Chapter 4

The Beachhead

By the time the two assault brigades’ reserve battalions arrived on Juno Beach, the tide was nearly fully in and the majority of the German beach obstacles between low and high-water marks were almost covered. The French Canadians of the Chaudiere Regiment and the Canadian Scottish had a difficult landing. Commander Kenneth Edwards in his book Operation Neptune recorded:

‘The Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Unit did magnificent work, but the speed of the assault was such that they had insufficient time to neutralize or demolish many of the obstacles. … On the whole, however, the majority of the obstacles were cleared by the simple method of the larger and heavier types of landing craft charging the beaches and crashing their way through the obstacles. At the same time the smaller types of landing craft threaded their way in between the obstacles.’

This method of ‘charging through the obstacles with the heavier types of landing craft led to damage and to casualties’. However, to delay would mean reducing the momentum of the assault and there was no other option available to the Royal Navy and Royal Marine landing craft crews. A Canadian Naval report describes the trouble caused by the mined beach obstructions:

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Reserve battalions landing on Nan Green, even though the beach was still under intermittent fire.

‘HMCS Prince David landed her first body of invasion troops exactly on schedule on the beach at Bernières-sur-Mer. The soldiers, members of a French-Canadian [Chaudiere] regiment … were ferried from the parent ship by the landing craft flotillas… It was not until the assault infantry and tank landing craft were practically on the beach that they ran into trouble in the form of mines. The small assault boats were the heaviest sufferers. … Their way lay through a section of hedgehogs and posts, which gave this piece of water the appearance of a field filled with stumps. These were the mine supports. First Lieutenant J. McBeath’s boat was mined; then Lieutenant Buckingham, Lieutenant Beveridge and Leading Seaman Lavergne had their craft smashed by mines. It was a wild scramble for shore, but every one made it with the exception of two French-Canadians… They were killed outright by the mine which their boat hit. … Chunks of debris rose a hundred feet in the air and troops, now hugging the shelter of a breakwater, were peppered with pieces of wood. The bigger landing craft did not escape, but they could take it.’

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Aboard this second wave of larger craft was Lance Corporal Stuart Stear, a Royal Engineer serving with 103 Beach Group. He explains that his company had eventually landed, having spent some considerable time going around in circles, behind the ‘Chauds’.

‘We were due to land about 11 o’clock and, as we went in, we passed HMS Ramillies [almost certainly HMS Belfast] and HMS Diadem who fired over us and all the other ships each with a barrage balloon. The noise was tremendous and as we got closer, we could see explosions on the back of the beach or just inland. Only twenty years old and in my first battle, I was scared stiff.

‘On the run in, I saw an infantry landing craft blow up on a mined beach obstacle. It seemed to leap up out of the water and it fell back in several pieces. Other boats had their hulls ripped open by Belgian Gate obstacles but our landing was almost dry. Clutching my toolbox, I rode ashore in our Company workshop truck, passing a lot of bodies, mostly Canadians, washing back and forth in the surf.’

In front of Lance Corporal Stear were the infantry companies of the Chaudiere Regiment, who impressed him with the business like way they were quickly across the beach and heading inland.

‘The beach, Nan Red, just west of St Aubin, was under occasional bursts of long range machine gun fire from the direction of Langrune-sur-Mer and from sporadic artillery or mortar fire. The machine gun fire was eventually stopped about midday when about five landing craft came in and took it in turn to fire their rockets at what was I suppose a strong point. I heard about one of our Sergeants being told to take on a pill box. Apparently he replied, “I’m an engineer not an infantryman.” But having been told that he was “A soldier first” he set off with six Sappers to do the job but by the time he got to the pillbox, the infantry had already captured it.

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A knocked out Bren gun carrier belonging to the QOR of C and a drowned truck on Nan Beach.

