The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson Page B

earth. Minefields, phone wires, and rocket pits inland were obliterated, but less than 2 percent of all bombs fell in the assault areas, and virtually none hit the shoreline or beach fortifications. Repeated warnings against fratricide “had the effect of producing an overcautious attitude in the minds of most of the bombardiers,” an Eighth Air Force analysis later concluded; some added “many seconds” to the half-minute “bombs away” delay already imposed. Nearly all payloads tumbled a mile or two from the coast, and some fell farther. Many thousands of bombs were wasted: no defenders had been ejected from their concrete lairs. Whether they felt demoralized by the flame and apocalyptic noise behind them would only be discerned when the first invasion troops touched shore.
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    Heavy chains rattled through hawse pipes across the bay, followed by splash after mighty splash as anchors slapped the sea and sank from sight. An anguished voice cried from a darkened deck, “For Chrissake, why in the hell don’t we send the Krauts a telegram and let them know we’re here?” Another voice called out: “Anchor holding, sir, in seventeen fathoms.”
    Aboard Princess Astrid, six miles from Sword Beach, a loudspeaker summons—“Troops to parade, troops to parade”—brought assault platoons to the mess deck. On ships eleven miles off Omaha, GIs in the 116th Infantry pushed single file through double blackout curtains to climb to the weather decks. Landing craft, described as “oversized metal shoeboxes,” swung from davits, waiting to be loaded with soldiers; others would be lowered empty, smacking against the steel hulls, to be boarded by GIs creeping down the cargo nets that sailors now spread over the sides. A Coast Guard lieutenant on Bayfield watched troops “adjusting their packs, fitting bayonets to their rifles and puffing on cigarettes as if that would be their last. There was complete silence.” Scribbling in his diary he added, “One has the feeling of approaching a great abyss.”
    Nautical twilight arrived in Normandy on June 6 at 5:16 A.M. , when the ascending sun was twelve degrees below the eastern horizon. For the next forty-two minutes, until sunrise at 5:58, the dawning day revealed what enemy radar had not. To a German soldier near Vierville, the fleet materialized “like a gigantic town” afloat, while a French boy peering from his window in Grandcamp saw “more ships than sea.”
    Minesweepers nosed close to shore, clearing bombardment lanes for 140 warships preparing to drench the coast with gunfire. Blinkered messages from sweeps just two miles off the British beaches reported no hint of enemy stirrings, and Omaha too appeared placid. But at 5:30 A.M. , on the approaches to Utah, black splashes abruptly leaped mast-high fore and aft of the cruisers H.M.S. Black Prince and U.S.S. Quincy, followed by the distant bark of shore guns. Two destroyers also took fire three miles from the shingle, and a minesweeper fled seaward, chased by large shells thrown from St.-Vaast. At 5:36 A.M. , after allowing Mustang and Spitfire spotter planes time to pinpoint German muzzle flashes, Admiral Deyo ordered, “Commence counterbattery bombardment.”
    Soon enough eight hundred naval guns thundered along a fifty-mile firing line. Sailors packed cotton in their ears; concussion ghosts rippled their dungarees. “The air vibrated,” wrote the reporter Don Whitehead. Ammunition cars sped upward from magazines with an ascending hum, followed by the heavy thump of shells dropped into loading trays before being rammed into the breech. Turrets slewed landward with theatrical menace. Two sharp buzzes signaled Stand by, then a single buzz for Fire! “Clouds of yellow cordite smoke billowed up,” wrote A. J. Liebling as he watched the battleship Arkansas from LCI-88 . “There was something leonine in their tint as well as in the roar that followed.” The 12- and 14-inch shells from the murderous queens