Normandy 1944 - Eyewitness accounts
Selected highlights from coverage of D-Day and the Normandy campaign
About 150 yards from shore I raised my head despite the warning from someone to “keep your heads down.” I could see the craft to our right were taking a terrific licking from small-arms fire. Tracer bullets were bouncing and skipping off the ramp and sides as they zeroed in on the boat, which touched down a few minutes before we did. Had we not delayed a few minutes to pick up the survivors from the sunken craft, we might have taken the concentration of fire that boat took. Great plumes of water from enemy artillery and mortars kept sprouting close by.
[The Prime Minister's party left the train at] 7.30 am to catch the destroyer Kelvin and leave Portsmouth at 8 am. The Americans had already started in a separate party. We had a very comfortable journey over and most interesting. We continually passed convoys of landing craft, minesweepers, bits of floating breakwater (Phoenix) being towed out, parts of the floating piers (Whales) etc. And overhead, a continuous flow of planes going to and coming from France.
I found that there was an open valley between us and the Germans. If we went straight ahead, we’d have to cross that open area. I moved to the left-forward edge of a wooded area, crawled behind a stone wall and pulled a rock out of it. That way I could lie there and observe without being exposed. I was looking at the whole valley right up to the top of the hill. With my field glasses I spotted two German gun positions up on the hill. I think both of them were 88s. One of them might have been a 75mm mountain howitzer. They had quite a few of those, because we were facing part of a German mountain division.
We skirted through the city, peering cautiously around every corner or pile of rubble. Often Kalb would look around a corner then pull back quickly, telling us quietly to go the back the other way. It was like a game of cat and mouse and we were the mice. Then it happened, I suppose it was inevitable.
Kalb looked around a corner and was shot at. The bullet hit him in the right hand, but it was only a scratch. I sent off a burst from the machine gun and we bolted down another alley. Kalb was in the lead followed by Willi, Gunther, then myself. We went from the frying pan into the fire.
In the meantime however, all hell was let loose on our right and both the other troops in the squadron were reporting attacks, some of their tanks being knocked out. By this time we were still well to the north of Cauville, I wasn’t yet in sight of the village itself, and the ground was rapidly becoming impossible for tank movement. It was real ‘Bocage’ with 2-4 feet high banks topped by thick hedges, interspersed with trees.
Here again, many of the small fields contained orchards and the trees themselves were so low that often one couldn’t pass beneath them but was forced to jink one’s way through. This made it impossible for the gunner to see clearly and, as the tank commander was bobbing up and down in the turret, or trying to use the periscopes for sighting, it was all rather a nightmare.
After several minutes of this, two dark shapes suddenly flew across the road left to right about a mile ahead of me. They were just a little higher than I was. I turned right to cut them off, got right down on the grass, pushed the mixtures into auto-rich, rammed the props to high, and shoved the throttles to the wall.
My P-38 leaped ahead as though kicked by a mule. The cutoff angle was good and I could see I would be coming in behind the bogeys in short order. I still didn’t have a positive ID, but every instinct told me they had to be German. Instinct is no good when you’re coming up behind a target with a 20mm and four .50 caliber guns armed and ready to shoot.
Daylight came: it was absolutely essential for us to reorganise and contract our defence perimeter. All attacks had been repulsed but our losses during the night had been considerable. And it was still going on! Fortunately our dominating position ensured that we could not be surprised…! We fired without ceasing, the machine-guns and rifles grew red hot!
In the end the enemy pulled back but he still threatened the right. Attention! He was about to pass the first two points I had pre-ranged. I quickly gave the order to my signaller. The shells fell, the Boches were thrown back in disorder!