‘We hurried across the beach to the cover of the seawall. I only saw one knocked out tank on the beach but there were plenty of vehicles. I read that Montgomery had complained that there seemed to be more vehicles on the beach than troops! We waited here for our recce party to return from checking out the water tower just inland from St Aubin that we were to fix to provide a water supply. At this point, I ate some of the chocolate and boiled sweets from our new and unfamiliar 24 hour ration packs. I can’t remember when I got round to eating my hard biscuits and using the Oxo cube sized tea ration – complete with dried milk and sugar.

‘It seemed to be absolutely chaotic on the beach at this time but I suppose there was order, as the infantry from our LCT and others gathered by the sea wall and were setting off inland very quickly. The Royal Navy Beach Master was able to call in the landing craft when there was space.’

While the reserve infantry battalions of 7 and 8 Cdn Brigades were quickly across the beach, the armour, self-propelled guns and numerous other vehicles needed a ‘gap’ to get off the beach. However, by mid-morning, traffic jams of vehicles were beginning to form on the beaches as they queued to make their way through the tenuous gaps or in some cases, yet to be opened gaps, into the area behind the dunes or into the coastal villages. Fortunately, the tide was now falling or there would have been even more drowned vehicles blocking the beaches. Despite the delayed landings by the infantry, armour and 79th Armoured Division’s special breaching equipment along with the defenders recovery from the shock of the bombardment, 26 and 80 Assault Squadrons and the Canadian field engineers were soon busy producing the tracked and wheeled vehicle gaps off the beach. The initial gaps were not necessarily where planned, due to the continuing resistance by some of the German wiederstandneste.

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The Stormont, Glengarry and Dundas Highlanders wade ashore from their LCIs in the Bernières aera on Nan White.

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The original small box girder bridge laid by an AVRE as one of the first routing off the beach has been complimented by a bulldozed second ramp.

Rudimentary gaps were reported as being open on Nan White Sector as early as 0850 hours. Here the ramp off the beach forced by Lieutenant Hammerton’s 75mm gun was open and soon supplemented by an AVRE laid Small Box Girder Bridges (SBGs), which provided routes over the ten foot high sea wall. The brigade battle log noted that as ‘Obstructions are being cleared on Nan Green, heavy fire reported beyond the beach. Mike Red – Small arms fire only now.’ However, the official historian recorded that:

‘By 1040 hours, two exits had been opened on Nan Red and three on Nan White, a decidedly more favourable situation than that obtaining on the beaches to the west, where flooded ground proved a serious hindrance.’

As will be seen below and in Chapter 6, Nan Red remained under fire and its gaps were not fully used until late in the day.

The M2 Gap

On Mike Beach, the engineers of 26 Assault Squadron’s Number 1 and 2 Teams, landing west of Courseulles, had to contend with some difficult sand dunes and a flooded area beyond, before armour could fan out to support the advance inland. The Brigade Intelligence Summary described the task: ‘A sandy road 8 to 10 ft wide runs inland 360 yards to a tarmac lateral road. Ramping of dunes, widening and surfacing is required to make exit.’

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79 Armd plan of Mike sector.

Sergeant Fielder was commander of one of the AVREs heading for the beach to the west of WN 31 where, it will be recalled, B Company, the Winnipeg Rifles were fighting:

‘You could see fire going every way. Our people were still shelling and there was still bombing going on. As we were going in we were fired at from a pillbox, but then one of the gun tanks on another craft fired at it and hit the aperture and they weren’t able to fire again, so we were lucky there.

‘We were slightly late landing. The Canadian infantry had gone in before us and were lying all over the beach and in the water. We thought at first they were Germans, but they weren’t and we ran over some of them because we didn’t realize who they were. It was only later we found out they were Canadians. We felt terrible, absolutely terrible, because we didn’t even know if they were already dead or not.’

Other harrowing accounts, from both British and Canadian drivers, describe the necessity of driving over Canadian infantry, lying wounded on the beach and in the dunes.

