Liberating Europe : D-Day to Victory in Europe 1944-1945

339 Pages·2014·16.39 MB·English

by  Grehan

C
ONTENTS
Introduction
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
The Despatches
1. The Dieppe Raid, 18-19 August 1942
2. The Assault Phase of the Normandy Landings, 1944.
3. Liberation of Europe (Operation Overlord) Operations of Coastal
Command, Royal Air Force, from May to August 1944.
4. Air Operations by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force in North West
Europe from 15 November 1943, to 30 September 1944.
5. The Final Stages of the Naval War in North West Europe.
6. Operations in North-West Europe from 6 June 1944, to 5 May 1945.
Abbreviations
I
NTRODUCTION
The operation which was launched in the first week of June 1944, and led to the
liberation of France and then Occupied Europe, was a success, even though it
proved to be a far harder task than had been expected. It is frequently said that
this success was in part due to the combined operation against Dieppe in 1942
where many lessons were learnt. Consequently an account of this raid, Operation
Jubilee, forms the first despatch in this volume.
The despatch supplied by the Naval Force Commander, Captain J. Hughes-
Hallett, whilst admitting to a number of mistakes (in what was in reality a
disaster), claims that the operation, which achieved nothing “was well worth
while provided its lessons are carefully applied when the time comes to re-enter
France on a large scale”. To regard the losses incurred in the raid – more than
3,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner – as being “worth while” one would
think that these lessons were truly revelatory. Yet what we learn from Hughes-
Hallett is that very strong forces were needed to break through prepared defences
and that a high proportion of troops should be held in reserve until it is known
where to use them to exploit success. These are two of the most basic and
fundamental aspects of military operations. To suggest that Britain’s military
commanders were unaware of these factors defies belief.
Nevertheless, when Operation Overlord was launched two years later, and
whether Dieppe had taught the Allied leaders anything or not, it was with forces
powerful enough to overcome the German defences. The second despatch in this
volume, therefore, concerns the assault phase of the Normandy landings,
Operation Neptune, and this is also supplied by a naval officer, in this case
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.
Operation Neptune was indeed a colossal enterprise, requiring, as Ramsay
explains, “the co-ordination of the movement of thousands of ships and landing
craft and aircraft and then of their fire power, the second the co-ordination of the
activities of hundreds of thousands of men and women of all services, both in the
United Kingdom and off the French coast, marshalling, loading, sailing,
unloading and returning at least eight ship convoys a day in addition to ten or
twelve landing craft groups”.
It is interesting to note that though we view the transporting of some 150,000
Allied troops across the Channel in, or protected by, more than 5,000 vessels,
whilst achieving almost complete surprise, as being the result of a high degree of
careful planning and co-ordination, it is evident that Ramsay must have
experienced a degree of difficulty dealing with the American Navy. In his
despatch he states: “I am aware that the U.S. naval authorities had to exercise
considerable restraint in submitting to a degree of control by superior authority
on a level higher than that to which they were accustomed. In their reports the
U.S. naval commanders have commented that in their view my orders extended
to too much detail.”
These are strong words. The Americans clearly did not like being told what
to do by a British commander and considerable restraint had to be exercised.
Ramsay also reveals that there was disagreement amongst the force
commanders. He states that after much discussion it was decided that the
landings should take place in daylight. Even though this was agreed upon, at
least two “vain” efforts were made to change it.
The third despatch in this compilation was written by Air Chief Marshal Sir
Sholto Douglas in his capacity as Air Officer Commanding-in-chief, Coastal
Command. His main task during Operation Neptune was to protect the ships and
smaller craft from German submarines. It had been noticed from March 1944
that the Germans had been withdrawing their U-boats from their bases around
the Bay of Biscay in order to concentrate them in the Channel in anticipation of
the expected invasion.
To counter this, Douglas aimed to “flood an area of sufficient depth to kill or
keep submarines submerged from the Western limits of the St. George’s and
Bristol Channels and the English Channel up to a point as near as possible to the
route of our cross-channel convoys.” Douglas called this his “the cork in the
bottle” policy, meaning that he intended to use his aircraft as the cork which
would keep the U-boats bottled-up beyond the invasion zone. Douglas also had
responsibility for helping to provide aerial protection for the cross-Channel
convoys and for this he was given eight Fleet Air Arm squadrons.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory provides the despatch
concerning the main aerial support for the Normandy operations. In this respect,
the air operations began as early as November 1943 with the objective of
reaching a situation whereby the German air force was rendered incapable of
effective interference with Operation Overlord. The second main objective was
the disruption of the enemy’s communications and channels of reinforcement
and supply. Leigh-Mallory details how this was to be achieved in the preparatory
bombing plan, which was designed to completely dislocate the railway network
across northern France and the Low Countries.
Attacks were also to be delivered against coastal batteries, enemy naval and
military targets and the enemy’s Radar installations. It was necessary, Leigh-
Mallory reminds us, that if all these attacks were delivered against the intended
landing area this would be a fairly obvious indication where the assault was
likely to take place. As a consequence at least two attacks were made on each
