Recent Reads: Despite Festivities, Dark Clouds Remain over Normandy

Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France

By Stephen Alan Bourque (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018)
   
Reviewed by M.C. Farrington
Hampton Roads Naval Museum

June 6, 2019, marks the 75th anniversary of the launch of Operation Overlord.  Upon its success hung the future of a continent dominated by a power facing certain defeat, Hitler's Germany, at the hands of another power equally hostile to Western democratic values, Stalin's Soviet Union.  The only hope of postwar freedom and self-determination in Europe hinged upon victory for the 150,000 Soldiers and Sailors pouring over the beachheads of Normandy that day in 1944, hoping to link up with paratroopers dropped inland the evening before.

Led for the most part by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the commemorations that took place today demonstrated the "infinite gratitude" of the French people to their Allied liberators, some of the last of whom were presented the Legion d'honneur, France's highest award.  From Royal Air Force jets drawing the Tricolore over visiting world leaders to deliberately disheveled reenactors intermingling with tourists, to the nonagenarians walking the same beaches as they did approximately 27,375 days ago, it was an event of remembrance not to be forgotten.

Most of the books about D-Day that have come out within the past year consequently echo the awe still felt for the Allied servicemen who fought their way onto those beaches.  They also reinvigorate the "good war" paradigm that distinguishes World War II from almost every other sustained military campaign the Unites States has embarked upon ever since.

But how good of a war was it?  So good that the majority of its veterans did not speak of or write about their part in it for decades, if ever?  While most rank-and-file Soldiers and Sailors did not record their activities and thoughts about D-Day while memories were still fresh, many of those who held senior positions in the Allied Expeditionary Force certainly did. Foremost among them was Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, whose Crusade in Europe (1948) has been one of the first stops for journalists and public historians writing new books about Overlord ever since.  The early works of other victorious leaders have also dominated the narrative for three-quarters of a century.

During the first decades after D-Day gifted storytellers such as Cornelius Ryan excelled at burnishing notions already held as sacrosanct, using the recollections of those who led Operation Overlord to underscore the fact that they were heroes who carried the fate of the Western World upon their shoulders.  While this fact is not in dispute, the aftermath of certain decisions they made slipped the surly bonds of scrutiny.

In his latest book about D-Day, prolific author Alex Kershaw wrote of Eisenhower:

Dismissed by some British officers as merely a “coordinator, a good mixer,” the blue‐eyed Eisenhower, celebrated for his broad grin and easy charm, had nevertheless imposed his will, working eighteen‐hour days, reviewing and tweaking plans to launch some seven thousand vessels, twelve thousand planes, and 160,000 troops to hostile shores.

A legion of public historians and nonfiction authors have hitched their narrative wagons to Eisenhower in much the same way as authors for generations have done with George Washington.

Just as with Washington, however, new generations of scholars have looked upon the man and his decisions with new eyes, synthesizing new material to assemble a new picture, warts and all.

More than ever before, scholars are looking at D-Day in new ways and making new discoveries that deconstruct the standard narrative of Overlord, leaving something new and  less familiar in its place.  Beyond the Beach is one of these works, but this is not just contrarian scholarship from just any historian.  Its author, professor emeritus at the US Army Command and General Staff College, has drawn together highly disparate sources, from USAAF and RAF records generated during and shortly after the war to local histories compiled in the decades since from French researchers and historians to assemble a meticulously drawn picture of preventable carnage on a grand scale; one that has eluded most Anglophone readers until now. 

The roughly 20,000 French civilians (in some cases, entire families) who were not just killed but pulverized and even atomized by the ferocious bombing raids orchestrated by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during Operation Flashlamp, the ferocious initial aerial assault of Overlord, as well as the rest of the campaign that summer is a major focus of this book.  "By the time the war was over," wrote Bourque, "the liberating air forces had killed as many French civilians as the Germans had killed British civilians during the 'blitz' and vengeance weapon assaults." 

Bourque puts the blame directly upon the supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, for a majority of the unnecessary deaths after he demanded complete operational authority over high-altitude strategic bombers that had theretofore been striking the German industrial heartland.  Redirecting them to lend tactical support to the Allied troops invading France produced lackluster results against the Germans and devastating results for French civilians. 

