13 miles, a firing rate of six 45kg. shells per minute, and a weight of 20 tons each.  The Atlantic Wall was considered to be nearly impenetrable by Hitler, since his fortifications were located on the tops of cliffs in practically impregnable locations. However, many factors contributed to their inability to successfully defend the European coastline. The Wall was never actually completed and construction at some of the bunkers was rather hasty. Often the personnel assigned to the the bunkers was second-rate, as Germany was fighting in the east as well as the west. It was not unusual to find gunners who were over the age of 40.  The battery at Longues-sur-Mer was defeated in June 1944 through a combined effort of both the British and the french. It has been preserved to this day as a Memorial of the war and the men who fought. The craters from the shelling, which at the time of the attack were 7m deep and 20m across, have never been filled and also serve as a testament to the violence and the magnitude of the conflict.  The batteries at Ouistreham, known as "Le Grand Bunker," and at Merville, are also examples of Atlantic Wall Fortifications which can found in Normandy today, though they are a little off of the typical tourist path.  Le Grande Bunker  Merville      |
Good for him. That generation surely didn't talk much. There were so many of them and to most they felt is was "just their duty" and no big deal to talk about. I sure there were many things in their mind they needed to push to the back for their own sakes.
Thanks for sharing with us today.
Boy or girl, I have an idea this child will be raised conservative and with a good knowledge of our history. That's a good thing.
So how far along is the baby and you know you will now have to keep us updated as we will consider the child one of "our own". ;-)
Cool, sure is a great feeling isn't it?
We never wanted to know, all 3 were a "surprise" and we liked it that way.
It's one of the smaller 500 gallons units.
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