Despite the haunting trauma of the beach, on their D Day début, the AVREs and Crabs proved to be technically capable of dealing with the dunes but beyond the sand, 26 Assault Squadron’s difficulties really began. The 79th’s divisional historian recorded that:

‘… both teams were put down just opposite No.2 Team’s gap [M2], Two Crabs cleared a lane up to and over the sand dunes, then both broke tracks, striking mines while turning. A third Crab passed and managed to flail a single track clear of the beach and 150 yards inland, as far as a flooded crater sixteen feet wide and twelve feet deep caused by a demolished culvert. Its gun remained in action [but in attempting to by-pass the obstacle] the tank was well and truly bogged. The tank commander Lieutenant Barraclough … later from his watery resting-place, shattered the Graye-sur-Mer church tower – an observation post.’

See aerial photo on page 92

This crater blocking the road across the flooded area beyond Gap M2, was almost certainly not caused by a deliberate German demolition of the culvert. It was probably hit by one of a stick of bombs dropped by the Allied airforces during their part in subduing the beach defences.

The immediate response by squadron commander, Major Younger, was to redeploy most of the remaining ‘funnies’ 600 yards further west on Mike Green. The M1 gap was open by 0930 hours, allowing armour off the beach to follow the infantry inland. Meanwhile, at M2, another AVRE had been summoned up by engineer troop commander, Captain Hewitt, to drop its fascine in the hole. The AVRE, named Charlie One, approached the flooded pit and promptly slid into it. Under fire and unable to recce the task Captain Hewitt had not been able to see that the job was beyond the capabilities of fascines to solve. But with an AVRE now filling the pit, the Royal Engineer’s ability to improvise a solution came to the fore. Captain Hewitt and his Sappers dropped a fascine into the landward side of the pit. Then Number 1 Troop’s SGB was laid onto the almost submerged tank’s turret. However, the route was still not viable for armour and all available men were summoned to carry logs that the Germans had dumped behind the beach for use as beach obstacles. With the logs dropped into the crater a precarious route was soon in use. Major Younger recorded that,

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Charlie One, recovered, painted and presented on a plinth.

‘…at about 0915 hours, the first DD tank got across behind the assaulting [infantry] companies. Six tanks got across before the tank bridge started to slide off the turret of the sunken AVRE’.

This troop of Shermans was able to provide valuable support to the infantry, who were pushing inland towards objective Elm. Work continued throughout the morning to keep M2 open and trickle vital armoured support off the beach. Repeated boggings of vehicles on both banks of the pit ensured that the M2 gap continued to be of marginal value until late morning, when rubble and sand was brought up to fill the pit and the route became, as planned, one of the two routes off Mike Red.

Further east, Sergeant Fielder was aboard one of the AVREs making its way inland to an objective at the edge of WN 29:

‘We were supposed to go up over the dunes to where they thought, from aerial photographs, that there was a ditch. But as luck would have it, when we got up there, there was no ditch. Then we started getting fired on by some Jerries in a dugout. We fired back at them with our Browning and they came out, about five of them, with their hands up. They were only youngsters. We sent them back to the beach, where there was a pen for prisoners. We shed our fascines and went on a little, but then I decided myself that we could do more by going back to the beach.’

Just over two hours after the initial landings, orange windsocks, coloured smoke and a variety of coloured signs, at eight points along Juno Beach indicated that routes for infantry, tanks and wheeled vehicles were open. Hitler’s Atlantic Wall had been comprehensively, if not yet completely breached.

The Landing of 9 Cdn Brigade

The 3rd Canadian Division’s reserve brigade had the unenviable task of waiting in their small landing craft off shore for the order to land. They spent,

‘…hours going around in circles, glimpsing the smoke and flashes of the battle going on along the beaches. In the rough sea off the beaches, seasickness was rife, as we marked time before landing. It was thoroughly miserable. We couldn’t wait to be ashore.’

