Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  Pluto and Mulberry were the two things which made the Normandy landings possible and they were therefore the two top-secret elements in all traffic and we could say an awful lot but never, ever touch on those two things. Our worry always was that the Germans would have aerial reconnaissance which would show them these great concrete things being constructed or these great drums which were going to be used for the pipeline. In fact they never did spot them and we were spared any embarrassing questions. But we were all worried that sooner or later we would be asked, ‘What are these drums being used for?’ so we had to have various cover plans up our sleeve for dealing with that.

  All the people that write about double agents – there’ve been quite a number of books written about Garbo and Brutus and so on – all assume that the leading part has been played by the agent, that they invented the traffic, that they invented the deception plans and so on. But of course that’s completely unreal. To have a deception plan you’ve got to know the real plan. Well, nobody knew the real plan except for a very small number of people. Some would know the place, others would know the date, others would know the composition of the invading force, but very few people knew the whole story. And those that did were code-named Bigoted: it meant that they had access to all the information. My colleagues and I, who were carrying out these deception plans, had to be Bigoted. We had to know the full story in order to give the deception plan.

  Major Goronwy Rees

  21st Army Group planning staff

  Again, I think, this is a lesson learned from Dieppe: we hadn’t realised at Dieppe how absolutely essential it was to have an absolutely overwhelming weight of firepower both from the air and from the land. Air Marshal Harris, who still thought that he could win the war on his own, had to be persuaded to use his heavy bombers to attack the German road and rail communications. I think he resisted very strongly, as he thought it was really a diversion from the whole point of the war, but he was made to do it and it was done enormously effectively. This happened equally with the French Resistance, because the French Resistance had vast plans for what they were going to do on D-Day. I had to go to SOE and ask them what their plans were and had to tell them that, from our point of view, we wanted the French Resistance to interfere with the German road and rail communications. This meant them giving up a great many dearly beloved plans of theirs but they did it and, again, they were very effective.

  Major Wilhelm Mohr

  Norwegian staff officer, 2nd Tactical Air Force

  It started in the late summer of ’43. From that time we felt very much that the direction of choosing targets and activity were planned as part of the invasion to come and as you got closer towards Christmas there was more and more of that. And I must say the people who did the planning must have been pretty brilliant because it was known later that Hitler had very much set his mind that Calais was going to be the point. We were attacking radar stations primarily in the Pas de Calais area to make him think that this is where we would concentrate. One thing we had as very much a prime job was to push the enemy’s air defence backwards, make him have longer distances to cover and so on, but again we did that more in the Calais area than we did in the Normandy area. But you’ve got to do it there, too. Otherwise they would sort of start wondering.

  Pilot Officer Herbert Kirtland

  Halifax bomber wireless operator, 76 Squadron, RAF

  Instead of strategic targets like Nuremberg and Stuttgart and Frankfurt and Berlin they started to be railway marshalling yards, places like Le Mans and Aachen, that would deny the Germans the opportunity to get their troops and panzers where they were needed if and when we invaded.

  We had a very hairy trip to Aachen, I remember. We were attacked but we didn’t know what it was that attacked us, nobody identified it; we got no hits but the gunners fired their guns. Flak was very heavy and the mid-upper gunner had a chunk of flak as big as my fist come through the turret and embedded itself in the bottom right-hand gun, which, if it hadn’t, would have split him open. And a few minutes after that, Carl was literally flying this thing through the target area and all of a sudden I could hear the noise of another aircraft, which you normally couldn’t hear, and the mid-upper gunner said, ‘Fucking hell!’ Another Halifax had drifted over the top of us, as near to a collision as anything. We could hear his engines and he’d nearly taken the turret off. We got away with it, we got back with no damage, but we’d been fired on by fighters, we’d been hit by flak and we’d had a near-collision all in the space of a few minutes over the target.

  With hindsight you know now what the pattern was but you didn’t really know then. You were just a cog in a vast wheel and the CO didn’t say, ‘All right, lads, we’re now getting ready for the invasion.’ But they were different sort of targets and your own common sense told you, ‘If we are planning to invade Europe, this is probably what we ought to be doing.’ I think we were pleased they were slightly shorter trips, obviously. But they were just as hairy.

  Group Captain Denys Gillam

  Commanding officer, 146 Wing, RAF

  I was commanding 146 Wing, which was a five-squadron Typhoon wing at Thorney Island. For a month, probably two months, we were operating against German radar stations with rockets and bombs but mostly rockets. Our job was to eliminate the German radar in the Channel with the exception of two stations which were deliberately left in order to spoof the invasion. This was a very expensive time in that we lost about three wing commanders and about five squadron commanders in just over a month. Of course the radar stations were all in the coastal belt where the heaviest flak was. But we did it very successfully and managed to do the job so they were all out of action with the exception of two that were deliberately left.

