We found out later it was the Europa. I removed the Leica from its leather case, then leaned over Norman’s shoulder to take several photographs.
Clay went on, “Surrounding the convoy at its edges are antisub patrol boats, S-boats, and destroyers. Further out look to be depot ships and tenders, two hospital ships. And oilers.”
We learned later this convoy was ferrying the soldiers of the XIII Corps. They had set sail from Rotterdam, Antwerp, Ostend, Dunkirk, heading west in four lanes, converging in an assembly area in the channel German sailors promptly dubbed Unter den Linden.
Our plane bobbed and weaved over Dungeness to Rye Harbor. Here the Wehrmacht’s VII Corps (we determined later) was landing, having sailed from Antwerp and Calais. The soldiers swarmed ashore along the coast from Rye to Hastings. General Clay described as much as he could, including sighting the passenger ship Bremen and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper.
“A fantastic array,” General Clay said. “Every goddamn stick of wood that can float in the Third Reich is down there. Look at them.” His binoculars were jammed to his eyes. “River patrol boats, Mediterranean pleasure yachts, and, by God, they’ve enlisted the Horst Wessel, their cadet training sailing ship.” He pointed across Norman’s nose. “It’s under power.”
We flew low over the hills behind Hastings, emerging at the coast again at Bexhill, where the XXXVIII Corps was landing, between St. Leonard’s and Beachy Head. They had sailed from Boulogne and Etaples, in the Artois region of France. From our height, the battle seemed frighteningly one-sided. The mighty procession of war ships was pressing against the coast, and the only visible resistance was the swinging sprays of AA tracers. Most death in battle occurs in narrow killing zones. Here it was the beach, where the war was being waged with ferocity we could not see.
Clay pointed to a transport ship listing offshore, then to another. We could see the soldiers climbing down lines into the sea as the ships rolled. “Looks like we’ve gotten a few licks in.”
We found out in subsequent days that in fact the Allies had given very few licks. The ships in trouble had foundered on the treacherous spits and rocks along the coast, another price the Germans willingly paid for the surprise of a low-tide landing. Rocky ledges emerged at low tide off some of the coast, such as at Bexhill. At other places, such as Dungeness, sand bars allowed only two feet of clearance. Some of the obstacles were notorious in maritime history, such as the Royal Sovereign Shoals, lying from four to eight miles east of the lighthouse at Beachy Head toward Dungeness.
Nowhere along the invasion coast were there adequate port facilities for the taking. Brighton’s famous promenade piers stood in shallow water, and in any event had been rendered unusable by RN engineers. Rye Harbor was inaccessible. The pier at Eastbourne Bay allowed only ships with drafts of less than two feet at low tide. The entrance to Shoreham harbor, west of Brighton, was made dangerous by rocks at depths of two to nine feet. Those few ports with sea-going capacity, such as Folkestone and Newhaven, were heavily defended. So the Germans had to hit the beaches.
General Clay’s comment on the loss of German shipping during the assault was, “You throw enough cow pies at the side of a barn, some of them will stick.”
And they were sticking. Despite the perils of the channel and of our defenses, the Kriegsmarine’s movements seemed precisely synchronized and perfectly executed. From three thousand feet, we could see little of the chaos German soldiers and sailors would tell me about after the war: bungled rendezvous, vessel collisions under smokescreens, detonations of overlooked mines, barges sinking under the weight of armored cargo, blasts from remaining Allied coastal artillery, vessels splitting open on unseen rock shelves, the dogged harassment from the surviving Royal Navy ships, the drownings and fires.
In the Cub, our horizon was distant and hazy, and the scene below was plodding, even peaceful. For German servicemen at the waterline, the short horizon was filled with the bizarre and the violent and the dead.
We flew behind Beachy Head toward the River Cukmere. Along this shore, from the Head to Rottingdean east of Brighton, VIII and X Corps were landing. They had crossed from Le Havre.
The western edge of their front ended before Brighton. Clay said, “They didn’t hit the towns. Folkestone, Eastbourne, Brighton, all are being ignored. Know why that is, Jack?”
“Of course. Against—”
“Against stiff resistance it can take twelve hours to clear one city block. So the German just skips the towns. He’ll come back and clean them up at his leisure. Or raze them.”
Clay spoke dispassionately, as if he were working an adding machine in some office. Bofors shells exploded near our left wing, rattling the Cub. Norman seemed not to notice.
I repeat here that I was cold with fright. I later leafed through the notes I took during that flight, and my handwriting is crabbed and scratchy, and not from Norman’s tight maneuvers with the Cub. I was grateful for the engine noise, because my voice was wavering even during the few syllables allowed me by the general.
Clay said, “That looks like all of them. Sixty miles of coast, from Folkestone to Brighton. Let’s head north.”
That was not all of them. A hundred ten miles to the west of Brighton, thirty thousand soldiers of the German II Corps were landing. They had departed from Cherbourg and sailed northwest to assault the beaches at Lyme Bay. There the British V Corps reeled under a massive assault. We learned later that the Germans employed over four thousand vessels on S-Day.
I was vastly relieved to be away from the coast. General Clay said only one sentence the entire way to London. “Winnie is going to crap himself.”
We landed in Hyde Park forty minutes later. The streets were eerily empty. Londoners were inside at their radios, listening for word from the BBC. We quickly arrived at the war rooms and were escorted inside. It was just after 7:30 in the morning.
Clay paused at the door to the cabinet room a moment, with me at his shoulder. The intelligence chief, General Cadogan, was at his map. Near him, talking with animation, were Generals Stedman and Alexander. Winston Churchill stood over his place at the felt-covered table, staring down at a report. Other Defense Committee members were in front of maps or at telephones along a wall. Tension was thick, apparent in the rigid stances, in the few inches separating the noses of arguing generals, in uncharacteristically large gestures, in the wadded fists and narrowed mouths. I actually saw the prime minister close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. But only briefly.
General Cadogan’s map was spotted with colored flags, reports of engagements with the enemy. Many were on the channel coast, and many were along the North Sea coast, some as far north as Edinburgh. The map reflected the confusion. The enemy had been on English soil for over two hours and still arguments raged as to whether they had come from the east or south.
The room abruptly quieted when General Clay appeared. He was supposed to be at Eastwell. Only the sound of several swivel fans could be heard as he walked toward Cadogan’s map. His chest was out and his jaw set. This was now his show.
“The German has landed from here”—he punched a finger at Folkestone and in a historic sweep brought it east to Brighton—“to here.”
Cadogan brushed back a wave of hair. “Yes, well, we do have increasingly reliable reports to that effect, but also, we’ve heard from—” He moved to point to the shore north of London.