Chapter 21
June 6, 1944
The art of war is simple enough. Find out
where your enemy is. Get at him as soon
as you can. Strike him as hard as you can,
and keep moving on.
- Ulysses S. Grant
“Tell me, Joseph. Do you think the Allies would invade in such a storm?”
The young courier simply stood at attention, and hoped he would not have to respond. The days of June 5, 6, and 7 had been identified by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel as a high invasion-risk period, having the right combination of moon and tides. For weeks the front line units and strong points had prepared for an imminent attack, but with this massive storm there was little chance of an invasion. German weather forecasters predicted no relief for weeks.
Joseph had arrived before daybreak in a driving rain, and huddled close around the small cast iron stove listening to Hauptmann Grote droll on. He was bored, tired of being wet and cold, and hadn’t eaten yet. The war seemed far away this stormy morning.
Rommel had returned to Berlin to attend his wife’s birthday - and secretly meet with General von Runstedt to urge him to release the Panzers contrary to Hitler’s orders if there were an invasion. Even the naval situation report showed a relaxed posture - E-boat patrols would be curtailed during this storm. OKW determined that an invasion would not be feasible until July at the earliest. For now, it was a rare chance to relax.
Grote reached for a cup of hot coffee. Coffee was hard to come by in this remote backwater command. The wine was no better. He knew the French kept the better wine and cheese hidden away, and surrendered a vile swill to the Germans.
“You can relax, Joseph. Even those crazy Americans would not attack from the sea in this storm.”
The command area of Widerstandsnest 29 was buffeted by the high winds that whipped through the open gun ports facing the sea and the open entry doorways facing inland. It was nearly impossible to shield oneself from the weather. Hauptmann Grote, Joseph, a communications soldier who manned the phones, and the gun crew spent the dark early morning hours trying to stay dry.
Thunder resonated from the channel and broke over the beaches as the first grays of dawn began to dissolve the darkness.
“That’s quite a storm, Joseph,” Grote commented. “Look at the flashes of lightening!” He stepped outside for a better look, and found he was almost mesmerized by the incredible flashes of light reflecting under and through the clouds over the horizon. The flashes were followed by rolling thunder. It looked surreal, with the dark gray sea blending seamlessly into the same gray sky. As the squalls abated, and the dawn brightened slightly, a strange silhouette seemed to stretch clear across where the horizon should have been.
Grote stood transfixed, unsure of what he was seeing. The lightening flashed again, this time closer, and in a moment he heard the sound ... a sound he had not heard since leaving the Russian front. It was the unmistakable sound of shells flying nearly as fast as sound, tearing at the air, ripping it apart.
Grote could not believe his own ears, and stared out to sea. The shell screamed overhead, and in an instant a massive explosion rocked the earth on the far side of Graye. Then another, and another. Grote was shocked back to reality, and realized only now that the silhouette shape on the sea was a fleet ... a massive fleet of ships. So many ships that the sea disappeared completely.
The communication officer had thrown himself on the floor at the first explosion.
“Get up!” Grote screamed. “Get up, stupid! Get me headquarters on the phone! Now!”
Shells continued to scream overhead, but landed too far inland to have any effect on the beach. The flashes of heavy naval gunfire continued, unabated, unending. It was like Hell was unleashed.
“I have headquarters!” The communications officer practically threw the receiver at Hauptmann Grote, and retreated back to a corner of the casement for protection.
“Hello, hello! This is Hauptmann Grote, WN29. We are under attack! Repeat, we are under attack!”
Joseph listened in a panic to the one-sided conversation, and could not believe what he was hearing.
“Naval fire! Ships! Hundreds of them! ... It’s not thunder, you fool! ... I don’t know how many! I can’t count them all, you idiot! We are taking heavy fire ... hello? Hello?”
The lines went dead. Smaller shells began exploding all around the casement, and the crew inside sought what little cover they could. The bombardment kept coming, and coming ... then fell silent. Grote took a quick count of his men, then ordered them to their positions.
“Gun crew, prepare to return fire! Joseph, go to the other positions and see if anyone is still alive. If so, tell them to open fire!”