During the prelude to D-Day, France wasn't technically an enemy nation.  As a result of an armistice reached with Germany in June 1940, the French State declared itself neutral, yet the nation was by 1944 completely under the jackboot of the Wehrmacht. Naturally, something had to be done about it, and airpower was one of the most powerful tools at the Allies' disposal.  But power does not mean effectiveness.  Bourque makes the case that, before the bombs began falling upon France, both the senior British and American bomber commanders knew that their heavy bombers would do more harm than good and did their best to prevent them from being used for a purpose they were not designed for.

The heavy bombers were not designed with operational flexibility in mind, and neither were their governing directives produced by the Army Air Force's War Plans Division in 1941.  "Although the Nazis had occupied France more than a year earlier," Bourque pointed out, "it says nothing about the problem of attacking targets in friendly, occupied nations."  Therefore, no distinction was made between the approach made to attack targets in Germany, France, or any other occupied country.  In effect, there really was an Allied war against France. 

A key part of this book revolves around the resistance to Gen. Eisenhower from Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command and Lieutenant General Carl A. Spaatz of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, knowing that their plodding high-altitude bombers could no more protect the troops hitting the beaches than they could deal decisive blows against those resisting them. After quashing the "bomber barons'" dissent, Eisenhower's deputy, Chief Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder and his air component commander, Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory (who had led RAF Fighter Command and had limited experience with bombers), assigned missions that the bombers were simply incapable of successfully carrying out.

Not only were Harris and Spaatz resistant to this new use of their planes, but members of the British government up to and including Winston Churchill himself were also reluctant to unleash the kind of destruction against the French that theretofore had been reserved for the Germans.

In his book Ike: An American Hero (2007), author Michael Korda detailed how both Spaatz and Harris warned Churchill that there might be as many as 80,000 French civilian casualties if their bombers were to directly support Overlord.  Churchill in turn sent a message to President Franklin Roosevelt concerning the use of strategic bombers and the possibility of a "slaughter" against "a friendly people who have committed no crimes against us."

Roosevelt replied, "However regrettable the loss of civilian life is, I am not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action by the responsible commanders that in their opinion might militate against the success of ‘Overlord’ or cause additional loss of life to the Allied forces of invasion."

Captain Harry Butcher, Eisenhower's naval aide during the war, also reported the opposition of Britain's War Cabinet towards the bombing.

On April 20, 1944, he wrote in his diary:

The War Cabinet felt such bombings would involve a heavy loss of French life, although it has been arranged to notify, by pamphlet and other means, the French people in areas to be bombed, so they can scurry to safety. Yet Ike has insisted and demanded that the ground forces have the benefit of the curtailment of movement of the enemy, which is inevitable by the destruction of the French transportation centers. The coming battleground must be isolated as much as possible. [Chief Air Marshal] Tedder is a perfect master of the art. Ike wants him to supervise and direct. Fortunately, the question has been settled and as General Ike wants it and everyone seems happy with the logic of the arrangement.

At the time, radar-guided bombing had recently been adopted by American strategic bombers but even with this technological leap forward, the Eighth Air Force Operations Analysis Section estimated that in the last quarter of 1944, only one in 70 bombs dropped over cloud-covered targets landed within a half-mile of them. And as is well known, June 1944 found Normandy continually beset with bad weather.  

Compounding things were the orders ultimately given to strategic bomber crews carrying out D-Day's preparatory air assault flying between 6,000 and 12,000 feet above the thick cloud cover. "The official US Army Air Force account notes that everyone was concerned with inaccurate bombing and hitting friendly troops," wrote Bourque," so, 'with Eisenhower's approval the pathfinder bombardiers were ordered to delay up to thirty seconds after the release point showed on their scopes before dropping.'" "Unfortunately, except in the Ninth Air Force sector," Bourque concluded, "the inaccurate air attack had done little other than alert German troops to the invasion force's arrival." 

In the final tally, Harris and Spaatz's prognostications turned out to be only slightly overstated. "The total French toll caused by Allied bombs," Bourque wrote, "was between 60,000 and 70,000 out of 150,000 French civilian deaths during the war." 