type of target outside of the projected assault area to just one attack on a target
within that area.
Other tasks allotted to Leigh-Mallory were:
1. To provide continuous reconnaissance of the enemy’s dispositions and
movements.
2. To support the landing and subsequent advances of the Allied armies.
3. To deliver offensive strikes against enemy naval forces.
4. To provide air lift for airborne forces.
Leigh-Mallory’s despatch, which ends with operations up to 30 September 1944,
is almost 50,000 words in length and is a highly detailed narrative of events
during the period under scrutiny. The appendices and maps mentioned in the text
by Leigh-Mallory were not, in fact, published.
A comparatively brief summary of naval operations following Operations
Overlord and Neptune is provided by Admiral Sir Harold Burrough. It was
written, Burrough claims, “with sufficient brevity that a busy man might find
time to read it”.
Burrough had to work under the command of US General Eisenhower, who
was the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. His final message
sent to Eisenhower, when the Supreme Command was terminated, presents a
somewhat different picture to that which we read about before D-Day:
“Tomorrow, for the first time, the United States Ensign will not be flown over
my Headquarters, and the hauling down of ‘Old Glory’ tonight will mark the end
of one of the happiest associations in a Combined Command which has probably
ever existed.” The success that the soldiers, sailors and airmen of the two nations
had experienced fighting together had, it would seem, brought greater
appreciation of each other’s efforts.
The final despatch is that of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. It covers
the period from D-Day until the German surrender in May 1945.
Amongst the most interesting parts of Montgomery’s despatch are his
observations on the high quality of the medical care which he witnessed. He
states that in the First World War two out of every three soldiers who were
wounded in the stomach eventually died, whereas in the Normandy campaign
two out of three that suffered such wounds recovered. He also observes that the
healing of war wounds had been revolutionised by the use of penicillin. In this
respect many men who in the First World War would have been permanent
invalids, were fit and ready to go back to the line within a month of being
wounded.
He also notes that as the troops swept through Germany they liberated many
of the concentration camps, such as Belsen and Sandbostel where thousands of
people were dying of typhus. Yet only twenty-five British soldiers contracted the
disease and none died from it.
Whilst acknowledging the efforts of the doctors and medical staff,
Montgomery also attributed the health of the troops, as well as their rapid
recovery, down to morale. “Commanders in the field,” he wrote, “must realise
that the medical state of an army is not dependent on the doctors alone. Their
efforts are immeasurably facilitated when morale is at its highest, and of all the
factors which ensure a high state of morale, there is none more important than
success.”
Montgomery repeats this theme, concluding his despatch with these words:
“I call morale the greatest single factor in war. A high morale is based on
discipline, self-respect and confidence of the soldier in his commanders, in his
weapons and in himself. Without high morale, no success can be achieved,
however good may be the strategic or tactical plan, or anything else. High
morale is a pearl of very great price. And the surest way to obtain it is by success
in battle.” This, quite possibly, is what Admiral Burrough had benefitted from.
*
The objective of this book is to reproduce those despatches as they first appeared
to the general public some seventy years ago. They have not been modified,
edited or interpreted in any way and are therefore the original and unique words
of the commanding officers as they saw things at the time. The only difference is
in the presentation of footnotes. Whereas they appeared at the end of each page
in the original documents, these have been inserted at the conclusion of the
relevant despatch and are indicated with numbers rather than symbols.
Any grammatical or spelling errors have been left uncorrected to retain the
authenticity of the documents – for example Admiral Ramsay congratulated
Rear-Admiral J. Wilkes, U.S.N. on his “splended” achievements and the success
on D-Day was “greatily” helped by tactical surprise. The authors of the
despatches also made frequent use of abbreviations, some of which may not be
immediately obvious to the reader; consequently we have included in the book
an explanation of these.
John Grehan and Martin Mace
Storrington, 2014
I
MAGES
1 Burnt out tanks and landing craft lie strewn across the beach at Dieppe after
the Allied withdrawal. (Courtesy of the War and Peace Archive)
2 In all, twenty-nine Churchill tanks, comprising of assorted Mark I, II and III
examples, were disembarked during the Dieppe Raid. Of these, twenty-seven
got ashore – two “drowned in deep water”. Fifteen would make it to the
esplanade – though not much further. (Courtesy of the War and Peace
Archive)
3 A number of Allied prisoners under guard at Dieppe before being marched
away to captivity. (Courtesy of the War and Peace Archive)
4 The Royal Navy’s landing craft LCA-1377 transporting American troops
across Weymouth Bay during preparations for the Normandy invasion, circa
May–June 1944. (Courtesy of the Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie/US
National Archives)
5 At exactly 08.32 hours on 6 June 1944, Sergeant Jim Mapham of No.5 Army
Film and Photographic Unit photographed this scene on “Queen Red” Beach,
a sector in the centre-left of Sword Beach (the precise location is near La
Brèche, Hermanville-sur-Mer). The shutter clicked just as the beach came
under heavy artillery and mortar fire from German positions inland. One US
newspaper which published this image in the aftermath of the landings
described it as “the greatest picture of the war”. (HMP)
6 US troops hit the shore on the morning of 6 June 1944. Titled “Into the Jaws
of Death”, this image was taken by Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert F.