Major General Keller had two options for 9 Cdn Brigade and had prepared plans to land either on Nan, behind 8 Cdn Brigade (Plan A) or behind 7 Cdn Brigade on Mike Beach (Plan B) to the west of Courseulles. General Keller would select which option to take, having monitored progress from his headquarters aboard HMS Hilary. It was clear from radio reports and the easily visible traffic jam on Mike Beach that Plan A, to land 9 Cdn Brigade on Nan Beach, was the obvious option. At 1015 hours, Brigadier Cunningham, aboard his headquarter ship Royal Ulsterman, received the code word ‘Katnip now’. However, due to the fighting at WN 27 they could not use Nan Red and they were forced to land in a succession of waves on Nan White. The official historian wrote, ‘Offshore obstacles were still in position and landings were made even more difficult by the presence of so many wrecked landing craft’.

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9 Canadian Brigade landing. Note the bicycles that were supposed to be used to speed their advance inland.

However, at 1140 hours, the brigade’s landing ships touched down but in some cases, the rifle companies could not be immediately disembarked because of congestion on the beach and its exits.

Despite some delays, 9 Cdn Brigade were across the beach with very few casualties and the entire brigade, including its armoured regiment were crammed into Bernières, which was still occupied by the Chaudiere Regiment. As noted by the brigade war diarist, ‘… there was a bad traffic jam in the town, which took some time to untangle’, stretching as it did back onto the beaches. This created yet more delays on the single route that 9 Cdn Brigade could use to reach their assembly area just south of the town. Here the brigade formed up and waited for almost two hours until 8 Cdn Brigade moved on inland. As will be seen in the next chapter, an enemy position at Talleville, complete with anti-tank guns, had halted the Canadian advance.

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Tanks of the Sherbrook Fusiliers come ashore at midday.

Major General Keller had ordered 9 Brigade to land on Nan White, having based his decision on the perfectly sound information available to him at the time, before the problem at Talleville became apparent. However, even if 9 Cdn Brigade had been directed to land on Mike Sector, it is likely that the one good gap (M1) and the one poor gap (M2), along with the marshy ground behind the beach would have led to similar results.

One effect of the traffic jam was that the Canadian self-propelled artillery regiments, who had earlier been firing in their amphibious role, could not motor across the beach and drive inland to their first designated gun positions. Consequently, they found themselves firing their first ‘dry land’ engagements, on the beach with the waves lapping around them.

Clearance of the Beach

With the strong points either taken or largely subdued, clearing the beach and its immediate hinterland of obstacles and mines was the next priority. This was to be followed by firmly establishing the control organization and the beginnings of the logistic infrastructure that were as vital to OVERLORD’s success, as the assault itself. Landing with the first assault troops were the Royal Navy and Combined Operations Beach Masters, along with movement control detachments and their signals sections. Their role was to call in landing craft as combat and logistic priorities and space on the beach dictated. In short they formed the first link in the chain that kept the forward units supplied. From the outset the demand for combat supplies, ammunition, fuel and food, was equalled by the demand for replacement men and vehicles and spares. All these resources had to be brought ashore in increasing volume, in parallel with the need to build up the number of combat troops that were needed ashore to fight the battle. The Allied landings across the beaches had to exceed the German’s ability to reinforce the Seventh Army by road and rail.

Canadian Captain Clarke, of Number 1 Movement Control Unit, was amongst the first logistic troops to arrive on Juno. He described his landing with the infantry:

‘Those last few moments were pretty awful. We were coming under intense small-arms fire and everyone was down as much as possible. I manoeuvred into a position to be as near as possible to the front. I wanted to be one of the first to land, not because of any heroics but because waiting your turn on the exposed ramp was much worse than going in.

‘A sergeant and a corporal started down. I was third. The sergeant couldn’t touch bottom but pushed away and swam in towards shore. The corporal started to follow and I plunged in after him but the weight of my ‘light assault jacket’, filled with enough canned goods to start a grocery store, pulled me under … I got back onto the ramp and the skipper of the LCI very sensibly decided to pull off and try to come in a bit better.

