D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [111]
14
The Americans on the Cotentin Peninsula
Like the British during the last seven days, the American First Army had also feared a major counter-attack from the south. Allied intelligence had not appreciated the success of its air forces and the Resistance in slowing the arrival of German reinforcements. Nor did they foresee that the German high command would throw the vast majority of its panzer divisions against the British Second Army.
Before the Villers-Bocage offensive, the American 1st Division, while establishing a deep salient around Caumont-l’Eventé, had feared an attack on its eastern flank. This was when the British 50th Division was fighting the Panzer Lehr Division round Tilly-sur-Seulles. General Huebner, the commander of the 1st Division, protested when Bradley took the tanks supporting them to smash the 17th SS Division’s attack on Carentan. But Bradley had reassured him that Montgomery would be bringing the 7th Armoured Division in on that side.
The 2nd Division to the right, and the 29th Infantry Division now also forming part of the front advancing south towards Saint-Lô, had no idea how weak the German forces facing them were. By the time they did, the 275th Infanterie-Division and the German 3rd Paratroop Division had begun to arrive from Brittany. The American objective of Saint-Lô would not be taken for just over a month of bitter fighting through the hedgerows of the bocage.
To their west, Heydte’s 6th Paratroop Regiment and the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen had established a defensive line on either side of the Carentan-Périers road. But the breakthrough the Germans feared there did not take place. The Allies had a much higher priority: the capture of the port of Cherbourg to speed their resupply.
The build-up of forces was already proceeding apace. In a triumph of American organization and industry, Omaha beach had been transformed. ‘Within a week after D-Day,’ wrote a naval officer, ‘the beach resembled Coney Island on a hot Sunday. Thousands of men were at work, including Sea-Bees, Army engineers and French labourers. Big and little bulldozers were busy widening roads, levelling ground and hauling wreckage.’ Before the end of June, Omaha beach command had a total strength of just over 20,000 officers and men, the bulk of them in the 5th and 6th Engineer Special Brigades. DUKWs ferried back and forth through the water with supplies and personnel. Once the beach was out of range of German artillery, then the landing ship tanks beached at low tide to disgorge more vehicles. When they opened their bow doors and dropped their ramps, according to one eyewitness, the strange grey vessel looked like a whale shark. ‘Jeeps bearing staff officers were as common as yellow cabs in the heart of New York,’ wrote the same naval officer. And ‘large groups of German prisoners could be spotted here and there awaiting removal via LST’.
On the beach, a sergeant in the 6th Engineer Special Brigade recounted how, when they were escorting some prisoners to a stockade, paratroopers from the 101st Airborne started to yell, ‘Turn those prisoners over to us. Turn them over to us! We know what to do with them!’ A member of a naval combat demolition unit saw the same or a similar incident. ‘Those wounded paratroopers were trying to do anything they could to get to those German prisoners. I guess they had been mistreated very badly in the rear or something. Bloody or not they were still ready to do more