Читать книгу A Bloody Victory - Dan Harvey - Страница 11

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THE SECOND FRONT

Confusion, mayhem and sheer terror greeted the US Rangers as the ramps of the first landing crafts hit the shore below the cliffs at the Pointe du Hoc promontory near Omaha Beach, situated in Normandy on the northern French coastline. Irishman Sergeant Pearse Edmund ‘Ed’ Ryan was born at 29 Cork Street, Dublin, in 1924; he and his parents immigrated to the USA the same year. The following is an account of his experience at dawn on D-Day, 6 June 1944, as recounted to the author by Ryan’s cousin, Commandant Peter Byrne (retd):

We were in the second wave, we had been delayed on the way from the troopship to the beach due to an adverse current or navigation or whatever. That delay might actually have saved some of us. As soon as we hit the water, the guy beside me had his head blown off. I mean it! It was surreal. There was no time to be shocked, sad or even to think! If you did so, you would surely panic. You just ignored the carnage around you and squeezing off the odd random shot from my M1 rifle I just prayed that I would not bring attention to myself, and with it the German machine gunners’ aim. The automatic fire from above churned the sand around us. I am sorry to say that a small group of us dived to take cover behind the heaped bodies of some comrades from the first wave, who had fallen victim to the accurate MG-42 fire. I heard the sickening thud, thud, thud as bullets from the deadly Mauser [MG-42 machine gun] found their mark in the dead bodies again and again and again, but we were safe. Then there was a lull when the German machine gunner needed to change ammo belts and we were away. A mad sprint to the bottom of the cliff and there, safe from view and from fire, we began to assess the utter havoc we were part of. Some guys threw up! This respite didn’t last.

Galvanising the remaining assets at hand and assembling those of us still fit to fight, our officers ordered the ascent of the cliffs. We fired up rockets propelling ropes and grappling hooks but the soaking of the ropes in the seawater left them heavier than expected and some did not reach their target. 100 foot ladders were also deployed and soon I was heading up on one of those. I was told later that the long ladders had been supplied by the London Fire Brigade. With the crescendo of the MG-42s barking overhead, I full expected this to be my last day on earth and I whispered an abridged Act of Contrition to myself as I climbed the ladder. Just as I reached the top, another lull, silence as the machine gunner and his assistant changed belts to reload. Peeking over the top, I saw one of my comrades, already topside, approach the gun emplacement casemate with a satchel bomb. This is a small rucksack stuffed with RDX high explosive. He had ignited the pull switch fuse and the bomb was smokin’! I thought being killed thirty seconds later wouldn’t make any difference so why don’t I hang on to the ladder just below the cliff top and see how my buddy gets on! Kaaboom! He had lobbed that smoker right into the loophole [opening] of the casement, sending the MG-42 crew to kingdom come! Up and at ’em! The destruction of the main obstacle in our path injected a new energy into us Rangers as we piled up on the headland. I needn’t tell you, we let rip. Myself and a buddy went around the back of a concrete bunker and found the steel door open. We had three grenades between us. I held the door and tossed in my grenade while he followed with his two. I slammed the door, hearing cries inside of ‘Achtung, Achtung, Achtung!’ which were answered by the grenades going Boom, Boom, Boom and the position was ours.

Pearse’s unit suffered almost 50 per cent casualties in the action. They were gallantly led by a Texas farmer, Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, who was himself twice wounded in the action. ‘Rudder’s Rangers’ quickly found and destroyed the 155mm Howitzers, but they had to hold out for two days against relentless German counterattacks, until they were finally reinforced on 8 June and the Germans withdrew. Holding out for those two days was a blur to Sergeant Ed Ryan; no sleep, no communications, no food, and perilously low on ammunition. But they had cracked the nut – they had taken the Pointe du Hoc clifftop battery: six 155mm Howitzer artillery guns in heavily reinforced concrete shelters; an impregnable position with formidable weaponry capable of flinging a 42kg high explosive shell nearly ten miles, with remarkable accuracy, from a commanding position dominating the landings at Utah and Omaha beaches. It was vital that these weapons would have to be captured or otherwise put beyond use. Having courageously fought their way to the clifftop, the rangers found, to their astonishment, that the gun emplacements were empty! Unknown, the Germans had withdrawn the artillery pieces during previous Allied aerial bombardments to avoid damage, hiding them nearby for rapid deployment, if required. Getting over their shock of finding telegraph pole dummies where the artillery pieces ought to have been, the real guns were looked for, found and destroyed. It had been one of the toughest missions handed down to any unit attacking Hitler’s Atlantic Wall that D-Day dawn.