‘The next run at the shore put us in about five feet of water. A naval fellow in a lifebelt went in with a rope and I followed. … Some of the men had great difficulty getting ashore, particularly the short ones. One poor chap was crushed to death when the ramp broke away in the heavy seas and slammed him between it and the side of the ship. Many of the lads on our LCI never got ashore: a Spandau opened up just when the water was full of men struggling to get ashore.

‘The beach was littered with those who had been a jump ahead of us and a captured blockhouse being used as a dressing station was literally surrounded by piles of bodies.

‘I didn’t lose much time getting to the back of the beach where there was a bit of protection and wriggled out of my assault jacket which I swore then and there never to wear again.’

Once ashore, amidst the chaos of battle, numerous essential tasks had to be started immediately if the battle to build up and sustain force levels was to be won. For example, military policeman, Corporal Long had to marshal and control the tracked and wheeled vehicles making their way through N1. He remarked that:

‘It wasn’t at all like the exercises we had done at Hailing [sic] Island [FABIUS]. It was all confusion and we were under occasional fire most of the morning and into the afternoon but we got on with our tasks.’

The RMP had to establish a traffic control system that made the most effective use of the gaps and ensure that priority vehicles were clear of the beach as soon as possible and heading towards their designated assembly areas.

Lance Corporal Stuart Stear and his fellow Sappers of 619 Independent Field Park Company RE had been tasked to repair the water tower at Bernières, which was to be the first water point established by 103 Beach Group.

‘When the recce party returned they told us that the water tower was undamaged despite the bombardment and destruction around it. So being spare, we were sent to the gaps or lanes off the beach to help clear mines. I remember a tank breaking down in the lane and the officer commander being told by a Royal Navy officer that he had five minutes to get it going or we’d blow his tank up. We had these heavy packed charges about two foot six square that we would put in the hull of a broken down tank to completely demolish it and clear the lane. In this case, the tank was moved but one packed charge had to be used to clear a tank on another lane.

‘Behind the seawall, the German defences seemed to be freshly built and the ground floors of the houses had been filled with concrete to make camouflaged bunkers. They had been badly shelled and were badly pitted but it was mainly superficial damage. Lying all about were khaki and field grey bodies. More field grey than khaki but it didn’t mean anything to me, as I was numb and overwhelmed by all that was going on. Beyond the sea front, there was less damage than I had expected.’

Sergeant Fielder, an AVRE commander of 26 Assault Squadron RE, recalled that, with the infantry moving inland with the support of the Shermans of 1st Hussars and the Fort Garry Horse, he was ordered to return to Mike Beach.

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An RMP NCO watches the armour and equipment coming off the beach near to D Day House at Bernières.

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German mines and shells cleared from the beach obstacles on Nan Sector.

‘So we went back and started clearing the beach of tetrahedrons, connecting them onto a couple of towropes and pulling them clear. In a matter of hours, we’d cleared the beach completely. We were still under fire, but more and more troops were coming in, thick and fast.’

Lance Corporal Stear spent most of the day working on the ‘chaotic’ Nan Beach and the area immediately behind the sea wall, clearing obstacles and mines:

‘Most of the mines were Teller anti-tank mines, which were not too dangerous to handle as they were designed to be set of by vehicles not men. We did find some S or jumping mines in a field beyond the village that were much more sensitive and difficult to clear. One of the men who had been in boy’s [apprentice] service with me, Sapper Spreadbury, was killed while he was trying to deal with a booby trapped mine in the dunes behind the beach. There wasn’t even enough left of him to fill a sandbag. Despite incidents like this, people quickly became blasé about clearing mines and needed to be swapped around quite frequently. Men lifting mines for the first time were the most thorough. While we were lifting mines by hand, the flail tanks cleared areas behind the dunes for the dumping of stores and the assembly of fresh troops.

‘Another task we began on D Day and continued for several days, was the clearance of obstacles from the beach at low water, as all the stores, men and ammunition had to be landed there. My job was to fit an armoured bulldozer’s chains to the obstacles so they could be dragged into piles at the back of the beach.