  Lieutenant-Colonel David Strangeways

  Chief deception officer, 21st Army Group

  You’ve got to be ruthless in this kind of thing. It’s horrible. I used to feel miserable about this. You knew you were sending a fellow on a reconnaissance which wasn’t a real reconnaissance, he might get bumped off, but this you’ve got to do. Because, if you don’t do it, then many, many more are going to get bumped off.

  Major Patrick Barrass

  2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment

  There was a lovely story going round; I don’t know how true it is. They sent people ashore in darkness to bring back samples of the beaches, so that they could assess whether they were firm enough to take tanks and so forth, and the story goes that somebody left a trowel behind and this was found out and then a bomber was loaded with trowels and sent down the coast dropping them all down the coast so that the position wasn’t given away. I can believe it, actually, when I come to think of all the preparations that were done before D-Day to be absolutely sure that nothing leaked anywhere.

  Sergeant Frank Higgins

  Royal Military Police

  We were met one day by members of the Intelligence Corps and they informed us that there was an officer coming from London. He would be arriving by car, he was to be immediately fitted out with the uniform of a sergeant of the Intelligence Corps, he was to accompany us on all visits to places that General Montgomery was going and he was going to study his mannerisms and his way of talking. And that was the man who actually became Monty’s double and who went to Gibraltar, just prior to the invasion, where we presume he hoodwinked the Germans and the Spaniards into thinking that he was on Gibraltar when he was in fact in Portsmouth preparing for the start of Overlord.

  Major Goronwy Rees

  21st Army Group planning staff

  I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life than I did during that year. And I think it was always in everybody’s mind that unless one really did one’s best and really went into every possible difficulty and tried to overcome every possible problem, the operation really could turn into an enormous disaster. Really, a seaborne landing on a heavily defended enemy coast is about the most hazardous operation of all. I think everybody was terribly aware of this all the time. />
  One felt all the time that something might be given away and without some element of surprise the operation would have been an even more hazardous one than it was. It meant that the staff had to be restricted to a very small number and one of the results of this was, of course, that people were asked to do quite unexpected kinds of jobs. It was a terrible responsibility I felt. I really used to be amazed when I walked around the streets of London, thinking, ‘Here am I, the only person here that actually knows the dates of this operation, where it’s going to happen, the forces involved. I must be of infinite value to the enemy and unless I’m very careful I really am going to get myself in the most terrible trouble.’

  I felt this most of all at the very end of the planning when it had all been done and the whole thing had been translated into operation orders and there, at last, was the great operation order: a thing about that thick. Of course it had to be signed by the three commanders. Monty signed it at St Paul’s and then I was given it and told to take it to Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory and to Admiral Ramsay for them to sign. And being very foolish, I didn’t take a car from the pool, I can’t think why I didn’t, I walked out of St Paul’s and took a taxi and then I thought, ‘My God, how absolutely terrible. Here am I, alone in this taxi, riding through London and very absent-minded and I’m quite capable of leaving the operation order here.’ Thank heaven I didn’t, though once I’d left a large part of the plans on a bus in London and only by running back faster than I’ve ever run in my life did I catch the bus up and find it on the seat where I’d left it.

  So I went round to Norfolk House where they both were. Admiral Ramsay took one look at it, signed it. Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory insisted on reading the whole bloody thing from start to finish, trying to correct commas. I had to say, ‘You know, it’s impossible to alter anything more, it’s all been agreed.’ Finally he signed it.

  ALLIES

  Brigadier Harry Hopthrow

  Director of Fortifications and Works, War Office

  I had no sooner got established as director than we attended an urgently summoned conference in the main War Office addressed by a Deputy Quartermaster General. He said, ‘I have to tell you, gentlemen, that a force of one million men is coming to this country and as far as Works are concerned you will have to accommodate them.’ He said, ‘I can’t tell you from what country,’ but I don’t know why, because what other country could it be than the States? And we’d only been engaged on that for about a week and they increased it to a million and a half. We had to provide accommodation not only for their men but also for their stores, hospitals and everything. Well, this put a terrific load on to the organisation. Nevertheless, it was the sort of thing that appealed to me, a big job like this.

  Wem is a place in Shropshire and that was where we built the first of their general depots and then we built four more Wems using the same bills of quantities, the same designs, as far as they fitted into the new sites they found for them. They were always referred to as Wems. A Wem had 450,000 square feet of covered accommodation and 375,000 square feet of uncovered accommodation. In addition there were eleven miles of road to one Wem and five miles of full-gauge railway. And we built five of them, for general storage, for the Americans. They built one or two places themselves.

  The Americans always wanted more than we gave them and they always had elaborate equipment. For instance, one time we saw a trainload of barbers’ chairs coming; they had to have these first-class barbers’ chairs and so forth. They had much higher scales of accommodation than we had. We were building for the British troops, too, we had to provide for them; of course some of them went into old barracks and old camps but we had lots of things to build for them.