In an assault along a fifty-mile front, the Allies targeted five beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword on the Normandy coast. To defend against invasion, the Germans had built up a vast array of concrete coastal fortifications, artillery batteries, gun emplacements, minefields, barbed wire entanglements and improvised shoreline obstacles. In all, there were more than half a million men manning the shoreline obstacles from Holland’s dykes to Brittany’s peninsula, and even further north and south, from Norway to Spain. The Fifteenth Army, the Germans’ main defensive force on the northern French coastline, was placed at the Pas-de-Calais, along the narrowest point of the English Channel between France and England. The Seventh Army, a less formidable one, was in Normandy. There was, however, a generally accepted belief that Calais, the shortest route and most direct to Berlin, with the most straightforward line of communications, was the most logical and therefore the most likely. It was also thought probable that the invasion would involve a support and a main attack, but which would be where?

Strictly speaking, Field Marshal von Rundstedt had territorial command but German Field Marshal Rommel had sought and been granted responsibility by Hitler to inject his energies, experience and enthusiasm into the situation. Rommel relished the challenge and his appointment to the post began with an inspection tour of the Atlantic Wall, only to find it far from being impregnable. A previous Allied coastal assault on Dieppe, in August 1942, had been defeated and proved costly for the Allies. The Germans had taken a certain amount of complacent comfort and even willing delusion from this. With Calais strongly suggesting itself as the foremost invasion site, it was here that Hitler had his Atlantic Wall heavily concentrated, its port strongly fortified and significant concrete coastal defences erected.

Elsewhere Rommel found many gaps, weaknesses and shortcomings along the defences of France’s shoreline. He filled these identified weak points with further protections: pill boxes, gun emplacements (artillery set in reinforced concrete block house casements), mines and more mines. Rommel could not get enough mines. He was short of war materials, steel and concrete, and the labour force to build beach obstacles, so he adapted and improvised. He developed French conscript labour battalions, felled trees from woods and designed obstacles of his own, often with mines or fused shells placed on them. These crude, simple, unsophisticated-but-deadly barriers were erected in large numbers between high and low tide water marks. There were varying types, including concrete cones called ‘dragons’ teeth’ and criss-crossing lengths of steel, some made from redundant railway tracks, which were cut and welded together in a jagged, protruding, triangular starfish shape. Another steel gate-like barrier configuration, known as ‘Belgian Gates’, and tree trunks, wooden beams and poles were set deep into the sand, projecting seawards, with mines or fused shells attached. All these were erected to repel the inshore invasion craft, to impale and rip open the hulls of landing craft, or cause damage or death with exploding mines and shells; they were to cause disruption and confusion, and to force disembarkation at the furthest point offshore, thus exposing the troops to gunfire for longer. Inland, Rommel had also flooded large areas of open field in order to counter parachutists or glider-borne troops likely to land there. Another defensive deterrent he used was to set poles in such spots, with barbed wire slung between the poles; this became known as ‘Rommel’s asparagus’. It was intended that these would tear apart the flimsy gliders as they attempted to land. Whatever preparations were possible, Rommel undertook them, driving his men hard and unapologetically. In doing so, he intended to conduct the defence of Europe at the water’s edge, firmly convinced that the first twenty-four hours of the invasion would be vital.

D-Day was a bloody and terrifying battle; the horror of the events, the intensity of the fighting, the extent of the casualties and injured, were anticipated and planned for by the Allies. For months and even years ahead of the event, it was the fear of failure that occupied every waking moment of the D-Day invasion commanders, staff and planners. The consequences of failure were immense and the possibility of this was to haunt them incessantly and insidiously. The repercussions of a fiasco were huge, and there were no guarantees that it would not be a washout. If D-Day were not to succeed, if the planners had got it woefully wrong, not only would many deaths result on the day, but it would result in a lengthening of the war; the stark reality of extended fighting was many lives lost, a continuance of Nazi tyranny in Western Europe, and the potentially devastating effects of Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 rockets, or flying bombs – ‘the Doodlebugs’, as the British public called them. There was also the extension of Hitler’s secret weapons programme: the Messerschmitt Me 262, a jet-powered fighter prototype, and the V-3, a multi-barrelled gun capable of firing 140kg shells across the English Channel at a rate of one every six seconds – the so-called ‘London Gun’. The turning point of the war (after the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940) was the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943) with the Soviet victory over the Germans demonstrating that the soldiers of the supposed ‘super race’, the Wehrmacht, were not indestructible after all; following this, the advancing Red Army was threatening the frontiers of Germany, and perhaps beyond. Finally, there was the fear of the unthinkable: possible headway being made by German scientists developing an atom bomb for use!

