D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [40]
6
The Armada Crosses
As those who set forth in the convoys of warships and landing craft looked over Southampton Water on the evening of 5 June, the invasion fleet seemed to stretch to the horizon. Many wondered what the Germans would think when they caught sight of this armada, by far the largest fleet that had ever put to sea. Nearly 5,000 landing ships and assault craft were escorted by six battleships, four monitors, twenty-three cruisers, 104 destroyers and 152 escort vessels, as well as the 277 minesweepers clearing channels ahead. Most were British, American and Canadian, but there were also French, Polish, Dutch and Norwegian warships.
On the landing ship carrying Lord Lovat’s commandos in the 1st Special Service Brigade, his personal piper, Bill Millin of the Cameron Highlanders, stood on the bow in battledress tunic and kilt, playing ‘The Road to the Isles’. The sound carried across the water and the crews of other ships began to cheer. Captains of several warships had the same idea. Two Hunt-class destroyers played ‘A-hunting We Will Go’ at full blast over their tannoys and Free French destroyers responded with the ‘Marseillaise’. Their sailors leaped about on deck, waving in joy at the prospect of a return to France after four years.
Convoys converged from all directions on the assembly area south of the Isle of Wight dubbed ‘Piccadilly Circus’. Admiral Middleton, on board the battleship HMS Ramillies, which had sailed down the west coast, recorded that ‘the traffic got thicker and thicker’ after they rounded Land’s End. In ‘strong winds and lumpy seas’, the Ramillies ploughed on through the slower convoys. He described it as ‘an exciting sport, especially at night’, but it must have been alarming for the crews of small ships which found the battleship bearing down on them.
The feelings of the 130,000 soldiers approaching the French coast by sea that night were turbulent. Field Marshal Lord Bramall, then a young lieutenant, described ‘a mixture of excitement at being part of such a great enterprise and apprehension of somehow not coming up to expectations and doing what was expected of us’. This fear of failure seems to have been especially strong in young, unblooded subalterns. An old sweat had come up to him and said, ‘Don’t you worry, sir, we’ll look after you.’ But Bramall knew that in fact ‘many of them had already had too much of a war’. His own regiment, the 60th Rifles, had fought throughout the desert campaign and the strain had told. At the back of many British and Canadian minds was also a fear that the whole operation might turn out to be a murderous fiasco like the raid on Dieppe two years before. Many wondered whether they would return. Some, just before leaving, had picked up a pebble from the beach ‘as a last reminder’ of their native land.
Almost everyone at every level was acutely conscious of taking part in a great historical event. Headquarters of the American V Corps heading for Omaha beach recorded in its war diary, ‘The attempt to do what had been contemplated by all the great military leaders of modern European History - a cross channel invasion - was about to commence.’
The main question in most minds was whether the Germans already knew what was afoot and would be waiting for them. Planners of Operation Neptune, the cross-Channel phase of Overlord, had spent months considering possible threats to the invasion fleets: submarines, mines, E-boats, radar and the Luftwaffe. Every precaution was taken.
Mosquito squadrons were patrolling the French coast all night, ready to down any German aircraft which might sight the approaching fleets.