D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

damaging the captain’s bridge and the flag bridge. ‘Immediately we opened fire,’ wrote an officer on the Nelson , ‘we got salvos screaming over from [the coastal batteries] and the first salvo straddled us.’ The Nevada also received near misses, while apart from the Texas , HMS Glasgow and several other ships were hit. None were crippled, but Rear Admiral Bryant rightly decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew his task force behind a smoke screen.
    On land, some of the infantry encountered strongpoints which would not give in rapidly. Great bravery was shown on a number of occasions. Armoured bulldozers were needed to bring up supplies under fire. Engineers and infantry used satchel charges and other explosive devices to drop down ventilation shafts. Occasionally, a display of strength would persuade a garrison commander to surrender. According to one extraordinary report, Private Smith in the 79th Infantry Division, who ‘had drunk enough Calvados to make him reckless’, captured one strongpoint single-handed.
    Smith, armed only with a .45 automatic pistol and accompanied by a similarly inebriated friend who had no weapon at all, ‘staggered up to the entrance of the fort’. Smith and his companion, on seeing that the steel doors were ajar, slipped inside and shot dead the German soldiers standing around in the entrance. Smith, ‘who was in truth stewed to the ears’, went from room to room, ‘shooting and shouting, and as he appeared at each door, the Germans inside, thinking the whole American army was in the fort, gave up’. He herded his prisoners together and marched them out into the open, where they were handed over to his battalion. Smith then returned to the fort and discovered another room in which there were wounded Germans. ‘Declaring to all and sundry that the only good German was a dead one, Smith made good Germans out of several of them before he could be stopped.’
    After the main defence position, the Fort du Roule, had been taken, Generalleutnant von Schlieben knew that there was little point in continuing the agony. Virtually all his men were trapped below ground in their strongpoints, along with several thousand wounded. He decided to surrender after American engineers blew up the ventilation shafts to his subterranean headquarters. The wounded could hardly breathe, there was so little oxygen. One of his officers, Oberstleutnant Keil, who was lauded by the Nazi authorities for holding out until 30 June on the Jobourg peninsula, defended Schlieben’s ‘sound common sense’. Schlieben did not want to sacrifice his men’s lives for no purpose, despite the fact that, as the commander of ‘Fortress Cherbourg’, Hitler had made him take an oath that he would fight to the death.
    On 25 June, at 19.32 hours, an officer on his staff sent a message by radio: ‘Final battle for Cherbourg has begun. General takes part in fighting. Long live the Führer and Germany.’ Schlieben was embarrassed afterwards when he heard of it. The next day he surrendered with the 800 men in his position. ‘Some of the boys,’ wrote an officer in the 4th Infantry Division, ‘could not understand why the Germans had given it up as quickly as they had.’ Schlieben, who seemed to be something of an epicure, was not impressed by the K-Rations he received. One of Bradley’s officers thought it highly amusing that he was about to face English cuisine as a prisoner when sent back across the Channel.
    Cherbourg was a wreck, especially the port, which had been systematically destroyed by German engineers. American troops mopped up isolated pockets of resistance. Once again there were dubious reports of Frenchwomen with rifles. ‘We saw a few women snipers,’ stated a sergeant with the 4th Infantry Division, ‘who were dressed in ordinary clothes. One day we brought in twenty Germans, including one woman.’ Acts of revenge were also committed, especially after a US hospital had been hit by an artillery shell. American soldiers are said to have killed Organisation Todt workers who were non-combatants.
    Over 600 German wounded were found in the Pasteur hospital. Captain Koehler, a battalion surgeon with the 22nd Infantry Regiment and a fluent German speaker, was put in charge. Although he had excellent cooperation from the German colonel and his medical staff, Koehler was appalled at the high death rate, largely due to the lack of preparation of patients before surgery. The