The 20th of June, 1944 - D + 14, The Storm

Storm on "Gooseberry"
Dwight C. Shepler
(Source)

The rain was pouring down and the wind was howling without cease. From their position near the coast, they could see that the waves in the Channel were the kind that kept anything smaller than a battleship at home. The storm on this side of the Cotentin (the western side) hadn't really picked up until today, two weeks after they'd come ashore.

Sgt Bill Brandt had been to the battalion aid station that morning and had talked to the battalion surgeon. Seems that Charlie was going to be okay, the Kraut bullet had missed everything vital but had nicked his large intestine. Doctor Sidney Corcoran had patched him up and told Bill -

"I had to open him up to repair a minor tear of the bowel, amazingly the bullet passed through him fairly cleanly other than that, very clean wound track. The man is being sent back to England to recover. It's going to be a few weeks, provided everything goes well."

"Thanks Doctor, no trip home huh?"

"Not this time Sarge, but he is a lucky man for all that."

Sgt Brandt looked back on yesterday, didn't see anything else he could have done. The Kraut sniper wasn't that good, fired at the wrong target, then moved too soon afterwards. Good for us, bad for him.

(Source)

Sgt Brandt looked out at the Channel, then back at his men. Huh, "his men," I'm starting to think like a sergeant I guess. While the guys were pretty happy that Charlie was going to be okay, they had given Pvt Woodrow Simpson a new nickname, "Duck."

"As in 'forgot to'," laughed Cpl Jack Wilson. Simpson figured that Charlie had saved his life. He didn't like the new nickname, but he also knew that if he bitched about it, it would definitely stick.

Duck looked over at Pvt Jackson Hebert, "Hey, A Bear, you got any cigs in that ration pack?"

Though his name was pronounced "Hee Bert," Tremblay insisted on pronouncing it the French way. Jackson, never Jack, hated it and let the guys know. So naturally it stuck. Hell, even Sgt Andersen and the L. T. called him "A Bear." Sgt Brandt had shortened it to just Bear, "Because you're always cranky!" The Sarge had quipped. I guess that was alright then, Jackson thought to himself. Sarge is a good egg.

As Bill chuckled at the back and forth, he noticed that their foxholes were starting to fill up with water.

"Time to bail fellows! Use your steel pots, otherwise you might drown in the night. Didn't realize you'd joined the Navy, did you?"

He sure wished that this damn weather would clear. Rumor had it that the division would be hooking south soon and not be marching on Cherbourg, which was fine with him. SSG Andersen had told him that if they could get around St. Lo, it should be clear sailing to Paris.

"Yeah, like we'll get to see Paris." Bill muttered.

"What's that Sarn't Bill?"

"Nothing Jack, any crackers and peanut butter in that ration pack?"

"Nope. Sorry."

And it kept on raining.

The 1st Polish Armoured Division in the Normandy Campaign 1944

Jan Kołodziej was wearing a British uniform. He was now officially Private Paweł Kowalski. The Polish guys he'd met in a little village had helped him slip his American babysitter and got him a uniform. When they discovered that he had been a mechanic's apprentice before the war, among many other things, they convinced their company commander that Jan, now Paweł, would be a great addition to the 1st Polish Armoured Division.

The captain had simply shrugged and said, "Why not, it's not like we will get replacements from Poland now is it?"

New uniform, new nom de guerre, Jan was happy to get away from the Americans. A couple of old grandmothers they were. He figured the best way to get back to Poland was to fight the Germans. He hadn't mentioned his late service in the Wehrmacht, short lived as it had been. While he remembered a couple of the Germans he'd served with fondly, he still didn't care for them as a people. He really hated Nazis, and this was a way to kill Nazis!

Bundesarchiv

Stabsfeldwebel Gerhard Lindner, wearing his full black Panzer uniform, had been to see the battalion commander, Major Rolf Fromme. He was now the new company commander. A company of six tanks. The Tommies were killing them, bit by bit, every day. He was very pleased that the heavy rains had kept the English armor at home. The roads were getting muddier with each passing hour. Nothing like Russia, sure, but it was getting sloppy.

They were performing some overdue maintenance on their crate, they even had a full tank of fuel! The big shots up at battalion knew that the Tommies had to take Caen, otherwise they'd be stuck on the beaches for the rest of the war.

"You look pretty Boss!" Feldwebel Willi Hoffmeister catcalled from the top of the turret when Lindner arrived at the tank.

"Lick my arse you alter schwäbischer Hund!¹" Lindner barked back at his best friend.

The crew all laughed, Lord knows they needed the break from action. Humor was good, it helped. Though Lindner thought that beer would be better.

The storm the soldiers are experiencing was a very real event in history. The Allies knew that they would not be able to sustain their armies logistically just using the landing beaches. They needed a harbor, but until they captured an intact French harbor, they would need something to fill the gap. So the Mulberry artificial harbors were created and towed across the English Channel. You can read more about those here. A brilliant idea, but Mother Nature intervened on the 19th with a storm which raged for three days -

Construction of the Mulberry harbors continued for the first days of the invasion. The Gooseberry blockships, had been added to the design because of concern as to how the Phoenix caissons would fair in the giant waves brought on by Channel storms. And on June 19, D-day plus 13, a fierce storm began which lasted for three days and was reportedly the strongest summer storm in forty years. It caused much damage to the in-progress Mulberry harbors. Image above shows a wrecked pontoon causeway from the American Mulberry A artificial harbor at Omaha, following the storm of June 19, 1944 which destroyed the Mulberry A harbor.

The storm broke loose the Bombardon, (an outer ring of floating breakwater) and it was free to crash into the remaining harbor structures for the duration of the storm. At the American Mulberry A, several Phoenixes were badly damaged. Barges and other craft inside the harbor were thrown about by the giant waves. These vessels inflicted much damage as they repeatedly crashed into the whale roadways. By the end of the storm, Mulberry A was considered a complete loss, and any salvageable harbor components were sent to British Mulberry B, which was somewhat sheltered by a reef and suffered less damage. But most of the equipment and harbor components which were in transit were lost and the continued rough water caused delays in transporting remaining loads. (Source)

The Americans and their British, Canadian, French, and Polish allies may find supplies hard to come by for a while.

We shall see.




¹ Old Swabian dog, Hoffmeister is actually from a small village in Bavaria, not far from Swabia. He hates being called a Swabian.