It is fighting power that achieves objectives in the battlefield. To penetrate German defences demanded a build-up of military assets with force enough to overwhelm. If it were only that, it would be reasonably straightforward, militarily, but the plan also had to provide for an outmanoeuvring. The invasion troops had make it to shore and inland in sufficient numbers, with sufficient capabilities, to resist German counterattacks and maintain their forward thrust across Northwest Europe. The undertaking was breathtakingly enormous and the risks were immense, but it had to be done. The evil of Nazi fascism had to be halted, freedom preserved and democracy defended. A sense of the breadth of the onslaught is indicated in Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery’s D-Day briefing in St Paul’s School, West London, on 15 May 1944:

We must blast our way on shore and get a good lodgement before the enemy can bring sufficient reserves to turn us out. Armoured columns must penetrate deep inland, and quickly, on D-Day. This will upset the enemy plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg out claims well inland.

This invasion plan of Northwestern Europe had a geopolitical strategic context; it was advanced incrementally between the USA, Britain and Russia – that is, between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin – over a number of years. As a result, in March 1943, a combined Anglo-American military planning cell was established in London to oversee detailed proposals for the invasion plan. British Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan was appointed Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) in order to begin planning for Operation Overlord. Getting ashore and forcing the invasion became the work of COSSAC planning staff. Surprise, strength, speed and sustainability were all important elements of this D-Day invasion plan. Selecting options of where to invade and keeping it secret while analysing associated issues posed a significant problem; seeking solutions to the issues kept the COSSAC planners busy throughout 1943.

Among their staff was Commander Rickard Charlie Donovan (Ballymore, Ferns, County Wexford), Royal Navy, who was part of the Plans Division – those co-ordinating Combined Operations (a branch of the Allied military HQ tasked with planning the invasion of Europe) – and so he became immersed in designing D-Day. An exceptional staff officer, he was retained after the war to write the history of Combined Operations. The strains of purism and pragmatism, combined together, also saw new technologies and tactics developed to tackle the beach obstacles; hard at work in this capacity was Irishman Michael Morris (later Lord Killanin), an officer in General Percy Hobart’s unique 79th Armoured Division – Hobart’s parents were also both from Ireland. The 79th Armoured Division developed ingenious innovations, customising armoured vehicles to overcome Rommel’s beach obstacles.

For their part, the Germans were also doing their planning. They knew the Allies were likely to use a support attack in co-ordination with – though not necessarily simultaneous to – the main assault. Perhaps the former as a feint, hoping to draw in the German reserves, and instead undertaking their main landing elsewhere. The Germans heavily analysed previous Allied amphibious landings in Morocco, Sicily and Salerno, and they believed they had a good grasp of how the Allies intended to fight their way ashore. However thorough, methodical and credible their examination and conclusions were, they were still left with the twin conundrums of where and when.

‘Impracticable’ had been the immediate verdict of General Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group (the land component commander for the invasion of Northwestern Europe). ‘Monty’ was from a family with deep roots in Moville, County Donegal, and was one of the best-known British generals of the Second World War; he oversaw victory over Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein, in North Africa (October–November 1942). When first shown the COSSAC D-Day plan very late in December 1943, Churchill immediately considered that the Allied assault needed to be widened from a twenty-five-mile front to a fifty-mile front, taking in five beaches instead of three, and that an additional air division be dropped prior to H-hour (the exact time when Allied invasion troops landed on the beach and the assault commenced). These suggested amendments, and others, were absorbed by the staff of the newly established Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under General Eisenhower. The COSSAC plan had wisely prepared for what resources were actually available; the SHAEF plan prepared for what was actually needed, and Eisenhower had the authority to get whatever that might be, be it increased strength, ships or more time. His message to the troops on D-Day was as follows:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.

The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

On Monday 5 June 1944, ‘Imminence of invasion is not recognisable’ was the tone of Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West) in its estimate of Allied intentions, approved by Field Marshal von Rundstedt and sent to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command of the Wehrmacht, later in the day. With the weather as it was and no apparent indicators to the contrary, they were comfortable in that assessment. In fact, many of the German high-level field commanders in OB West had been summoned to conduct a Kriegsspiel (tactical exercise without troops) away from the northern French coastline in order to prepare on maps at Rennes what was, ironically, about to unfold on the ground, on 6 June, at Normandy.

German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox) of Army Group B, after months of overseeing the defensive preparations against the Allies, intended to bring the Allied invasion to a grinding halt at the water’s edge. Hitler, too, was convinced that the destruction of the Allied landings was the decisive factor in the entire conduct of the war, and would contribute significantly in its final result. Hitler had over-extended himself, fighting on two fronts at once. The decision to invade Russia in 1941, and his interference with his generals in the running of it, saw his offensive campaign on the Eastern Front culminating deep inside Russian territory – and the defeats began to mount. If the Germans could arrest the intended advance of the Allies in the west, Hitler could buy time and space, perhaps even discouraging the Allied army into reorganising and even reconsidering their options. If he succeeded in stopping them on the northern French shoreline, he could make a pact with Stalin or otherwise consolidate his still-not-inconsiderable military might on one front. As it was, most of the best of his forces were on the Eastern Front facing the Soviets. But the forces positioned on the Western Front were not without strength, their resistance stiffened by the impregnable Atlantic Wall and the dogged leadership of Rommel.

