The Valour and the Horror

By 23 January, 1944, the Allies had settled on a basic plan of attack for Normandy. The Americans would take the western flank closest to Cherbourg, while the British operated to the east, on the approaches to Caen. Logistics determined the arrangement. American forces had arrived in Britain via the country's western ports, and had positioned depots in those areas. It made sense for them to operate near those bases. In addition, responding to the congestion in Britain's ports brought on by preparations for the invasion, American logisticians planned to load ships in the United States for direct discharge onto the beaches of France, without an intermediate unloading in Britain. The western flank was closer to that line of supply.

Invasion tactics

On the night before the invasion, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would land by parachute and glider near the town of Ste. Mere-Eglise, securing the roads that led from the shoreline, and obstructing enemy efforts to reinforce beach defences. The next morning Bradley's First Army would arrive. The VII Corps would put the U.S. 4th Division ashore on UTAH Beach near les Dunes de Varreville. To the east, the V Corps, composed of the U.S. 1st and portions of the 29th Infantry Divisions, would land on OMAHA Beach, near the town of Vierville-sur-Mer. With a foothold secure in Normandy, V Corps would expand the beachhead to the south, while VII Corps cut across the Contentin Peninsula, and then wheeled north to capture Cherbourg. With the seaport in hand, VII Corps was to turn south and move toward the town of St. Lo. Once Bradley held the town and the St. Lo-Periers Road, he would have his army on dry ground suitable for offensive operations by mechanised forces. Patton's Third Army would then take to the field. Advancing into Brittany, it would seize Brest and other ports, and cover the south flank when the First Army began an attack to the northeast toward Paris.

To the east, the Second British Army would operate in the region between Bayeux and Caen, an area that possessed suitable sites for airfields and that offered a relatively unimpeded route to Paris. As in the American sector, an airborne division, the British 6th, would secure the northeastern flank of the operation, dropping during the hours before dawn near Caen and the mouth of the Orne River. At H-hour, the British 50th Division under the British 30 Corps would come ashore on GOLD Beach, near Bayeux and the American zone, while 1 Corps conducted a two-pronged attack farther to the east. There, the 3rd Canadian Division would cross JUNO Beach near the town of Courseulles and the British 3d Division would come ashore at SWORD, near Lion-sur-Mer. "In the initial stages," Montgomery told his officers, "we should concentrate on gaining control quickly of the main centres of road communications. We should then push our armoured formations between and beyond these centres and deploy them on suitable ground. In this way it would be difficult for the enemy to bring up his reserves and get them past these armoured formations."

Over all, Allied planners intended to gain a lodgement between the Seine and Loire Rivers. Assuming that the Germans, after initial resistance, would choose to withdraw their forces behind the natural barrier provided by the Seine, they estimated that the task would take about ninety days. After a pause to regroup and resupply, the Allies would then begin an advance into the regions beyond the Seine and toward Germany.

Bolero - supplies

As planning continued, the BOLERO buildup in Britain, begun in 1942 to arm and provision the invasion, took on new momentum. With 39 divisions slated to participate in the invasion 20 American, 14 British, 3 Canadian, 1 French, and 1 Polish, along with hundreds of thousands of service troops, there was little time to waste. The number of U.S. fighting men based in Great Britain, alone, would double in the first six months of 1944, rising from 774,000 at the beginning of the year to 1,537,000 in the week preceding the final assault. More than 16 million tons of supplies would be needed to feed and supply those men and their allies: six and one-quarter pounds of rations per day per man; 137,000 jeeps, trucks, and half-tracks; 4,217 tanks and fully tracked vehicles; 3,500 artillery pieces; 12,000 aircraft; and huge stores of sundries; everything from dental amalgam for fillings to chewing gum and candy bars.

Quarters and depots to house the entire force mushroomed across the English countryside, many in just the seventeen weeks that preceded the invasion. The fields of Somerset and Cornwall became armories for the vast stores of bombs and artillery shells that the operation would require. The congestion extended to Britain's harbours, where ships laden with more supplies stood by. By the day of the attack, besides the immense force of fighting ships that would land the troops in Normandy and of cargo vessels that continued to ply Atlantic supply routes, more than 3 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping were in direct service to the invasion. The huge size of the buildup notwithstanding, landing craft were in such short supply that Eisenhower postponed the invasion for one month, from May to June.

Destruction of German transportation

While logisticians laid the base for the invasion, the Allied air forces opened the way for the attack itself by waging massive bombing campaigns in Germany and France. In Germany, between January and June, 1944, Allied fighters swept the skies clear of German warplanes and took a heavy toll in pilots. As a result, by June 1944 the enemy lacked both the aircraft and the airmen to mount more than a token resistance to Allied plans.

Meanwhile, in France, as members of the French resistance cut railroad tracks, sabotaged locomotives, and targeted supply trains, Allied aircraft bombed roads, bridges, and rail junctions to prevent the Germans from moving reinforcements toward the invasion beaches. To deceive the enemy's intelligence agencies, the attacks occurred along the entire length of the Channel coast. By June, despite intelligence reports questioning the value of the attacks, all rail routes across the Seine River north of Paris were closed; the transportation system in France was at the point of collapse.

Deception

Deception was, indeed, a major part of the Allied campaign plan. To mislead the Germans into believing that the Pas de Calais, rather than the Cotentin, would be the site of the invasion, Eisenhower's staff created a mythical 1st Army Group, with an order of battle larger than that of Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Basing the phantom force near Dover, just across the Channel from the supposed target, the planners had construction crews build dummy installations of plywood and canvas and dot them with an array of inflatable tanks and vehicles. They also anchored a vast armada of rubber landing craft in the Thames River estuary, where German reconnaissance aircraft were certain to spot them. Eisenhower assigned Patton, the American general the Germans most respected, to command the phantom army and saw to it that known enemy agents received information on the status of Patton's force. Allied naval units conducted protracted manoeuvres off the Channel coast near the location of the shadow army, and components of Patton's fictitious command indulged in extensive radio trafficking to signal to German intelligence analysts that a major military organisation was functioning. A careful plan of aerial bombardment complemented the ploy. During the weeks preceding the invasion, Allied airmen dropped more bombs on the Pas de Calais than anywhere else in France.

To protect the date of the invasion from prying German eyes, the Allies called it D-Day, which carried no implications of any sort. NEPTUNE, the code name they used in place of OVERLORD on planning documents after September 1943, was similarly devoid of connotation. Although American commanders doubted that their ruses would have much effect, their schemes succeeded far beyond expectations.

see also The search for a supreme commander

Valour and Horror, Second World War, Canadian history, World War II, W.W.II