‘During the afternoon, I saw German prisoners passing us being marched back to the beach. They seemed very young and as frightened as we were. Later, others came back on their own, unescorted, happy to be on their way to England and out of the war. The German prisoners helped with carrying stretchers on to the empty landing craft and were put to work burying their dead.

‘By late afternoon, the seeming chaos of the morning had been replaced by order, with signs and military police everywhere and by early evening even the sporadic artillery fire had stopped.

Meanwhile, just inland from the beach Germans were being flushed out of their hiding places. Captain ‘Nobby’ Clarke was again an active participant:

‘The afternoon and evening was devoted to “de-lousing” the houses behind the beach of snipers and quite a job it was. We were a bit clumsy at first and lost quite a few because of it, but it soon became more or less a drill. I had a small group of two sergeants and six Sappers with plenty of guts. Some of the houses just refused to be de-loused and so we burnt them down. We set one on fire which had caused us a lot of grief and when it really started to brew a young Jerry made an effort to escape through a window. He got partly out when a gunner on an LCT saw him and hit him with a streak of about fifty Oerlikon rounds.’

An essential part of bringing order to the beachhead was the grim task of collecting the dead. Nothing would have undermined the morale of troops coming across the beach and heading for the front as the sight of mangled bodies. Captain Hall, was the beach master for the Regina Rifles on Mike Red Beach and described how after his battalion had moved inland, he:

‘… just hung around the beach. There was lots to see, people to help. We started to collect casualties. German prisoners of war started to come on to the beach in fair numbers. …later in the day, when the tide went out, we saw a lot of the casualties that had been drowned, so I got a party of prisoners to start picking up bodies, including the body of the company commander who had followed me in but didn’t make it.

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Hedgehogs and Belgian gates (Element C) piled at the beach of Juno within days of the landing.

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German prisoners gathered on the railway station platform at Bernières. Note the tree trunks and rails for beach obstacles.

‘We brought them in and part of my job was also gathering the effects of those killed in action, turning money over to the paymaster and anything else belonging to them to the Padre. I made notes on how they were killed – shell wound, drowning and so on.’

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German PWs assembled in the shelter of the sea wall at WN 28 along with wounded. The men guarding them are from 103 Beach Group.

Not only was it essential to build up logistic strength but it was also important to have sufficient troops ashore to hold the expected German counter-attack and continue to enlarge the beachhead. Landing behind the Canadians and the leading elements of 103 Beach Group, was 51st Highland Infantry Division. Badly delayed by the slower than planned establishment of the beachhead, 1 Gordon Highlanders waded ashore, late on the afternoon of D Day, as the leading element of 153 Brigade. Robert Rogge of 5 Black Watch was following them:

‘Up on the deck, wearing all of our equipment and life belts, we could see the shore and Bernières-sur-Mer. It was Juno Beach. The 7th and 8th Brigades of our 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had already gone ashore. We went in very slowly, and as we got in closer, we could see a lot of stuff floating in the water and a few bodies. The craft just sort of stopped with a thump, and some of the guys fell down, and we had to pick them up again with all of that gear on them.

‘The ship’s crew dropped the ramps and we went on down and got into that water, and it was cold. I went in as far as my armpits, and while I was wading in to shore I could hear one of our pipers playing “Bonnie Dundee” on the ship behind us, and we were really getting piped into action. It was something. We could hear a lot of firing in the distance, and we waded ashore and there was a breach in the seawall, and movement control people herded us through the breach and up on into the town, where there were a lot of French people standing around, just looking at us.’

During the course of the evening, 153 Brigade concentrated at Banville, four miles inland, while for the next two days the remainder of the Division gained additional, unwelcome, ‘sea-time’ waiting for their turn to land on the congested beach.

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Mike Red beach. A self-propelled anti-aircraft gun alongside a knocked out DD covers landings in the afternoon of D Day.

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