While offence is the most decisive type of military operation, defence is stronger, and the Germans had prepared well. The invasion was due – even overdue. It had to come soon, but they did not know where or when. Wherever and whenever it did, they knew it would be a major turning point in the war. A spell of unseasonal and continuing bad weather, the worst seen in June along the northern French coastline in over twenty years, had convinced Rommel to feel confident that the Allied invasion was unlikely to occur over the coming days. And so, after months of devising and driving defence improvements, Rommel felt it appropriate to leave his headquarters in the castle of the Duke Francois de Rochefoucauld at La Roche-Guyon, roughly midway between Normandy and Paris, and make the eight-hour journey to his home in Herrlingen, Ulm, to celebrate his wife Lucie-Maria’s birthday on 6 June. Rommel realised that the coming Allied attack would be decisive – in fact, that the first twenty-four hours of the invasion would be one of the most vital days of the war. What he did not realise was that the vast military machinery and apparatus of the greatest airborne and amphibious force ever assembled was already in motion and was about to unleash its massive might. The Longest Day, the Day of Days, was already at hand – the long-awaited Second Front was about to be opened.

The fate of the Second Front had become weather-dependent. Already Irish coastguardsman and Blacksod Lighthouse keeper Ted Sweeney, and his wife Maureen, had delivered a weather forecast by telephone from County Mayo’s most westerly point. It was one of a number of weather stations feeding meteorological data updates on to Group Captain (Royal Air Force) J.M. Stagg’s Meteorological Unit at Southwick House, southern England, to enable them to prepare and present advice to the Allied HQ on weather. The information update from Blacksod Lighthouse had given clarity to opinions of a previously divided prognosis among the US meteorologist staff – who were optimistic – and British staff – who were pessimistic – as to the effect of the prevailing adverse weather conditions: the successive depressions moving eastwards, twenty-four hours before the scheduled H-hour on 5 June. With first wave troops already aboard ships, General Eisenhower had suspended the operation; ships already out at sea had to be reversed and the fleet of ships that had not yet left harbour had to be kept quayside and the men left onboard. However, the second weather report from Blacksod suggested conditions likely to bring a brief interlude of improved weather. General Eisenhower, advised by Group Captain Stagg, launched D-Day with the famous words, ‘OK, we’ll go.’

And so started the largest airborne and seaborne invasion in history. Two hundred thousand Allied troops (Irish among them) hurled themselves headlong in a deadly onslaught against huge concrete German defence fortifications along Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. It was an irresistible force against an immoveable object.

The Allied D-Day operation involved the execution of five interlinked and overlapping phases. Phase one: airborne paratrooper and glider-borne infantry drops – between midnight and 2 a.m. – with 23,000 troops descending behind the German lines, the US on the left or western flank and the British and Canadians on the right or eastern flank. Phase two: acts undertaken, between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., to distract and deceive, even spreading the false perception that another point of attack was occurring at Pas-de-Calais. Phase three: aerial bombardment, at 3 a.m., with a heavy concentration on German coastal defences all along the northern French coast. Phase four: naval bombardment, at 5 a.m.; heavy salvos from Allied naval ships standing off the Normandy shoreline, covering the assault troop approach to shore on landing craft. Phase five: the first waves of Allied assault troops fight their way ashore, between 6 a.m. and 7.30 a.m., on five beaches, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, over a fifty-mile stretch of enemy-held coastline; each was to breach the beach’s defences, force their way inland to gain a lodgement in the hinterlands, and join up together in a consolidated bridgehead. Then they were to be prepared, once reinforced, to advance eastwards towards Paris.

The Germans along the Atlantic Wall were stationed in concrete constructions behind purpose-built structures of solid stone and steel. Where there were minefields and tank traps, Rommel had them enlarged and dug deeper; already-built bunkers were further reinforced. This was all done to channel the attacking Allied troops – and especially their tanks – to within range of carefully-sited anti-tank weapons and powerful Mauser MG-42 machine guns. These weapons, in addition to being placed in bunkers, were sited on the ground floors of fortified houses, beachfront villas, farmhouses inland and other ‘strong point’ buildings. These buildings, sturdy and ideal for adaptation, had been captured by the Germans and strengthened by buttressing them with logs, sandbagged earth and concrete. In some instances, entire coastal and inland villages were manipulated towards this end. These lines of beach and inland obstacles – minefields, bunkers, gun emplacements, fortified houses and resistance points – were a serious stumbling block for any attempted assault.