The shortcomings of the bombing campaign also contributed to the staggering casualty rate of the Allied troops storming ashore, particularly at Omaha.  In many first-person accounts of D-Day I have read there is a common refrain of a false hope held by those landing that morning, best summed up in an official after-action report by Lieutenant Alfred A. Schiller, a medical officer assigned to the 7th Beach Battalion (established at Camp Bradford, Virginia, in September 1943), who landed at Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6:

In the briefing sessions, we were told again and again that the beachheads would be thoroughly softened up by aerial and naval bombardment, yet when the fortifications of the beachhead and cliffs were examined later, there was no evidence of a single bomb having been dropped on the beach installations in this area (Omaha) by aircraft. Only a few of the most- superficially placed and unprotected enemy gun emplacements had been destroyed by our naval gun fire - and as far as I could discover, this destruction might have come from [sic]car tanks instead. Had the softening-up taken place as planned, I'm certain we would easily have overcome the opposition without nearly such stupendous losses, and the evacuation schedule could have been carried out as planned.

"It is probable that the adjustment to the bombing times had the opposite effect of what planners intended and caused more Allied and French casualties than it prevented," wrote Bourque. "no wonder few air enthusiasts have wanted to realistically discuss the details of this assault, since the largest single air attack in history failed to accomplish its mission."

During the Normandy invasion, a U.S. Army medical corpsman gives candy to a French girl injured during the invasion. Photograph released June 17, 1944. (80-G-59435, Naval History and Heritage Command image)

The throngs of French citizens attending the festivities in Normandy today and in decades past were no doubt genuinely grateful to their liberators, yet that gratitude must surely be tempered with the knowledge of the great cost that came with that liberation.  After three-quarters of a century, it is high time that those outside France become just as acquainted with those unpalatable details. Bourque has done a masterful job of laying out that cost in great detail, and I doubt that after reading Beyond the Beach anyone could ever look upon Eisenhower's "crusade" with the same eyes again.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: The Depot that Supported D-Day

A group of Landing Craft, Vehicle (LCVs) maneuver in the Chesapeake Bay off Camp Bradford, Little Creek, Virginia, in 1943.  (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian
As the world prepares to focus once again on the beaches of Normandy and recognize the men who gave their lives to cross them on June 6, 1944 to free France from German occupation on D-Day, it's worth mentioning the simple but brilliantly conceived landing craft, commonly known as Higgins boats, that got them from their hulking transport vessels to those beaches.

Not to be forgotten as well are those who trained their operators and maintained the myriad types of landing craft that ultimately paved the way back to Europe.  Much of the training and maintenance that paid dividends during Operation Neptune (the littoral phase of Operation Overlord), as well as earlier operations in North Africa and Europe occurred all over Hampton Roads. 

Dozens of Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVPs) under construction at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1943. More than 23,000 LCVPs were made at numerous shipyards across the nation during the war, but just two major depots were established by the Navy to refurbish them, one just a couple of miles away from the shipyard. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The first and most numerous of what became over a dozen varieties of Higgins boat, known as the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) entered U.S. naval service in June 1941 after the first nine of them rolling into Norfolk aboard rail cars from Andrew Jackson Higgins' factory in New Orleans.  The LCVP was originally made from Higgins' Eureka boat, a favorite of Prohibition-era smugglers as well as their Coast Guard adversaries, modified with innovations rooted in Japanese designs noted by Marine Corps Lieutenant Victor "Brute" Krulak while he was stationed in China a couple of years before.

This illustration by combat artist Mitchell Jamieson depicts the old wooden barque Marsala, anchored off Little Creek in Chesapeake bay, which was the first ship used by the new Amphibious Training Command to instruct Soldiers and Sailors in boarding and debarking transport vessels. Many of the trainees pictured would go on to participate in the invasion of North Africa in November 1942, Sicily and Southern Italy the following year, and, ultimately, France in 1944.  (Courtesy of the Navy Art Collection)   

From North Carolina's Outer Banks to the Ocean View section of Norfolk to Naval Amphibious Training Base Solomons, Maryland, halfway up the Chesapeake Bay, hundreds more LCVPs and their larger cousins, the Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCMs), Landing Craft, Vehicle (LCVs) and a dozen other variants would perform rough duty loading and landing trainees over and over on beaches throughout the Mid-Atlantic for the duration of the war.  After endlessly bobbing and banging against the transport vessels to load personnel and pounded by the surf disgorging them on local beaches, it became readily apparent that specialized facilities were needed to keep the boats, constructed from five-eighths inch plywood, from falling apart. 

The Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot in Norfolk, one of only two established during the war (the other being in Berkeley, California), began before the war as a small activity known as the Base Material Office on the Naval Operating Base (now known as Naval Station Norfolk) with a staff consisting of eight officers and 271 enlisted personnel.

This 1923 map of Norfolk showing sections of the city south of the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River shows the neighborhood of Newton Park, home to Ford's Norfolk Assembly Plant for over eight decades, except when the facility served as a Naval Landing Craft Equipment Depot during World War II. Norfolk Naval Shipyard in nearby Portsmouth and its St. Helena Annex across the Elizabeth River's Southern Branch can clearly be seen east of the facility. (Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

By June 1942, 738 personnel maintained a pool of 397 new landing craft in their modest five-acre stowage yard and had 32 under repair. They were also training operators who would accompany the landing craft to their new commands.  The hundreds of landing craft converging upon Hampton Roads and the thousands of personnel needed to operate them were overwhelming the small facility, but help arrived in the person of  Henry Ford's son, Edsel, who sold his sprawling vehicle assembly plant along the south bank of the Elizabeth River's Eastern Branch to the Navy for $2 million on September 8, 1942.   

The first Model T to be produced at the brand new assembly plant in Norfolk is pictured with an assortment of local Norfolk city officials, bankers, and businessmen on April 20, 1925. The car was bought by the city and driven off the assembly line by Mayor Seth Tyler. The plant quickly became the largest non-maritime employer in the city. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

The Ford Motor Company invested in a major expansion of infrastructure at their Norfolk plant during the 1930s. The nearly-completed pier seen here in 1938 was designed to offload components and load completed vehicles directly onto ships on the Elizabeth River, but it also proved ideal for loading and unloading landing craft from military vessels in the river during the war.(The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Sailors quickly emptied out the three small buildings and stowage yard they maintained at NOB in October and moved 20 miles south into a main building measuring roughly 300 feet by 1,400 feet containing office spaces, a large galley, mess halls, and recreation areas in the southern end, and storerooms, repair shops, classrooms, paint booths on the north end, where as many as 25 railroad cars could be loaded or unloaded under its roof at one time.  The facility was equipped with a practically new 400-foot pier and was surrounded by 65 acres of stowage.  By March 1943, Naval Amphibious Force Atlantic Fleet was finally ready to maintain and refurbish the many thousands of landing craft required to prosecute the war in North Africa and Europe. 

In regular operation for only two months, the Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot, made from the former Ford assembly plant in the Newton Park section of South Norfolk, was packed with hundreds of landing craft in various states of repair on May 4, 1943. (National Archives and Records Administration image, Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)   

By October 1943, the depot, which boasted a staff of 1,117 enlisted men led by 70 officers, had repaired or overhauled over 10,000 landing craft, with thousands left to go.  After D-Day, however, the work load eased as more and more landing craft were transferred to the Pacific.  

The Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot at the height of its activity in October 1943.  At the time, 103 landing craft were under repair in the quarter-mile-long assembly building and 1,463 boats (many of which can be seen in the photograph) were available for issue at the sprawling 65-acre stowage yard.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)   

The need for such a large depot on the East Coast evaporated after the war, so the Ford Motor Corporation scooped the facility back up from the Navy on February 25, 1946, for $1.6 million–$400,000 less that it had sold it to the Navy for for less than four years earlier.  Nearly that much had to be invested into the empty facility to begin cranking out vehicles again, which it did in August.  The assembly plant continued to produce vehicles of all types, from sedans to trucks to school bus chassis, for decades until the last F-150 rolled off the assembly line there in April 2007. 

The empty interior of the mammoth Navy Landing Force Equipment Depot is shown on January 22, 1946, just before the Ford Motor Company reacquired it on February 25 for $1.6 million, $400,000 less than the company had sold it for in 1942. The company then invested $1.5 million to resume full production of cars, trucks, and school bus chassis later that year. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

On August 7, 1946, the first Ford truck to roll off the assembly line since reacquiring the facility from the Navy is driven by Acting City Manager Henry H. George (left) and Norfolk Mayor James W. Reed. The last of the Ford trucks made in Norfolk, an F-150, would roll off the assembly line in 2007. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)