A day in Normandy: Standing where they fought
Seventy-two years have gone past. D-day returns every year in Normandy and observed with great reverence
Asadullah Minhaz
While a long-time admirer of Victor Hugo, I never had the faintest idea about his poetic genius. My boyhood days were fascinated by the complex characters he made only in novels, especially those in the masterworks like Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misrables or The Man Who Laughs. But then it occurred only in last year September (2015) when a prospect of visiting Normandy D-Day beaches seemed promising enough to start a google search on the area, and I came across the lyrical masterpiece, Demain ds laube. It is a poem written by Hugo during his exile at Guernsey, an island off the coast of Normandy; and as claimed, it describes Normandy countryside. The poem, even so translated, touched me with the melancholic mood, as I remembered the fateful dawn of D-Day, 6th June 1944. The contexts were not definitely the same, but of around 150,000 soldiers crossing the English Channel hundred years later, some could be whispering similar:
Tomorrow, at dawn, in the hour when the countryside becomes white, I will leave. (Demain, ds laube, lheure o blanchit la campagne, Je partirai.)
That became, nonetheless, the last dawn for some ten thousands of them.
But, were they all aware of the ominous consequences of the next day landing? How did they manage to conquer the fear of entering into the jaws of almost certain death? This thought kept nagging me until I had to seek an early retirement to bed on the 18th September night in Paris; the train from St Lazare Station was due to start around 0730 in the following morning.
Even with high speed TGV (Train Grande Vitesse, in French) it would be nearly a two and a half hours journey from Paris to Caen, the immediate station to Normandy. The September Weather was comfortable and the journey began at six oclock from Quatre-Septembre metro station through to St Lazare, where we were (me and a friend) on board the TGV just in time. The train sped past the lush green countryside, plains and plateaus and sporadic rains. I became little concerned about the likely weather condition in Normandy; though the forecast was promising a bright day. Likewise, when we had reached Gare de Caen (Caen Railway Station) at around 10 am, it was glorious sunshine waiting to welcome us. The city of Caen was in ruins during the Normandy battles and those historic images exist on display around the station. We rented a cab (red Renault Koleos) for the entire day from a nearby car rental. The Saturday morning streets looked laidback and deserted as we started for Pegasus Bridge, our first destination.
The twenty minutes journey from Caen to Normandy was typical, through usual French landscape with hamlets, villages and vegetation. Nonetheless, this intermission offered an opportunity to backtrack history pages. Normandy Landing, as goes down, is the largest seaborne landings in the history, involving nearly two million soldiers, sailors and airmen. A coalition of forces from about thirteen countries were formed against Germany. The bridgehead on the coastline was to be secured by 10 coalition Divisions, against 4 German Divisions (nearly 156,000 boots on the ground against 50,350). The operation involved some seven million tons of supplies, 4448 thousand tons of ammunition, 17 million maps and 6,939 naval vessels Literally, in Christopher Marlowes words, thousand ships were launchd across the English Channel.
The objective, 80 km stretch of the Normandy coast, was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beach. The landing of the allied divisions began at 06:30 on 6th June amid strong winds. The shores were heavily mined and covered with obstacles. Landing forces were immediately received by intense fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches; the landing was long anticipated and the Germans prepared the Atlantikwall to welcomeit.
On the eastern flank of the landing beach, two vital road bridges were held in strength by the Germans. And so, Operation DEADSTICK was launched by British Airborne Forces, shortly after the midnight on 5th/ 6th June, to capture those bridges across the River Orne (Horsa Bridge) and the Caen Canal (Pegasus Bridge). Those were only eastward exit for British forces to be landed on Sword Beach.
