Norman
W. Cohen Gold Beach - Wireless operator - Royal signals
Normandy
Landing Beaches Operation Overlord, launched on June 5th, 1944 and delayed
for 24 hours due to bad weather, was the daring initiative to establish beach
heads at Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches, on the coast of Normandy, in northern
France, in order to open up a western front in the fight for democracy.
The
Captain of our ship tried twice to land, but the beaches were crammed. On the
third occasion, through the tannoy loudspeaker system, he yelled to another boat,
"Get out of the God-damned way". Back came the reply, "Like hell!
I've got General Crocker's 30 Corps Headquarters on board". Back from our
Captain came, "Move! I'm carrying General Dempsey's Second Army staff!"
He then revved the engines, lowered the ramp and rammed the beach where we all
disembarked into about six inches of water. The dispersal of all vehicles went
very smoothly and after a matter of minutes we had arrived at Ver-Sur-Mer, a very
small Normandy fishing village. Having studied the history of the first day beachhead
landings comparatively recently, I know that I would have been much less relaxed
back then had I been aware that the Allies did not have even a foothold on the
Normandy coast and had maintained barely a toe-hold for many days after the landing.
Our signals unit comprised four wireless
trucks each fitted with enormous, long-range radios, supposedly capable of transmitting
and receiving over distances of up to 2000 miles, although we had never needed
to test them that far. We also had a small partitioned area for batteries, general
equipment and a generator. I think we used the latter more for boiling water for
tea via an electric element, fitted into a brick base which had been purchased
from Woolworths, than for their intended purpose. Each truck had a driver, a corporal-in-charge
and two other wireless operators. We also had a radio mechanic who was shared
by all four of the trucks. My corporal, with whom I palled-up, considered me the
'educated' one so always deferred to my opinion when problems arose. On arriving
at Ver-Sur-Mer, making radio contact with Allied Supreme Headquarters in the UK
was of prime importance. Preparations were undertaken for transmission, and orders
were issued for the erection of our large di-pole aerials. The vehicle was also
fitted with external panniers, which contained guide ropes, collapsible poles,
insulationconnectors and aerial wire but on this occasion, for speed, I suggested
that we tried using 10 feet of tubing, which was like a fishing rod. It took only
seconds to erect, as opposed to the stipulated Di-pole aerial, which always took
more than 30 minutes, plus the time taken in calculating the length of aerial
in relation to frequency. We were great improvisers and this is a gift I have
never lost, it has often come in useful when doing running-repairs around the
house. Our frequency had been given to us, in a sealed envelope, prior to disembarkation.
Our "fishing rod" erection set on the correct frequency transmitted
and received so clearly that it sounded as if our contacts in the U.K. were only
100 yards away and we were later highly commended for our speed and initiative.
Our transmission and messages received were always coded in groups of five letters,
such as LBHAY, NQRES, TULPY or RMLFX . We worked in shifts as follows: A) midnight
to 08:00 hours; B) 08:00 hours - 13:00 hours; C) the following day - 13:00 hours
- 18:00 hours; the final shift, D) 18:00 hours to midnight. For example, we worked
shift B and D one day, C and A the next day. The third day was free. The worst
shift was midnight to 08:00 hours we all dreaded it, after about 02:00 hours it
seemed impossible to stay awake. No matter how many cigarettes one smoked or how
many cups of tea drunk, sleep could not be kept at bay. Messages would continually
reverberate through the headphones and I would doze off to find that my message
contained up to fifty or sixty groups of letters, at which point I would jerk
awake. Then immediately, I would interrupt the sender and ask for all after the
last group of letters only to find that we had been so well-trained that even
in my stupor, the message had been taken down correctly and that I had slept through
only one or two groups of letters. By 03:30 hours one returned to an automaton
state and worked without sense or feeling. A favourite expression of ours was,
"It's amazing how quickly time goes when you're having fun!"
"D"
day, June 6th, 1944, was depicted as, "The Longest Day," in the
film of that name. That was an understatement, the reason being that "D"
day had actually started two days before, Imagine the organisation involved in
moving two complete armies, one under the command of the Americans and the other
under the command of the British, across the sea. Ver-Sur-Mer, a very small,
seaside village in Normandy, was our very first destination on foreign soil. Immediately
on arrival, as I have written, we established communications with the High Command
of General Montgomery's Headquarters of 21st Army Group in the U.K. Goodness
knows what messages we were sending as they were all in code. Probably something
like, "Send at once, 20,000 rolls of toilet paper and five hundred pencils."