  I had a very good opposite number to me in the American Army, Colonel Berrigan, and their Engineer Corps was much more highly skilled in big work than ours because they’d given them jobs like draining the River Mississippi and that sort of thing. So they were into big stuff from the very beginning. We found they couldn’t build roads very well. I don’t know why, because they’ve got some very good roads in America. But if you left it to the Americans and they came across a field and they wanted a road on it, they’d requisition a load of gravel and just pour the gravel on top of the grass. Well, of course, that didn’t last very long before the grass came through and they were back to where they’d started. On the other hand, they were extraordinarily good at building railway bridges: they were marvellous. And, of course, we had differences in nomenclature, which was a bit difficult. But Berrigan was a marvellous chap. He and I were hand in hand all the time; I had no problems with him, ever.

  Sergeant Major Jack Black

  112th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery

  You could see the build-up round about you. Even by the summer of 1943 you could see the build-up. We saw the Americans with all their trucks; and our trucks began to have the white star painted on the roofs. You’d have been blind if you hadn’t noticed that there was something coming up.

  Sergeant Kenneth Lakeman

  Royal Corps of Signals

  I remember the first lot of Americans and Canadians coming in. I had been asked to collect one of our Arial motorcycles from the workshops and on my way back I was stopped at a crossroads by a military policeman. This was just outside Camberley: Frimley Green. There was a Canadian convoy coming along and after a while he stopped the convoy and waved me on and the convoy didn’t stop. Here was I, careering along on a motorbike, and this huge Canadian truck coming full blast at me, so I took evasive action and drove straight through this hedge. And I always think this is British mentality at its best: I went through this hedge on the bike and landed up in this garden and there was a dear lady there pruning roses and without turning a hair she looked at me and said, ‘Are you all right? Would you like a cup of tea?’ I thought that was bloody marvellous. She said it had happened several times. She’d had a tank through her garden on one occasion.

  The Americans arrive: a United States Army private, John Ziaja, of Adams, Massachusetts, not long off the boat.

  Wren Messenger Margaret Seeley

  Women’s Royal Naval Service, HMS Squid (Royal Navy shore station, Southampton)

  I remember bicycling up to Winchester and bicycling all around Southampton and the roads were lined with American troops, stationary. They’d all sort of converged, all these huge American lorries full of GIs, and they all whistled at us and threw us Mars bars and bits of chocolate. It was a question of either being on your dignity and bicycling on or getting off your bicycle and grovelling in the ditch and picking up the candy, which of course we did because we were on rationing. One just waved at them and thanked them and went on our way. But the Americans were everywhere.

  Edna Dron

  Land Army Timber Corps, Tiverton, Devon

  I remember our first introduction to Americans. A friend and I were sitting in the YMCA and this gang of Americans came. I think it was their first night there and they came up to us and asked if we were in the Home Guard: they saw the strange uniform; we thought it was a cheek! But they were very friendly and they had lots of dances which we went to and I suppose they provided a lot of the social life there.

  The Americans had plenty of money and they had big mouths and they’d shout about it. They had plenty of food. They had the PX: that was the American place where they got all these goodies, cigarettes and things like that. But they were a good crowd of people to enjoy yourself with. For many of them, I suppose, it was their first time away from home. They were homesick, I think, most of them.

  Corporal George Richardson

  6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

  We went down to Cambridge and got into trouble with some American forces. Every time the DLI [Durham Light Infantry] met up with the Americans usually a little war went off because the British women wouldn’t look at us. We’d been told we were somebody by both General Smuts and General Montgomery; everybody had told us we were heroes and we’d be welcomed back
home as heroes. We came back home and nobody wanted to know. The only reason that our troops were finding fights with the Americans was because they had a lot of money and they were going around with half a dozen medals on and had never been in action.

  It went on for a few weeks until we were told we were receiving a visit from the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower. We assembled on a big green, a full brigade turnout in a three-sided box, the brigadier at the front with a microphone, all the COs all perfectly lined up, blancoed up, spit-and-polished up. Eisenhower came up and got partly along, not far from me; kept stopping and pointing at the medals and saying, ‘I bet you’re proud of this’. Wasn’t receiving any answers back. And I heard him say, ‘Ah, shit. This is not what I’ve come for.’

  He went back, over to the microphone, and he says, ‘I want to speak to you men. Come round here.’ And not an officer or man moved. He turned round to the brigadier and says, ‘I want to speak to these men. I want them to come forward.’ And the brigadier said, ‘I’m afraid they’ll not take any orders from you, sir.’ And he said, ‘But why not?’ The brigadier said, ‘I’ll do it,’ and he just shouted to the COs, ‘Break off your men and bring them forward.’ And from what I hear the brigadier said, ‘The British Army doesn’t take any orders from an American general.’ Of course, the old brigadier was more or less of the same opinion as all our COs and every man jack of us. We’d seen a lot of action and been brought home and the Yanks had invaded England while we were away. That was the opinion of everybody.