A Bloody Dawn

The Irish at D-Day

Dan Harvey

• Publisher: Merrion Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781785372438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

The epic Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, has been extensively chronicled. The largest seaborne invasion in history, it began the liberation of German-occupied France, and later Europe, from Nazi control, laying the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

What is less well known, however, is that thousands of Irish and members of the Irish diaspora were among the Allied units that landed on the Normandy beaches. Their vital participation has been overlooked abroad, and even more so in Ireland. There were Irish among the American, British and Canadian airborne and glider-borne infantry landings; Irishmen were on the beaches from dawn, in and amongst the first and subsequent assault waves to hit the beaches; in the skies above in bombers and fighter aircraft; and on naval vessels all along the Normandy coastline. They were also prominent among the D-Day planners and commanders.

This Irish contribution to the most extraordinary military operation ever attempted in the history of warfare is at last told for the first time in A Bloody Dawn: The Irish at D-Day.

1

FESTUNG EUROPA (FORTRESS EUROPE)

While offence is the most decisive type of military operation, defence is stronger and the Germans had prepared well. The Allied invasion of the northern shoreline of France was inevitable, imminent even, just not today. After months of overseeing the preparation of defences to meet head-on the impending Allied attack, German General Erwin Rommel (‘the Desert Fox’) of Army Group B decided to leave his headquarters in the castle of the Duc Francois de Rochefoucauld at La Roche-Guyon, roughly mid-way between Paris and Normandy.

It was early morning on 4 June 1944, and he hoped to make the eight-hour journey to his home in Herrlingen, Ulm, Germany, to celebrate his wife, Lucie-Maria’s, birthday with her on 6 June. 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 that the Allied invasion was unlikely to occur over the coming days. And so, on that damp, gloomy Sunday morning after months of devising and driving defence improvements, he set out for his home via the headquarters of his superior, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Oberbefehlshaber (OB, Commander-in-Chief) West, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris. Rommel knew that the Allied attack would be decisive, a turning point in the war, but what he did not realise was that the vast military machinery and apparatus of the greatest airborne and amphibious force ever assembled was in fact moving into position and about to unleash its massive might.

All too aware of the Allies intent and of what was coming, yet not knowing the details of their plans and design, proved a huge strain and an enormous, almost intolerable, burden on the German command. All their questions were about to be answered, and Rommel would be hundreds of miles away. Unexpectedly, but all too close at hand, was the moment he and his troops had been waiting months, even years for behind the vast array of concrete coastal fortifications, artillery batteries, gun emplacements, minefields, barbed wire entanglements and improvised shoreline obstacles. More than half a million men were under his command, manning coastline defences stretching 800 miles from Holland’s dykes to Brittany’s peninsula; even further north and south beyond that, from Norway to Spain respectively. The Fifteenth Army, his main defensive effort, was at the narrowest point of the Channel between France and England, the Pas-de-Calais. His Seventh Army, a less formidable one, was in Normandy. Whether the forthcoming battle was to be fought forward front, on the beaches, or back behind, inland of them, was hotly debated, with sharply divided views on the matter. So too were there distinct opinions as to where the invasion would occur, the Pas-de-Calais or Normandy? There was, however, a generally accepted belief that Calais was the most logical and so most likely choice. It was thought probable that the invasion would involve a support and a main attack, but where would this be?

Rommel positioned troops in improved defences, having used the time since his appointment in December 1943 well, but he desperately needed more men, more materials and more time. Most of all he needed Panzers, the feared German tanks that provided the striking power of Germany’s armoured divisions throughout the war. He wanted five Panzer divisions at the coast, in position, primed and ready during the first hours of the invasion to drive the Allies back into the sea in what he foresaw as a necessarily violent and brutal defence. Not as they were held, far away and only available on Hitler’s direct order. Rommel doubted not just that they would arrive in time but that they would not arrive at all. He feared they would become stalled, or more likely completely destroyed by Allied aircraft, as the Allies had almost unfettered air superiority. So on his way to Germany, he had requested and received an appointment with Hitler at Berchtesgaden to try to get these Panzers moved forward.

***

If the air of uncertainty, stress and tension had been temporarily lifted in the German headquarters of OB West because of the unseasonable spell of bad weather, across the Channel in the Allied headquarters in Southwick House outside Portsmouth there was rising uncertainty, strain and tension exactly because of it. Nerves were stretched further with the arrival of each new weather front coming in. Already, winds in the English Channel were exceeding twenty-five miles an hour and growing, and there seemed every possibility of an approaching Atlantic storm at sea. Mounting with the waves was doubt as to the feasibility of letting the mission armada slip anchor and head for the northern French coast.

