Band of Brothers_ E Company, 506th Regim - Stephen E. Ambrose [23]
Eisenhower needed to provide sufficient width to the invasion to bring in enough infantry divisions in the first wave to overpower the enemy, dug in behind Hitler's "Atlantic Wall."(1) In one way, Utah was the easiest of the five assault beaches. At the British and Canadian beaches ("Sword," "Juno," and "Gold," east of Omaha) the numerous vacation homes, small shops, and hotels and casinos that lined the coast provided the Germans
1. "Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall," the paratroopers liked to say. "He forgot to put a roof on it."
With excellent protection for machine-gun nests, while at Omaha a bluff rising from the beach to a height of 200-300 feet gave the German defenders, dug into a trench system on a World War I scale, the ability to shoot down on troops coming out of the landing craft. But Utah had neither bluff nor houses. There were some fixed defenses, made of reinforced concrete, containing artillery and machine-guns. The biggest was at La Madeleine, in the middle of Utah (the fortification took its name from a nearby religious shrine that dated back to Viking days). But the gradual slope and low sand dunes at Utah meant that getting across and beyond the beach was not going to be as difficult as at Omaha.
The problem at Utah was what lay inland. Behind the sand dunes was low ground, used by the Norman farmers for grazing cattle. Four narrow, unimproved roads ran inland from the beach; these roads were raised a meter or so above the ground. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the German commander, had flooded the fields, with the idea of forcing any troops and armor coming inland to use the roads ("causeways," Eisenhower's planners called them). Rommel had most of his artillery in camouflaged positions or reinforced casements and bunkers back from the flooded area, where it could bombard the roads; Rommel had his infantry prepared to take up defensive positions along the western end of the roads, where it could repel any troops moving up them.
The task Eisenhower gave the 101st was to seize these causeway exits. The method to be used was a night drop. The aim was to disrupt the Germans, create surprise and havoc, and get control of those exits and destroy the big guns before the Germans could react.
It would be an intricate, tricky, and risky operation. To have any chance of success, it would be necessary to practice. For the practice to be realistic, it would be necessary to find a piece of the English coastline similar to Utah Beach.
Slapton Sands, in Devonshire, in southwestern England, was similar to Utah. A long narrow stretch of beach was separated from dry ground by a shallow lake and adjoining swamp. Two bridges crossed from the shoreline to high ground. And so it was that the VII Corps carried out its rehearsals for the part it was to play on D-Day at Slapton Sands.
At the end of April, the entire VII Corps participated in Exercise Tiger. E Company rode in trucks to a resort hotel on the seashore at Torquay, where it spent a comfortable night. The next day, April 26, it was back into the trucks for a ride to an area back from Slapton Sands from which all civilians had been evacuated. The company slept in the field until midnight, when trucks brought the men forward to a simulated drop zone. After assembly, the company marched overland through a mist to an elevated point a mile back from the beach and set up a defensive position, guarding the bridge.
At dawn, Webster wrote, "We could see a vast fleet of amphibious craft moving slowly in to land. I've never seen so many ships together at one time; an invasion fleet is the most impressive sight in the world." What he had not seen was the disaster of the previous evening. German torpedo boats had slipped in among the LSTs and other big assault craft carrying the 4th Infantry.