To many, the chronicle of Normandy landings would mean Operation OVERLORD and Operation NEPTUNE, or Operation FORTITUDE for the most. Valiant accounts of coup de main operations like DEADSTICK remain unknown to common readers. DEADSTICK was a glider borne assault by a group of British Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment (2nd Oxf Bucks) immediately before the landings on D-Day. The force comprised about 180 men commanded by Major John Howard , destined to land in six Horsa gliders to capture the bridges. Gliders (sort of engineless aircraft) were towed into the air and close to their target by military transport planes. Unlike paratroopers, air-landing operations by gliders allowed landing of troops in better concentrations at the target landing area. Furthermore, the gliders were silent and difficult for the enemy to identify. Interestingly, five of the six gliders in this occasion could land precisely close to the target. Inside the replica glider placed by the Pegasus Memorial museum, I was awestruck for a moment, realising the feelings of someone in an engineless flying object in the sky, inside hostile airspace. This innovative operation surprised the Germans and the mission was accomplished with only two allied casualties.
We had to recover from the hypnotic spell of DEADSTIC at the Pegasus Memorial, for as the time was flying with so much left to see. We became on road soon and took a 70 km drive towards the Pointe du Hoc, on the northern part of the landing beaches. Along the way, we first went to Sword beach, very impressive German Coastal Battery emplacement at Longues-sur-Mer, the US Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, and Omaha Beach. The coastal battery was a site of four navy 152 mm guns. The gun emplacements were so thickly fortified casemates that they still remain almost intact after receiving the most of the allied pounding on D day (about 1500 tons of bombs). The very remarkably organized American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer delivers an impression that the sacrificed souls are still on guard and vigilant for their purposes. Standing at the Omaha beach and at Pointe du Hoc, I instantly started recalling the epic movies, The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan; the battle sites looked very familiar indeed.
The battle locations are well preserved with historic grace and expertly designed to take a visitor for a ride through the memory lane. These are frequented by large
group of relatives, students, researchers,
Walking in Normandy, I could appreciate how a costly idea of building emplacements along the western coast of Europe proved useless. The Atlantic Wall a chain of fortifications stretching from Russia to Norway and along entire French Spanish west coast was built with the idea of defending Nazi occupied Europe from allied invasion. It was a vast network of bunkers, fortifications of static defences without air supremacy. Despite his past knowledge on limitations of fixed defences during German invasion of France in May 1940, (where German blitzkrieg easily overran Frances so called impregnable Maginot Line), Hitlers obsessive interest in 1,670 mile wall cost over 17 million cubic metres of concrete, 1.2 million tonnes of steel and 3.7 billion Deutschmarks alone in France . It is said that due to its cost and structural component involvement, Hitlers war material production got affected. Only 20 % of the intended length of the wall could be completed by 1943 and Normandy was one of the less prioritized areas. Coast of Normandy, as I saw, did not pose any natural terrain barriers or significant topographical difficulties. Physical Guarding of such a huge shoreline meant an involvement of impractical lot of soldiers and equipment. And it was not available for the Germans, especially after the defeat in the North African Campaign and getting battered at the Battles of Sicily, Italy and Stalingrad. At the end, the wall proved futile and found more appropriately as a drowning mans clutching at a straw. It perhaps teaches that fixed static defences are useless if they are not deep and adequate to guard in all points of ingress, and above is there is not enough air power and mobile elements to support them.
Seventy two years have gone past. D day returns every year in Normandy on 6th June and observed with high reverence. The playlets of bravado, the telltale of undertaking certain death risks are recalled. As always, gentle breeze murmurs from across the English Channel. And beyond question, Hugos immortal emotion reigns for eternity:
I will not look upon the gold
of nightfall, 0
Nor the sails from afar that descend on Harfleur,
And when I arrive, I will place on your grave
A bouquet of green holly and heather in bloom
Sooner or later, everything becomes past; today becomes yesterday. With most of our times sent to oblivion, only some priceless moments are captured by history. In Normandy (and elsewhere in the Europe I visited), history is preserved with high care and skill. The battle fields appear alive with conserved collections, befitting interpretations, pictures, museums, guides and reproductions. And on most days, they get brimming with young students. We could, perhaps, do something similar for all our historical battle fields.
(The writer is a military professional; can be reached at [email protected]) Army Training and Doctrine Command