The courier scrambled out of the shelter of the casement. In a few minutes the heavy guns of the shore batteries opened fire on the invasion fleet. The crews had survived the initial bombardment.
Joseph ran back into the command center, breathless.
“Landing craft approaching the beaches!” was all he could gasp out. Almost immediately, the overlapping fields of machine guns and mortars began to belch fire down the beaches. Screaming human voices could be heard over the appalling explosions and machine gun fire. The noise was frightful.
Suddenly, the face of the gunworks was blasted head on by a tank round. It was a sound and explosion Grote had heard a thousand times, but one he was not expecting. Then two more, in quick succession. The last explosion opened a large gap in the front of the gun position and spewed concrete throughout the casement.
“Tank fire!” the gun crews echoed, almost in unison.
“Tanks? That’s impossible!” Grote screamed over the din. Large landing craft were still not visible, so there was no way tanks could be ashore.
“Look! There!” The lookout pointed directly in front of their position. On the beach was a tank, one that Grote recognized as an American Sherman. It was preparing to fire on the adjacent casement. In the water, rolling heavily in the swell, was an oddly shaped craft coming ashore, but he could not see what it was. A covering of some type, like a canvas skirting, appeared as the craft rolled ashore. When the canvas dropped, Grote was staring down the muzzle of a Sherman tank’s 75mm gun. The tank had swam ashore ... as impossible as that seemed. Grote flashed back on the joke at his expense in the galley of the fishing boat, “You think they will swim them ashore?”
“Do we have phones? Or radio?”
“No! Communications are down!”
“Joseph! Come here!”
Hauptmann Grote hurriedly wrote an urgent dispatch. It read:
Initial bombardment ineffective
Enemy tanks ashore. American Shermans
Some kind of skirt allows them to swim ashore independently
WN30 out of action. We are taking heavy fire
Requesting 21 P counterattack immediately.
“Take this to headquarters. And hurry! Tell them you have seen these floating tanks. They are real. And they are taking us apart!”
Joseph grabbed the dispatch and stuffed it quickly in his pouch. He ran out of the bunker, ducking at each explosion, and grabbed his bicycle. I will never make it, he feared, but he promised he would die trying.
The bunker was rocked by another blast that ripped apart the protective concrete in front of them. The sound echoed through the casement, a deafening sound. Grote scrambled back to his feet, and screamed, “The telephone ... the telephone!”
Then all was quiet.
R
It was 4:00 am on June 6. Antoine Bouchard was wakened by a pounding on his door.
“It is Little Fish. Open up!”
Bouchard had spent a long night convulsed in his nightmares, and was slow to rouse. He stumbled to the door, and unlatched it. The British agent pushed his way inside and slammed the door behind him.
“It’s beginning!” he gasped, out of breath.
“What’s beginning? What are you talking about, man?” Bouchard responded, still half asleep.
“The invasion! Now!”
It was still eerily quiet, as the bombardment had yet to begin. But the agent had received the coded message by radio and was moving into position.
“A bombardment will begin shortly. We need to get into your cellar until it is over, just to be safe!”
The two men squeezed into the small root cellar Antoine had dug in the floor. There was barely room to breathe. It was a short wait. Shells tore overhead as the naval gunfire landed long, and the fields behind the German positions were blasted apart by the explosions. Shrapnel ripped the windows out of the cottage, and nearby concussions blew down the door. Had they been sitting at the cottage table they would have been torn to bits. Then the bombardment stopped.
“Time for me to go!” the agent blurted out, and threw open the crude hatchway, revealing the damaged cottage interior.
Bouchard looked around the remains of his home and cried out, “I am coming with you!”
The agent did not protest, and the two slipped quickly up the small lane and into position near the Caen-Bayeux crossroads, and waited. They could hear the roar of battle on the nearby beaches, the sounds of aircraft overhead, the blasts of heavy guns. Hell had erupted in Normandy.
Shells from the giant armada offshore screamed over the rooftops of Courseulles, landing past their intended targets, destroying civilian homes, and killing French residents of the Calvados. When the Canadian troops finally hit the beach, they had to face murderous fire from the intact hardened defensive positions that should have been destroyed by the naval fire.