Irish Coast guardsman and Blacksod Point 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 into Group Captain (RAF) J.M. Stagg’s Meteorological Unit at Southwick House to enable him to prepare, analyse and present advice to Allied HQ on the weather. This latest update from Blacksod Point had clarified the opinion of the heretofore divided prognosis between the US (optimistic) and British (pessimistic) meteorologist staff as to the effect of the prevailing adverse weather conditions; the successive depressions were moving eastwards. Now, twenty-four hours before the scheduled landing (H-Hour), with first-wave troops already on board ships, General Eisenhower suspended the operation and the engines of ships already out at sea were put into reverse. Meanwhile, the fleet of ships that had not yet left safe harbour were kept quayside, and the men on board waited.

With the atmosphere fraught, and becoming more so, the fate of the second front was now dependent on the weather. A second telephoned weather forecast from Blacksod suggested conditions were likely to bring a brief interlude of improved weather. General Eisenhower, so advised by Group Captain Stagg with his famous words, ‘Okay, we’ll go’, set the invasion in motion one day after its intended launch. In the intervening years since Operation Overlord, weather satellites, improvements in computer mapping and other advances in the science of meteorology have seen the dramatic development and transformation of weather forecasting, today seen as much more accurate and reliable. Seventy-five years ago, the part played by Blacksod weather station’s trustworthy reporting proved vital. A little-known but absolutely necessary ‘Irish’ contribution to D-Day.

Despite the weather, whenever and wherever the invasion came it was Rommel’s intent to bring it to a grinding halt at the water’s edge. Adolf Hitler was also convinced that the destruction of the Allied landings would be the sole decisive factor in the entire conduct of the war and would contribute significantly to its final result. Hitler had overextended himself fighting on two fronts at once, and the decision to invade Russia and his interference with his generals in the running of it saw his offensive campaign in the east grind to a halt deep inside Russian territory. As the defeats began to mount, he continued to convince himself that he could afford to trade space for time, but the shortage of men and materials were his difficulty. Hence, if he could arrest the advance of the Allies on their arrival almost as soon as their offensive in the west had begun, Hitler could buy time there; perhaps even discourage a demoralised and defeated Allied Army into reorganising and reconsidering their options, but most certainly their timetable. Perhaps even their very faith in themselves. Stop them on the shoreline; achieve an operational pause in proceedings; make a pact with Stalin and/or otherwise consolidate his still not inconsiderable military might on one front, and he could still win. As it was, most of the best of his army was in the east facing the Russians. What was in the west would have to stiffen its resistance by defending behind his impregnable Atlantic Wall, and being led by Rommel.

***

Strictly speaking, Field Marshal von Rundstedt (OB West) had territorial command but Rommel had sought and been granted responsibility by Hitler to inject his energies and enthusiasm into the situation. Rommel relished the challenge, and an appointment began with an inspection tour of the Atlantic Wall, only to find it far from being the impregnable ‘Fortress Europe’ made much of by the propagandists. A previous coastal assault on Dieppe by primarily British and Canadian forces in August 1942 had been defeated and proved costly for the Allies. A certain amount of complacence, and even willing delusion, had been taken from this by the Germans, and anyway it was believed that while Normandy was a possible invasion site, Calais had to be the most logical point for the Allies to attack. It was the shortest cross Channel route from southern England to northern France and from there through to Berlin was the most direct and so shortest supply route. So it was here that Hitler had concentrated his Atlantic Wall, strongly fortified its port, and erected significant concrete coastal defences.

Elsewhere, Rommel found many gaps, weaknesses and shortcomings along the defences of France’s northern shoreline. He filled these weak points with physical barriers: pillboxes, gun emplacements (artillery set in reinforced concrete block houses), mines and yet more mines. Still, Rommel could not get enough mines and he was short also of war materials, steel and concrete and the labour force to build beach obstacles. So he improvised, creating conscript French labour battalions, felling trees from woods and designing obstacles of his own, often with mines or fused shells placed on them. These crude, simple but deadly barriers were erected in large numbers between high and low tide water marks. Effective, they were of varying types: criss-crossed lengths of steel, some from redundant railway tracks, were cut and welded together in a jagged, protruding triangular starfish shape; concrete cones called ‘dragons’ teeth’; 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 attached. All were designed to repel the shore-bound invasion craft, to impale and rip open the hulls of landing craft or cause damage or death with exploding mines and shells. Overall, to cause disruption and confusion or to force the off-shore disembarkation of troops, thus exposing them to gunfire for longer.

