IV.

The Invasion Begins

A storm forced postponement to June 6, so it was just before midnight on June 5 that more than 20,000 Allied airborne troops parachuted into France. Their mission was to seize and hold the bridges and roads the Germans could use to move to the battlefields once the great amphibious maneuvers began. The British airborne landed on the left of the invasion area; the American on the right. Both drops suffered from scattering, particularly of the U.S. paratroopers, because of enemy ground fire and a lack of navigational aids. The troops had to locate one another and then move and fight in small groups, many unrelated by unit, rather than in organized battle formations as planned. The one advantage of this scattering was that it confused the enemy, who had great difficulty determining the size and scope of the invading force. By the end of D-Day, the exits from the beaches and the entrances to the battle area were both held by the Allies.

The assault beaches were named, from west to east, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The Americans landed at Omaha and Utah, the Canadians at Juno, and the British at Gold and Sword. America’s forces included the 1st, 4th, and 29th Infantry Divisions, and the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The British sent their 3rd and 50th Infantry Divisions and 6th Airborne Division, while the Canadians used their 3rd Infantry Division. Shortly after 6 am the invasion rolled ashore. At Sword, Gold, and Utah, enemy resistance was relatively light, and the Allied forces had considerable success; on Utah Beach, for example, U.S. soldiers moved rapidly up roadways leading from the beach to join some of the airborne troops.

At Juno, meanwhile, the invading Canadians faced a beach littered with partially submerged obstacles. Landing craft were forced to feel their way in. The troops waded ashore and zigzagged through the obstacles, but German mines took a heavy toll. In the first hour of the invasion at Juno, 50 percent of the Canadian assault team members became casualties.

The savagery peaked at Omaha Beach, the largest of the Overlord assault areas, where the Germans had built formidable defenses and heavily mined the waters and the sand. Their weapons were fixed to cover the beach with spraying fire from three directions. Omaha was designed to be a killing zone.

West of Omaha beach, a promontory known as Pointe du Hoc jutted into the English Channel. The promontory provided an elevated vantage point from which huge German guns could fire upon both Omaha and Utah beaches. Intelligence and photo reconnaissance had identified six 155-mm guns in casemates (defensive structures made of concrete) on the point. The Allied command knew Omaha was the key to the fate of the landings.

The task of neutralizing the German guns fell to the U.S. Army Second Ranger Battalion. Three companies landed at Pointe du Hoc at 7:10 am and began scaling the cliffs to engage the Germans on top in a heavy firefight. Within minutes of the landing the first Ranger was up the cliff; then the others fought their way in small groups to the casemates, only to find the 155-mm guns removed. The Rangers moved forward, sending a two-man patrol down a narrow road leading south, where they discovered some guns 500 yards from the crewmates. The two Americans quickly put the guns out of action with special thermite grenades, handheld incendiary devices that soldiers used to destroy equipment. Shortly after 9 am the Army Rangers on Pointe du Hoc had accomplished their mission. The cost was half their fighting force.

At Omaha Beach itself everything went wrong. Most of the tanks launched to support the infantry sank. With few exceptions, units did not land where planned because strong winds and tidal currents had scattered the boats in all directions. Throughout the landing the formidable German defensive positions showered deadly fire upon the ranks of invading Americans. Bodies and damaged craft littered the sand. Men seeking refuge behind obstacles pondered the deadly sprint across the beach to the seawall, which offered at last some protection at the base of the cliff.

At 8:30 am all Allied landings ceased at Omaha. The force on the beach was on its own. Slowly, in small groups, the troops scaled the cliffs. Navy destroyers sailed in, scraping bottom in the shallow water and blasting away point-blank at the German fortifications. By noon enemy fire had decreased noticeably as the German defensive positions were taken from the rear. By nightfall the Americans—who had suffered about 2,400 dead and wounded at Omaha—held positions nowhere near the planned objectives but they did have a toehold on the beach. In 18 harrowing hours, the walls of Hitler’s Fortress Europe had been breached.

The fighting continued after D-Day, but the Nazis were doomed. Rommel knew it. On June 17, less than two weeks after the invasion began he returned to Germany. Once Hitler’s favorite general, Rommel felt that he could be candid and direct when so many lives were at stake. He tried to persuade Hitler that the end of the war was inevitable and that the only justifiable course, for the sake of Germany, was to seek a negotiated surrender. Hitler would hear none of it. On the contrary, he came to regard Rommel as a traitor. In October, implicated in a plot to kill Hitler and faced with court-martial and almost certain execution, Rommel committed suicide.