I have always marvelled at the enormity of the size of the operation. All our
drinking water had to go through large portable purifiers, which went constantly
from unit to unit. Fieldkitchens, field hospitals, bakeries, food ration depots,
fuel supply depots all had to be set up and manned. After a couple of weeks the
organising geniuses had the whole operation running smoothly but those first couple
of weeks must have been a nightmare. Our bridgehead was so small that we only
held on to it by our fingertips but, fortunately, I and everyone like me just
did not know anything about all this, We just obeyed orders and got on with our
jobs.
One night I fell asleep, completely
exhausted, after bivvying next to our wireless truck. I was called, all too soon,
at 6:00 am the next morning, to take over as duty wireless operator. I was fully
dressed so only had to put on my boots and report for duty, I suppose there was
water for a wash but I cannot remember. All I do recall is that on going outside,
I saw very close to our tent, much too close for comfort, a German plane that
had crashed in the field next to us during the night. In my exhausted state I
had slept right through the crash and heard absolutely nothing.
On
another night during our sojourn in Ver-Sur-Mer, I wanted a drink while on duty
and opened the back door of the wireless truck to go into our tent. Today all
vehicles have an automatic system that as car doors open an interior light comes
on but that was not so during the war. Then, as the door opened, the lights went
out in order to preserve the blackout. The mechanism, however, required the door
to open a crack before the switch operated thus causing a chink of light to show
for a second. I opened the door then remembered that I had not taken my tin drinking
mug with me so closed it again. As I did so, I heard a bullet hit the door.
Immediately I telephoned to the communications H.Q. and told them that someone
was firing at me. I was alone in the truck and trying to concentrate on the job
in hand when, some minutes later the telephone rang and I was told to open the
back door. I think I replied, "Not fing likely", and got a flea in my
ear from the voice on the phone which turned out to belong to no less than a Major.
"That's an order," he said. "Do it now!" So with the only
available thing handy, which happened to be my rifle, I levered the door open,
when immediately, another bullet hit the truck followed by staccato bursts of
gunfire from another direction. It transpired that a French woman, objecting to
our having broken up her romance with a German soldier, was attempting to exact
revenge. She was spotted hiding up a tree and on the second occasion on which
she fired, our soldiers fired back at her and she was wounded and sent to a prison
hospital. I saw her being taken away and think that her German lover was a very
lucky that she was captured, he had a narrow escape. She was very, very plain,
badly dressed and unwashed, with thick matted hair! During the summer months the
French farmers' wives were in the habit of spreading their sheets out to dry flat
on the grass of their fields. We were told that as they could be arranged in such
a way as to convey messages that would be visible from the air, High Command had
stated that no washing at all was allowed to be displayed outdoors. In view
of the very few German planes that were brave enough to fly over us, I always
thought that was an unnecessary hardship inflicted on the already long-suffering
women.
The French roads had to be repaired
frequently and fast as they were constantly being chewed up by the enormous tanks
and half-track vehicles making ninety degree turns at the many corners. To carry
out the repairs, hundreds of big, burly 'soldiers' arrived from the Pioneer Corps.
Most of them seemed to be 7ft tall and 6ft broad, with hands like shovels. They
had either been conscripted into the army or volunteered and so wore British Army
Uniforms. To find uniforms that were big enough for them must have proved an impossible
task and so they were dressed in whatever could be found that remotely fitted
them. The results were ludicrous, they would never have passed any inspection,
I cannot believe that any of them could have done the six weeks-basic army training.
They must have had corporals, sergeants and officers in charge but I failed to
see how anyone less than a lion tamer could have controlled the maybe 500 of these
'navvies', but, my goodness, they knew how to work!
Another
memorable incident that occurred during that first week. Messages that
we were transmitting were often intercepted by the Germans, who could then quickly
'D.F' (direction find) our positions and dispatch planes to strafe us ('strafe'
meaning to machine-gun). What were referred to as dogfights then ensued between
German and allied planes and, at the same time, our anti-aircraft barrages were
firing at the German planes. Once, I was sitting outside our wireless truck watching
one of these air battles, a tin mug full of tea in my hand, when a piece of jagged
anti-aircraft shrapnel landed in the mug. I was most upset as I had to go in and
make another cup of tea. As I watched, the German plane was hit, blown to pieces
and began falling to earth. I decided I would like a souvenir and began running
towards the place where I estimated the falling pieces, that appeared to be floating
slowly down, would land. It was an optical illusion, they were actually hurtling
towards the ground at great speed although I was unaware of the fact, so that
when I got close to where I thought one piece was about to land, very fortunately,
it beat me to the spot. Fortunately, it was one complete wing which landed vertically
and then fell heavily away from me. I realise in retrospect, that I was very lucky
that it hadn't landed on top of me. I succeeded with difficulty and some help
in dragging it back to our wireless truck, I don't know quite why, I never did
anything with it, but left it there in that Normandy field. I wonder if it still
there.