Rommel also flooded large areas of open fields inland to counter would-be spots for parachutists or glider-borne troops to be dropped into. Another deterrent he used was to set poles in fields linked with barbed wire, which became known as Rommel’s asparagus. It was intended that these would tear apart the flimsy gliders as they attempted to land. What preparations were possible Rommel undertook, driving his men hard and unapologetically. In so doing 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. He was going to halt the Allies as they disembarked the landing craft and bring their advance to a standstill on the blood-soaked sands; this cut short any hope of its continuance and ended any thought of invasion before it got started.

He knew that the Allies were likely to use a support attack in co-ordination with the main invasion, not necessarily simultaneously with the main assault, perhaps the former as a feint, a ruse, hoping to draw out the German reserves and instead focus their main effort in landing elsewhere. There was much German analysis of the previous Allied amphibious landings in Morocco, Sicily and Salerno and the German Army believed they had a good grasp and understanding of how the Allies intended to fight their way ashore. However thorough, methodical and credible their examinations and conclusions were, they were still left with two questions about the invasion: Where and When?

Unlike Rommel, General von Rundstedt (OB West) believed that the landings were unstoppable, but that the initial defensive efforts would be successful if they helped to delay and contain the first wave. He believed that the invasion was best dealt with after they had landed because then it would be known where to deploy their reinforcements, massed together in strength while the Allies were still disorganised, weak, confused and isolated – trying to gain footholds in separate bridgeheads. Rommel felt the reinforcements would never reach the front line, as they would be destroyed by Allied air strikes before they could be moved into place. By this stage of the war the Allies had air and sea superiority and Rommel believed this was a critical factor. The two views of defending against the invasion persisted. Convinced in his own assessment of the situation, Rommel continued to execute his preparations, making ready his course of action; not for him the paralysis of analysis. Deep down he was fearful of the unexpected, the Allies effecting something sudden and surprising. It was a battle of wits also, each side attempting to out think the other.

On Monday 5 June, ‘Imminence of Invasion is not recognisable’ was the tone, tenor and stated evaluation in OB West’s ‘Estimate of Allied Intentions’, approved for despatch by Field Marshal von Rundstedt to Hitler’s headquarters Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), Armed Forces High Command, later in the day. With the weather as it was, together with no apparent indicators to the contrary, they were comfortable in that assessment. In fact, many of the high-level German field commanders in OB West had been summoned to conduct a Kriegsspiel (a tactical exercise without troops) away from the northern French coastline to ‘war game’ on maps at Rennes in Brittany. Ironically, this scenario was about to unfold on the ground on 6 June at Normandy.

Having made their way to Rennes, some of the German staff car drivers congregated and tuned a radio to the frequency of a German propaganda station, ‘Radio Paris’, from which its German-American presenter, ‘Axis Sally’, would play popular wartime tunes mixed with propaganda messaging beamed towards the Allied forces, who irreverently referred to her as the ‘Berlin Bitch’. Mildred Gillars was her real name and she was to serve a twelve-year sentence for treason after the war, dying in 1988 in Columbus, Ohio, at the age of eighty-seven. There was an Irish variant, William Joyce from Galway, famously known as ‘Lord Haw Haw’, who would introduce his pro-Nazi propaganda broadcasts with ‘Germany calling, Germany calling’, telling Allied and Irish listeners that ‘Mangan’s clock on Patrick Street, Cork is ten minutes slow’ and other similar messages to unsettle and otherwise attempt to prey on the subconscious of his audience. He broadcasted several times a day throughout the entire war years, after which he was arrested and subsequently hung for treason – the last man to be so sentenced – by the British in 1946 in Wandsworth Prison in England. In 1976, his daughter, Heather Iandolo, was to succeed in having his remains brought to Bohermore Cemetery in Galway.