It was at the beaches, however, that the holding back of the Allied assault waves would occur – not indefinitely, necessarily, but for duration enough to allow the Panzer reserves to be brought forward and deployed, and then, with all their combined fire power, push the invasion back into the sea. Rommel wanted these Panzer divisions already present at the coast, primed and prepared, during the first hours of the invasion, to drive the Allies back into the sea in what he foresaw as a violent and brutal defence. The Panzers were not available to him, however; instead they were held far back and only to be released on Hitler’s direct orders. Rommel doubted that they would not arrive on time; in fact, he believed they would not arrive at all. They would become stalled, or more likely completely destroyed, by Allied aircraft, as the Allies had almost unfettered air superiority.

Availing of this air superiority was Dubliner William ‘Bill’ Andrew Wallace; he flew a Seafire aircraft, a naval version of the Spitfire which was adapted for operation from aircraft carriers. A pilot with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, he was part of Fleet Air Arm’s 867 Air Squadron. His D-Day log book entry records that he was spotting for HMS Warspite, calling in the fall of shot of their gun salvos to increase their accuracy. It also notes that he was shot down over a beachhead at 8.30 a.m. and landed near Russy crossroads, five miles inland, behind enemy lines! Flak from anti-aircraft guns had hit his engine and he force-landed in fields, his engine on fire. With assistance from locals, who gave him directions as to where the Germans were, he managed to avoid being captured and navigated his way to the American beachhead ‘O’, spending the night on the English Channel on board an American landing craft tank. Bill, the son of the porter of the Northern Bank on Dublin’s Grafton Street, who grew up in a flat above the bank, arrived safely back to England and survived the war; he later joined Aer Lingus, where he worked for twenty-four years, and in 1970 he became one of the first pilots to join Aer Arann. Bill died in 1985.

Another pilot who came to earth, this time on purpose, was Irish-born Oliver Plunkett Boland, a glider pilot. He was the second glider to land at Pegasus Bridge in undoubtedly one of the most daring and well-executed actions by the British 6th Airborne Division; it was a pre- H-hour ‘coup-de-main’ operation to seize and hold two bridges, keeping them intact for later use by the Allies. Crash-landing their gliders, with expert precision, immediately adjacent to the bridge, the men from 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (the Ox and Bucks) and 249 Field Company Royal Engineers, all commanded by Major John Howard, surprised a stunned bridge guard, overwhelming them with staggering speed, grenades and small arms fire; it was no small feat. Well after the war, in conversation with Irish journalist Kevin Myers, who asked him if there were Irish men among the Ox and Bucks regiment, now-retired Major John Howard replied, ‘about ten per cent’, then adding, ‘the best ten per cent!’ Those under Major Howard were later reinforced by the 7th Parachute Regiment; together they successfully held the bridges until further reinforced on D-Day by Lord Lovat’s 1st Special Service (Commando) Brigade, who landed on Sword Beach.

Among the ranks of the reinforcements was Galwegian Private Pat Gillen, who described his exit from his landing craft in the following terms, ‘The whole thing was to move fast, not to be an object for the snipers. They used to say “if you want to see your grandchildren then get off the landing craft faster than Jessie Owens [an Olympic sprinter]”. Seemingly I was fast.’

Thousands upon thousands of Allied assault troops ran that gauntlet and diced with death, disembarking, under intense enemy fire, onto the D-Day beaches, at dawn on 6 June 1944. Many died, but the carnage was especially horrible in the opening hours on Omaha Beach. Among the first to die on Omaha was Joseph Madagan, whose mother was from Clouna, near Ennistymon in County Clare. Joseph was with the US Rangers, who, alongside ‘A’ Company 116th Infantry Regiment, were among the first wave. Weighed down with heavy backpacks and equipment, staggering and stumbling through water, those moving sluggishly were easily picked out by the enemy snipers. Earlier, Allied aerial and naval bombardments, although immense, had not always achieved the desired results, and there was plenty of fight left in the defenders.

But it was the Allies, with naval support, tank fire, air support and the sheer grit of courageous small units, that won the day; by day’s end, the Allies had a foothold on the Normandy coast. Most survived the horrors of D-Day, but many fell in the fierce fighting in bocage countryside: the small fields, high hedgerows, earthen embankments and sunken roads which were ideal for the wily and determined German defenders, who still had considerable resolve left.

The Germans had been surprised by the Allied landing at Normandy, and, significantly, continued to believe, as they had been led to believe, that the Allied invasion at Normandy was only a diversion for a still-to-be-executed main Allied effort at the Pas-de-Calais. They had become convinced by their own logic – with assistance from the Allies – of a phantom army that was poised to strike across the English Channel from Dover. This highly successful Allied deception continued to keep the Germans’ very real and very strong Fifteenth Army in situ to fight a very fake First United States Army Group formation.