Two shells smashed into the local Catholic church. The priest, Antoine’s contact with British intelligence and the only person in Courseulles who knew his true allegiance, was killed in the blast.
R
Joseph managed to get free of the machine guns, mortars, and small arms fire on the beach without incident, and frantically pedaled his bicycle down the road heading for the headquarters unit at ChŠteau de Tailleville. As he passed the cutoff to Graye, another boy he knew, another of the Hitler Jugend assigned to courier duty, appeared on his right. He was carrying a small machine pistol, which Joseph did not have.
“I have orders to deliver my satchel to ChŠteau de Tailleville, and to shoot anyone trying to stop me!” he gasped, breathless. Joseph decided to join him for protection.
As the two couriers rounded the corner, they approached the crossroads to Tailleville. Bouchard remained on the other side of the hedgerow while the agent jumped out to stop Joseph.
“Joseph, wait,” he cried! He was certain that Joseph would stop for him, but was not prepared for the second armed courier. The two boys stopped, and before Joseph could tell his partner this was the priest, the second courier unshouldered the machine pistol and opened fire, following his instructions to shoot anyone that tried to stop him.
The agent was hit immediately with a spray of bullets that ripped into his chest, and threw him back against the hedgerow directly in front of Bouchard. Joseph ran up to him, screaming “He’s the priest. Conrad, he’s the priest!” It was too late.
The two boys stood over the agent’s bloody body. Neither had ever fired at a person before, and they stood shaking in disbelief.
“Conrad, you have killed the priest!”
Conrad looked at Joseph, and threw the machine pistol to the ground, his hands still shaking. Seeing this, Antoine sprang from his hiding place on the other side of the hedgerow and pounced on the gun. With a short burst of fire, both boys fell to the ground. Bouchard grabbed the dispatch parcel from Joseph, struggling to continue breathing, then reached inside the coat of the agent and took out the envelope that held the forged document. He grabbed the three bodies one by one and dumped them on the other side of the hedgerow. He then threw the bicycles into the ditch and headed back to his cottage, his heart pounding.
What should he do now? The agent was dead, the courier dead. How important is this thing anyway? He decided to look at what was in the dead courier’s packet before he decided what to do.
The second courier’s bag contained some battlefield intelligence and a status report but nothing that appeared important. He pulled the papers from the other bag and found what he was seeking - the situation report from WN29, the forward command bunker. As he read the request for the 21st Panzer counterattack, he knew he had to act. On behalf of his France, his Marianne and AriŽle, he had to make one last sacrifice. The original situation report was thrown into the fire and he placed the dead agent’s forgery, still in its sealed envelope, into the bag.
He wrote one last letter to his friend, Andy. He knew this could very well be his last letter. He wrote in a hurry, in a shaky hand, realizing he had little time:
6 Jun 1944
My Dear Andy,
This will be my last letter, for I will die this day, I am certain of it. I wish only to be remembered as a patriot, but that cannot be.
Pray for me. You are my only friend.
Antoine
He opened the lid to the tin box that held his precious letters, and placed this last one inside carefully before closing the lid. He slipped the box back into its hiding place and replaced the brick covering it. He then backtracked to the spot where he had stashed the bicycles and climbed aboard, pedaling furiously towards the Chateau, uncertain just what he would do once he arrived.
The ground was flat and at this early stage relatively unencumbered. As he hurried through the bocage, he could hear scattered gun fire all around him as paratroopers that dropped into the region at dawn engaged scattered German units.
Finally, the chateau came into view. He heard “Halt!” and was stopped immediately by two German soldiers standing sentry duty.
“I am Jacques Charbonneau, a soldier of the Great War for Germany. I have a dispatch from the beach!”
“And how did you get this?” one soldier demanded.
“The courier, he was killed by a shell blast just outside my home. I grabbed the bag and came here with it.”
The sentry saw that the courier bag was official, and pointed his rifle at Bouchard, motioning him toward the door of the chateau. Inside was a scene of complete chaos.
“Who is this?” an officer demanded. “What is he doing here?”
“He has the courier bag from WN29. He says the courier was killed by a shell blast,” the sentry reported standing at attention.