Our next move was to Tracy Bocage,
this was prior to the Falaise Gap massacre. It was a delightful place with a church,
a few picturesque houses, cottages and farms. We arrived there and were told that
we had to wait for our new officer, whom we had not yet met. We were, by this
time, highly-trained and seasoned soldiers and did not need a young, wet-behind-the-ears,
second lieutenant, just out of "OCTU" (Officer Cadet Training Unit)
to tell us what to do. It was a glorious July day and we wandered about and explored
the village which was completely deserted, we went everywhere literally, leaving
no stone unturned. It was getting dusk when he, the Second Lieutenant, arrived.
He called us all together and excitedly warned us that he had been told that the
village was booby-trapped. He advised that we take our trucks into a field, form
a square with them and cover them completely with camouflage- netting. We were
to sleep with the netting over us, under the night sky. As he opened the five-barred
gate into the field, one of the booby-traps of which he had warned us went off
and thus his war ended. Apparently the back of his head suffered the most damage,
and he was shipped back to England. That was by no means the end of the story
for us because next morning on waking, we found that we had parked our wireless
trucks and ourselves inches away from a large German minefield. What I had thought
was a tree-stump and over which I had draped my jacket in the dark of the previous
evening, turned out to be a very large, unexploded bomb which was sticking up
about three feet above the ground. We managed to get the Royal Engineers' mine
disposal unit to assist us and they sent in tanks to very carefully, pull us away
from the danger. Apart from the truck drivers we were all at a safe distance and
fortunately, no one was hurt. We did hear enormous explosions during the day so
assumed the engineers had done their job successfully, we then moved into another,
safer field, adjacent to a farm and by that time, General Dempsey's H.Q. had arrived.
One day, we decided to catch and cook one of the many geese that we had seen wandering
about. There was one that seemed less wild that the others and so being easy to
catch, was the one that ended up in the pot. We picked apples for apple sauce
found potatoes and other vegetables after which about ten of us enjoyed a wonderful
meal. A week or so later, one of the platoon came excitedly running towards us,
an English newspaper in his hand. A headline read, "Who Cooked the General's
Goose?" Apparently, soon after landing in Normandy, General Dempsey had been
presented with a tame goose by a grateful, French Farmer and it had obviously
waddled about and mingled with the other geese in the area. No wonder it had been
so easy to catch. Hopefully, I won't have to face a court-martial now I have finally
revealed the truth. Even in retrospect, I can well remember that it really was
a most delicious meal.
Fortunately, troops
in action, rarely had to suffer the spit and polish routine suffered by soldiers
in peace-time. I say this as at either side of our wireless truck we had two low-slung
panniers for our bulky radio equipment and being very inventive, we made especially
good use of one of them. We crammed three of them as full as possible with our
equipment and put straw on the floor of the fourth pannier for the comfort of
some borrowed Normandy chickens which kept us supplied with fresh eggs all the
way up into Holland. It's funny but I don't seem to remember them being at all
noisy but they laid plenty of eggs for us.
It
was standard practice in action, when moving to a new location, for one half of
our unit to pack up and race to the new site while the other half remained and
continued to operate. When the advance unit informed base that it was ready to
transmit, the rear unit ceased transmitting and went to join it. On one occasion
while in Normandy, we were busy dismantling aerials etc. when I was approached
by the local farmer, in whose fields we were camped and asked if we had any paraffin.
Obviously we had gallons and gallons of petrol, in jerry cans, but he insisted
that he had seen paraffin, so to humour him, I went to our petrol stores and lo-and
behold, one can did contain some paraffin. To this day I don't know where it came
from. The farmer was thrilled when I gave it to him for his dormant equipment
and he came to me later that day, with a big hammer and chisel in his hand, inviting
me to go to his home with him. He took me into his farmhouse and down into the
cellars where he then started knocking down a lower portion of a wall. When a
hole of about 12 inches square appeared he put his arm inside and brought out
a very dirty bottle. He repeated the action twice more and then told me, "Two
for you and one for me." The bottles contained Cognac which he said his father
had hidden from the Germans in the First World War!
Then
came the realisation of total war when the German resistance in France finally
collapsed. The Battle of the Falaise Gap marked the end of the Battle of Normandy,
which started on June 6th.1944 and ended on August 22nd of the same year, which
happened to also be the day after my 21st.birthday. Although history recounts
that maybe 100.000 German troops succeeded in escaping the allies, in their haste
to do so, they left behind 150.000 prisoners, over 10.000 dead and the roads virtually
impassable due to the wreckage of destroyed vehicles and the dead and rotting
bodies of men and horses. The sights and smells of death, desolation and decay
remain clearly in my memory, even to this day.