The Allied penetration inland was not going as fast as hoped for, and certain key cities – Bayeux, Caen, Carentan and Saint-Lô – took a lot of fighting to capture. The Allies had done well, but they experienced a lot of intense and bloody fighting in the bocage. After three weeks of this, US Ranger Sergeant Ed Ryan, who had successfully scaled the cliffs and captured the gun emplacements at Pointe du Hoc, was shot and wounded. He survived the war. Also wounded was Lance Corporal James Bryan, a farm labourer from Thurles; he fought with 3rd Battalion Irish Guards on D-Day, sustaining the injury on 9 July, outside Caen, from a German Stuka dive bomber. Shot in the neck by a sniper was Dubliner John Donnelly, whose obituary in The Irish Times, 15 June 2019, tells us that, apart from fighting with the British army, landing on Sword Beach on D-Day, he became one of Ireland’s foremost insolvency experts after the war and lived to be ninety years of age. John Donnelly lost many friends as a young soldier, and this affected him very deeply. It was perhaps this fact that led him to spend two years training for ordination as a Jesuit, and, later, to have a short-lived dalliance as a medical student. In time he settled down in his father’s chartered accountancy practice, which he bought out two years before qualifying himself.

James ‘Jim’ Sullivan was conscripted at Reading, England. He was a point-to-point jockey at Wantage in the United Kingdom. A member of 51st Highland Division, he was part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) evacuated from Dunkirk, on 4 June 1940, on a ship called The Princess Maud along with 1,270 others. Later, as a tank driver attached to the 7th Armour Division (‘The Desert Rats’), he took part in the North African campaign; on the way back from this campaign he became involved in the invasion of Sicily, then returning to the UK to prepare for D-Day. Wounded on the approach to Caen, he was brought back to the Royal Memorial Hospital at Netley, Southampton, and on recovery he was sent back to Salisbury. His younger brother Denis also served in the British army during the war, with the 16th Carrier Platoon, while his three other brothers, Donal, Jerry and William ‘Bill’ Sullivan served in the Irish Defence Forces.

The hard fighting on the ground involved three separate operations to try to take Caen. Heavy aerial bombardments of German defences became a feature of the bloody struggle, with casualties mounting on both sides. Progress through the bocage was painfully slow and cost the lives of many men and a lot of materials. That it was not unnecessarily slow was always a concern of General Montgomery, who was criticised by his detractors for being overly cautious but praised by the soldiers for not being wantonly wasteful with their lives – a lesson Monty had learned personally on the Western Front during the First World War.

Fixing the Germans into positions and wearing away their strength, the various Allied (British and Canadian) operations were actually achieving what they were designed to. The outcome was in line with the operational narrative Montgomery had envisaged; the uncertainty and delayed timelines frustrated many, however. Meanwhile, the hard fighting and dying continued on the ground. Allied aerial and artillery bombardments had a brutal physical effect on the Germans, and where this was not actually the case, the psychological impact caused many to become dazed, even demoralised and some practically ‘demented’. Drawing in the Germans on the east flank of the bridgehead, keeping them there, and making them commit their reserves of men and, more particularly, their tanks, allowed the Americans on the west flank to push southwards, facing minimum resistance; next they turned eastwards, then sweeping northwards and creating a pincer movement with the British and Canadians. This manoeuvre forced open the ‘breakout’ as the Allies finally penetrated the Germans’ fiercely defensive posture. This was Monty’s battle plan, and even though it took longer than first assessed, the strategy eventually worked. The fighting in the bocage was behind them. The Germans fell back in disarray and narrowly avoided annihilation at the Falaise Pocket, where the encircling Allies failed to close the gap quickly enough. There was much left to do and a second, much smaller, amphibious invasion of France in the southeast, near Nice and Marseilles – known as Operation Dragoon – which was successfully completed on 15 August. The liberation of Paris quickly followed and the Allies swept eastwards, at speed, making a rapid advance towards Germany. Their momentum was curbed on the Dutch border due to highly extended supply lines that still stretched all the way back to Normandy. The port of Antwerp was in Allied hands; the difficulty was that it was forty miles inland and the Germans still had control of the Scheldt estuary, which led from the sea to Antwerp.

With the Allied advance stalled due to a shortage of supplies – particularly of fuel and ammunition. The Red Ball Express, the convoy system which was its lifeline, could not keep up the flow of supplies needed to maintain an advance against the German resistance. In order to continue to capitalise on the Germans’ confusion, the Allies needed to be hot on the heels of their retreat. The Germans were not to be given time and space to reorganise and recover. Along the Belgium–Netherlands border, considerations of time and space, Monty felt, were best addressed by surprise and speed; airborne surprise combined with the speed of XXX Corps (30 Corps) were the keys to success.