“Do I know you?” the officer asked, staring intently at Antoine.
“No, Herr Oberst. But I often assisted Hauptmann Gerhardt in certain ... matters of interest,” Bouchard was careful to not elaborate.
“Ah, yes, I remember him speaking of you. A fisherman, and a former German soldier as I remember the conversation. How did you come by this, fisherman?”
“The courier would pedal past by my cottage every day. He and I became friends. This morning as he passed by there was a shell that hit near the road, and Joseph was hit. I came out to see what had happened, and he told me this had to be taken to the chateau, that it was urgent.”
“Did you read the dispatch?” The colonel began to open the bag and saw that the situation dispatch was in a sealed envelope.
“No, Herr Oberst. I simply grabbed the bag and hurried here.”
“And what of the courier?”
“He did not live very long after, Herr Oberst.”
“I see. Well, it looks like everything is in order. The Fatherland thanks you again for your service, fisherman. I suggest you find a safe hole to crawl into until we repel these invaders. Dismissed.”
With that Antoine was ushered back outside and warned again to take refuge. The officer opened the satchel and unsealed the envelope. His face brightened as he read the dispatch.
“Get me WN29 on the phone to confirm!” he ordered.
“I am sorry, Herr Oberst, the phone communications are still disrupted.”
“Radio, then!”
“We have no radio contact with the beaches, Herr Oberst.”
“Damn Maquis! If I were running the security here, things would be different! Get me Caen headquarters, immediately!”
A call was placed to the battalion headquarters at Caen where telephone communications were still open.
“Yes, this is Oberst Deptolla. I have a report from the beach at Courseulles ... yes, General. It says,
Initial naval bombardment ineffective.
Taking small arms and mortar fire.
Successfully repelled armor carrying landing craft.
Casualties light.
Enemy casualties heavy.
Evacuations from the beach beginning.
Oberst Deptolla waited for instructions from headquarters.
“Yes, sir, we will be ready.”
As the Canadian Royal Winnipeg Rifles and Regina Rifles overran the beach defenses and swept through Courseulles, and the Canadian Scottish secured Bernires-sur-Mer just to the east opening the harbor to Allied transports, General Richter at his Caen headquarters was reviewing the situation map.
“Reports indicate that the center of this sector at Courseulles is holding, and has inflicted heavy casualties. The invasion there has faltered. Here to the east, paratroopers have taken the bridge over the Caen Canal, and threaten our flank. We cannot mount a counterattack towards Arromanches until that threat is cleared. I am ordering the 21st Panzer Division to proceed here, towards Haut Lion. Once the flanking threat is passed, we will advance on Arromanches and destroy the Allied invasion on the beaches.”
By afternoon, Colonel Kurt Meyer had ordered his armor forward into a hornet’s nest of paratroopers, but found few hard targets to engage. Stymied, he eventually withdrew to prepare for the westward counterattack that never came.
By this time, Canadian forces had landed more than 3,200 vehicles and 21,500 troops on Juno Beach, and had established the largest bridgehead of the invasion. By nightfall the Canadians held positions near Carpiquet on the Caen-Bayeux road, and the Germans had lost the opportunity to counterattack.
R
A man in a rumpled coat and a scarf pulled up over his face burst into the office of the harbor master as Le Collette was frantically trying to make contact with the local military command headquarters. Shots rang out, and Le Collette fell to the floor. In the chaos of the bombardment, no one noticed the rumpled man hurrying through the streets away from the port.
R
Antoine Bouchard was not certain if his efforts had succeeded, if the ruse was complete. He moved carefully back down the narrow road toward the safety of his cottage root cellar, watching for any sign of danger. Scattered firefights erupted all around him, although he had yet to see any of the combatants.
As he approached a sharp turn in the road, two men stepped out from behind the trees and leveled their weapons at him.
“Halt!” was all he heard, and his world went spinning. What had happened? Had he been shot? His senses were blurring. He could see the faces of the two men standing over him as one reached down and snatched the gold cross from around his neck.
The last thing he saw was the face of his beautiful Marianne, calling to him.
“Come back to me, Antoine. Come back to me.”
R