Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War. James Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ morning on 6 June 1944, it was time to start the fighting again. Tom’s and Dee’s troopship was now some twelve miles off the Normandy coast, just out of range of enemy shellfire. Everyone was told to get up, put on their packs, helmets and other gear, and form into their assault teams ready to clamber down the side nets and into the landing craft that would take them to the beaches.

      Before first light, the men of the 18th were doing their best to climb down into their Higgins boats landing craft. The sea was far from calm, and even the troopship was rolling. The flat-bottomed Higgins boats alongside were lurching up and down dramatically. Clambering down the nets was no easy task – it was still quite dark, they were carrying a heavy pack and equipment, and Tom and Dee also had two rolls of wire and a field telephone each – and because the men had to time their jump into the boat, the nets soon became congested. Tom’s hands were constantly being trodden on by men above him. Even so, both brothers, who had been placed in the same squad, managed to successfully judge their leaps into the boat without injuring themselves. Then began a long and deeply uncomfortable wait. The brothers had lost track of one another and neither knew if they were on the same landing craft.

      The first wave of troops was due to hit the beaches at 6.30 a.m., but the battle for Normandy began some forty minutes earlier. As Tom and Dee circled round and round in their landing craft, pummelled and flung against the sides as the boat crashed up and down on the rising swell, the huge naval armada opened fire, followed soon after by wave after wave of Allied bombers. The noise was incredible: the report of the guns, the sound of shells whistling overhead, and the eventual explosions along the coast.

      The first wave, meanwhile, was already heading towards the beaches but things were not going well. The enemy bunkers and gun emplacements had not been knocked out as planned and many of the 16th Infantry’s Higgins boats were landing in completely the wrong place. Those that did reach Easy Red came under heavy fire, with appalling losses of men. It was a similar story elsewhere along Omaha, and soon the whole operation was behind schedule. In the hold of their boat, Tom and Dee could not see what was going on, but the men manning the craft were watching through field glasses and radio messages were coming through continually, and it quickly became clear the landings were not going to plan. To make matters worse, over half the men on the boat were being violently seasick, the acid stench of vomit filling the close space of the boat. Dee and Tom were not sick themselves, but Tom admits he felt ‘kind of nauseated’.

      Just after 9 a.m., having been in their landing craft for over three hours, the 2nd Battalion of the 18th were ordered to land immediately to help the struggling 16th. But at the time, they were still circling some twelve miles out and it would take them the best part of two hours to reach the shore. At least they were now on their way, however. ‘By that time, all I wanted to do was get on land and get on with it,’ says Dee. The deafening sound of battle accompanied them all the way to the beach. ‘You could actually see those shells flying over,’ says Tom. ‘Them things looked like a fifteen-gallon barrel hurtling through the sky.’

      Before they landed they were warned they should get off the beach as quickly as they could, and not to stop for anyone. Fifty yards from Easy Red, the ramp on their Higgins boat was lowered and Tom and Dee jumped out into the sea. The beach was already a scene of carnage. ‘You could see bullets hitting the sand, and the sand flying up all over the place,’ says Tom, ‘and mortar shells bursting all around. And in the water were bodies floating everywhere and lying all over the beach.’ There was also plenty of barbed wire, countless German obstacles, and radios and other equipment littered all over the place. The water was only knee-deep now, but Dee remembers seeing bullets hitting the water all around him as he hurriedly waded to the shore. Explosions continued bursting, but Dee could only think of one thing: to get off that beach as quickly as possible.

      While Dee was running as fast as he could, past the dead and dying, Tom had reached the beach and had thrown himself down in a shallow washout in the sand. ‘It was a natural thing to do, I guess,’ he says, ‘but it wasn’t no shelter at all.’ He lay there a moment then realized that if he stayed there he was going to get himself killed, and so he jumped up and took off across the beach, hoping to God that he wouldn’t get hit.

      Both of them made it to the shelter of the beach wall without so much as a scratch, and shortly after a US Navy destroyer, USS Frankford, came close to the shore – within a thousand yards – and managed to knock out several machinegun nests and a pillbox overlooking Easy Red. ‘That pillbox stopped firing just as we were running across the beach,’ says Dee. ‘I tell you, that destroyer saved a lot of lives.’

      Soon after eleven in the morning, the battalion managed to move off away from the shelter of the cliff, and capture the E-1 exit from the beach. As Dee was moving up along the draw, he saw an American soldier lying to one side. ‘He’s laying there with one leg blown off,’ says Dee, ‘and telling everyone to be careful because there was a minefield up ahead.’ Although Tom and Dee had become separated during the landing, Tom saw the same man. ‘He was shouting, “Follow the others! Stick to the cleared path!”’ recalls Tom. ‘Those medics must have given him plenty of morphine. I don’t know whether he made it or not…’

      As they moved off the beach, shells continued to scream overhead, from out at sea but also from German positions inland. The 18th were now ordered to capture the tiny town of Colleville-sur-Mer, half a mile inland, an objective originally given to the now decimated 16th Infantry, but although their part of the beach was now clear, there was no let-up in the fighting. Both Dee and Tom were now busy laying telephone lines and were doing so under constant fire. No sooner would a line be laid than shellfire would rip it apart again. Off Dee and Tom would go, with their buddies, feeling along the wire until they found the break in the line. Every time they heard a shell scream over, they would fling themselves flat on the ground and hope for the best, then get up again, dust themselves down and get on with the repair work. After one particularly close explosion, Tom realized he’d lost his helmet. He looked around everywhere, but couldn’t find it. Soon after, he found another and so put it on and continued repairing the lines. ‘Where the hell d’you get that helmet?’ asked his wiring buddy, John Lamm.

      ‘I just found it lying about,’ Tom told him. He took it off and looked at it, and saw the eagle painted onto it, and the name ‘Taylor’ on the back. It was Colonel Taylor’s, of the 16th Infantry. Tom shrugged, picked up some mud and covered up the eagle and the name. ‘I wasn’t going to give it up,’ says Tom.

      For his work that afternoon, Tom was awarded the Bronze Star. ‘Private Bowles, despite heavy enemy fire, proceeded across vulnerable terrain and repaired the wire. His heroic action contributed materially to the success of the invasion,’ noted his citation.

      

      By the end of D-Day, the Americans had gained a tenuous foothold. Tom and Dee were with the rest of the battalion just outside Colleville-sur-Mer; they had almost achieved the day’s objective. But while the battle for the beaches was over, the battle for the hedgerows was now to begin, as Dee was about to discover to his cost.

      The following morning, on 7 June, Dee and his buddy Private Kirkman had been laying some wires and were heading back down a track towards one of the battalion’s companies, when a hidden German machinegunner opened fire from twenty yards. Kirkman was shot through the wrist, while Dee was hit twice in the arm, the back and his side. The force knocked them both backwards, off the road and into a ditch that ran alongside. Incredibly, both were still fully conscious; lying there, Dee felt numb and was unsure where he’d been hit or how badly. Together they managed to crawl about fifty yards until they reached some shrubs out of sight of the enemy gunner. They then both got to their feet and walked back up the road and managed to get some help.

      Tom had been lying in a ditch trying to get some sleep when he was told the news. Hurrying up to the aid post, he found Dee still conscious but lying down on the ground.

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