It was not, however, the newly-promoted Field Marshal Montgomery’s decision to make, because on 1 September 1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed direct operational command and control of all Allied ground forces in Europe. Monty was no longer the overall co-ordinator of the land battle – an appointment he had been granted by Eisenhower for the D-Day assault and the Battle of Normandy. This, of course, had placed American troops under Montgomery’s command; back in the US, public opinion turned against this, due to the already superior number of American troops in Europe and the ever-increasing US contribution, of equipment and supplies, to the Allied cause.

It had been Eisenhower’s intention to drive forward on a broad front, forcing the now-unsettled Wehrmacht to try and cope with many points of Allied attack simultaneously. However, the slowly arriving supplies meant he was unable to exploit US General Patton’s advance in the south and Montgomery’s in the north. Both had an intense dislike of the other and they had a longstanding rivalry – each wanted to beat the other to Berlin.

Montgomery wanted the Germans kept on the run; he felt the pressure needed to be kept on them, so in the absence of a plan from Eisenhower’s headquarters, he devised one of his own which would provide ‘a really powerful and full blooded thrust’. Montgomery’s audacious plan was untypical of his usual slow, considered, meticulously-built-up approach; it was bold, risky, even reckless.

With the success of D-Day, the Battle of Normandy, and the collapse of German resistance in France and Belgium, the end of the war was within sight. Monty’s Operation Market Garden was undertaken to further this end. Imaginative, daring, simple – the ‘Market’ part of the operation was the surprise element, involving US and British paratroopers who were to seize some seven main bridges, laying a carpet, as it were, for the ‘Garden’, or speed element, of the British XXX Corps, who were to advance rapidly up this ‘corridor’ – a single sixty-four-mile access road to Arnhem. This was to be the start line for a further operation, avoiding the defences of the Siegfried Line (the Western Wall), instead heading into the Ruhr, the German industrial heartland. This, it was hoped, would end the war before Christmas 1944, saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives. The US 82nd and 101st airborne divisions seized and held their objectives, although it was not in total keeping with the planned timeline. The most difficult task, the seizing and holding of the bridge farthest away at Arnhem, fell to the British 1st Airborne Division and 1st Polish Parachute Brigade. There were Irishmen throughout the Operation Market Garden formations, and not least at Arnhem, where hundreds were involved in the fierce fighting.

D-Day was planned over months, even years. The planning for Operation Market Garden took place over days, scarcely a full week. It was the first time the Allies used airborne troops strategically. Nothing like it, in terms of scale, had ever been attempted before. Thirty-five thousand airborne troops were flown a distance of three hundred miles from England. It was the first time the First Allied Airborne Army was to be deployed after nine previous cancelled operations; they were itching to get into the fight before the war was over. There had been an over-optimism and over-simplification of the situation, and a belief by some – Lieutenant General Frederick Montague ‘Boy’ Browning chief among them – that all the airborne army had to do was get airborne and victory would follow. Then came the realisation that there were simply not enough aircraft to drop three-and-a-half airborne divisions in one day. Thereafter, Lieutenant General Lewis Hyde Brereton’s air plan shaped how the airborne insertion would happen. In the event, the plan was overly weighted toward the consideration of loss of aircraft; the drop zones selected were too far away from the objectives and the Allies lost the essential element of surprise, tying up manpower having to protect the landing and drop zones instead of fighting for the bridge. It was a day drop and there was no fighter or fighter bomber support – a stipulation by Major General Paul L. Williams, IX Troop Carrier Command that handed air superiority to the Germans. The asset of fire power was lost, as was the Allied ability to help break deadlock situations, protect troops and press home advantages. Bad luck, poor weather and ineffective radio communications all played their part, but another significant factor in the unsuccessful seizure of Arnhem bridge was regarding intelligence – the known presence of two German Panzer divisions in the vicinity was ignored. Dutch underground reports, photo reconnaissance and Ultra code interceptions all gave strong indications of their existence. Any delays, however, did not suit the many prevailing agendas at play. Chief among them was that Allied Command wanted to test the capability of the First Allied Airborne Army’s capacity; its commanders wanted to get into the war before it was over and be able to point towards their operational experience. Churchill wanted the German V-1 and V-2 rocket launching sites overrun while Montgomery wanted to regain control of Allied strategy; Eisenhower wanted an end to the squabbling between Patton and Montgomery, and maybe to get a Rhine crossing into the bargain. Overall, there was a sense that Germany had little left to offer by way of halting the Allied advance; they were on the ropes and one knockout blow was all that was needed to bring the war to a close; 1944 was 1918 all over again, and the dramatic collapse of German resistance was once again at hand. Caution was not a part of the prevailing mindset, and, given the top-down endorsement of the Market Garden plan, neither was it felt that the suggestion of such circumspection would have been appreciated.