There was a stranger wartime tale of two Irishmen, James Brady and Frank Stinger, who joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1938 and were posted together to Guernsey in the English Channel in 1940. One evening, having been denied service in a local pub, they became drunk and disorderly and received sentences of imprisonment, which they were still serving when the Germans occupied Guernsey. They were handed over to the Wehrmacht by the Guernsey Police, becoming prisoners of war. Initially taken to Camp Friesack in Brandenburg, Germany, they were subsequently put to work as farm labourers, thereafter taking up an offer of becoming members of the Waffen-SS as German soldiers. Their unit was the 502nd SS Jägar Battalion, a commando-type Special Forces unit mostly composed of foreign recruits, whose commanding officer was an Austrian, Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favourite commando. He had previously been handpicked by Hitler to lead a successful glider-borne rescue of Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini from the inaccessible and highly defended Italian mountaintop hotel where he was being incarcerated, having been overthrown.

Skorzeny and his unit were to be involved in other such operations, their last major mission successfully causing mayhem and confusion during the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge, December 1944) in Operation Greif, when German commandos’ proficient in English dressed in American uniforms and infiltrated behind Allied lines in disguised tanks. They were later to cause concern when it was thought they had plans to assassinate General Eisenhower in Paris during Christmas week 1944. Such a threat was taken seriously, causing Eisenhower to be temporarily confined to his Versailles headquarters. Had the attempt been made, it may well have resulted in casualties to those around him, one notable among them being Irishwoman Kay Summersby, who served as Eisenhower’s chauffeur and later as personal secretary.

Kathleen MacCarthy-Morrogh (her maiden name) spent a privileged and happy childhood in Inish Beg House, Baltimore, County Cork, with a governess, post-hunt parties, sailing, horse riding and socialising. Her father had been a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Munster Fusiliers but was thoroughly ‘black Irish’, as she used to say of him. A noted beauty, she moved to London in her late teens and became, among other things, a fashion model for Worth, the equivalent of being a supermodel today. There she married Gordon Thomas Summersby, from whom she was divorced but kept his surname. Subsequent to the outbreak of war, Kay joined the Mechanised Transport Corps and during the Blitz drove ambulances through the rubble-strewn streets in blackout conditions to horrific scenes of carnage, death and destruction, often ferrying bodies to morgues.

In May 1942, she was assigned as chauffeur to US General Eisenhower. A good driver, attractive, friendly, sociable and accomplished – in addition to possessing ‘Irish’ charm – a close wartime rapport was to develop between them, notwithstanding the enormous chasm in rank and an eighteen-year age difference. On one occasion, journeying by sea to Tunisia to be with him during Operation Torch, the troopship she was on, the Strathallen, was torpedoed and she had to abandon ship into the lifeboats. She was engaged to Major Richard ‘Dick’ Arnold, but he was killed while mine-clearing in Tunisia in June 1943. Kay was to become Eisenhower’s secretary and, breaking protocol, military etiquette and regulations, a closeness developed, their mutual attraction evident. Wherever Eisenhower went, Kay was almost always, but discretely, present.

That a strong relationship existed between them was never in doubt; that an actual affair ever occurred was never clear-cut. The propriety or not of this relationship was never raised in circles, but certain assumptions were made and believed. Kay accompanied General Eisenhower on 5 June 1944, as US paratroopers boarded their aircraft prior to jumping out before H-Hour on D-Day. She was also present and photographed in a US Army Group (later airbrushed out) at the formal surrender of the Germans. It was strongly speculated that Eisenhower sought counsel on the advisability of divorcing his wife Mamie to marry Kay, but was supposedly told in no uncertain terms that to do so would severely hamper any hopes of a future political career. Faced then with the choice of Kay or a career in politics, Eisenhower chose the latter. He was to be twice elected US President in the 1950s. Kay was given American citizenship and made an officer in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) of the US Army, an unusual honour for a foreign national. Kay lef...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Kevin Myers
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Festung Europa (Fortress Europe)
• 2. Devising D-Day
• 3. Revising D-Day
• 4. An Active Underground
• 5. The Screaming Eagles
• 6. The Rifles Seize and Hold
• 7. Angriff! Angriff! (Raid! Raid!)
• 8. Overwrought on Omaha
• 9. Defending Democracy on Gold Beach
• 10. Jellyfish
• 11. Sword Beach
• 12. D-Day Plus
• 13. Telling the D-Day Story
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• Appendix 1: Second World War Operations
• Appendix 2: Ireland’s British Army Generals in the Second World War
• Appendix 3: A Chronology of the Second World War
• Index
• Plates