On 17 September 1944, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Joe’ Vandeleur, Irish Guards, gave the order to his lead tank commander to cross the ‘start line’ and set in motion XXX Corps’ advance up the route that became known as ‘Hell’s Highway’ – the ‘Garden’ part of Operation Market Garden commenced. Progress up Hell’s Highway was marred by delay, ambushes and blown-up bridges; the rate of advance fell well behind schedule. So much so that, in Arnhem, those who were tasked with holding the bridge for two days were still there eight days later, fighting in vain, not only to establish an alternative bridgehead at the Oosterbeek perimeter, but also for their very lives. This fight against a rapidly reinforced German opposition saw the 1st Airborne Division suffer enormous casualties (fatalities and wounded), and prisoners of war were taken. Only a dramatic, organised withdrawal back across the Lower Rhine, under the cover of darkness and artillery covering fire, saved what remained of the shattered airborne division. Thwarted in their efforts to secure the last bridge – the major objective of the operation – the Allies now had to reconcile themselves to the fact that the war would extend beyond Christmas, likely well into 1945.

John O’Neill, from Bere Island off Castletownberehaven in County Cork, was one among those who had lost their lives. He had followed two brothers to Worcestershire in 1933 and three years later enlisted in the British army. He fought with the Northumberland Fusiliers and was killed in action; he was 29 years of age, and is buried in Overloon War Cemetery in the Netherlands.

Sergeant John Daly from County Waterford, 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, was one who received reward for his efforts; he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for providing covering fire with a Bren light machine gun, allowing Major Robert Cain, South Staffordshire Regiment, to successfully stalk and ambush Tiger tanks – for which Cain was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). Cork man John Stout served with the Irish Guards Armoured Division, which raced to Arnhem and came agonisingly close to capturing the key bridge.

Brigadier General John ‘Shan’ Hackett, Officer Commanding 4th Parachute Brigade, was one of the very last back across the Lower Rhine, well after the organised withdrawal; he was the son of a Tipperary man and Trinity College graduate who had immigrated to Australia. He had hidden out, with the help of local Dutch residents, for weeks after the battle. The Germans had imposed restrictions on the distribution of food against these same local residents, along with others in the urban areas of the western part of the Netherlands, leading to severe shortages in what became known as the ‘Hungerwinter’, during which people starved and died. Their already perilous plight was added to by a bitterly cold winter, the freezing conditions exacerbating their suffering. A plan – Operation Manna – was devised by the British to airdrop food supplies to the needy population. Belfast-born Air Commodore James Roy ‘Paddy’ Forsyth was one of the pilots who took part in this RAF humanitarian mercy mission, which succeeded in dropping some 6,500 tonnes of supplies.

Lieutenant Colonel John Place from Foxrock, Dublin, Commanding Officer No. 2 Wing RAF Glider Pilot Regiment, was the pilot of a Horsa glider during Market Garden; while map-reading, he suddenly had to take over the controls when a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell outside the cockpit window pierced the fuselage of the glider and fatally wounded co-pilot Ralph Alexander Maltby, from Belfast, who was flying the glider at the time. As they neared the landing zone, machine-gun fire ripped through the plywood fuselage, wounding another of the occupants. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Colonel Place managed to bring the glider down in a safe and successful landing.

Another Dublin connection involved the actress Audrey Hepburn, whose mother was a Dutch noblewoman. Both her parents were sympathetic towards the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s, and her father suddenly left the family to become more deeply involved in their activities. Hepburn and her mother went to Kent, where she was educated, before moving to her mother’s farm in Arnhem. Her parents divorced in 1938. It is believed that while there Hepburn raised money for the Dutch resistance through her performances in silent ballet dance and witnessed the transportation by train of Dutch Jews to concentration camps. Hepburn, too, suffered during the subsequent German blockade of food supplies, and she became ill. However, success and fame awaited her as a Hollywood actress, during which time, in 1960, she renewed contact with her father after locating him in Dublin through the Red Cross. While he remained distant, emotionally, she financially supported him for the rest of his days.

The Allies were poised on the German frontier, their advance hampered by a shortage of supplies. Montgomery’s bold gamble to ‘jump the Rhine’ at Arnhem had not worked and Allied forces again focused on securing the Scheldt estuary – approaches to which were held by the Germans – in order to free up the use of Antwerp Port, which was in their own hands. The failure to secure Arnhem was a setback; Montgomery’s surprise drive towards Berlin was a failed gamble at bringing an end to the Second World War. Now it was time for an emboldened Hitler to launch his own.