Chapter 1
The initial directive for VII Corps participation in the assault on Normandy was issued by Headquarters First U.S. Army on 1 February 1944, based on the Anglo-American "Initial Joint Plan." The operation was out-lined sufficiently to permit initial estimates of troops, supplies, and shipping requirements to be made. VII Corps was to assault a beach on the eastern coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, secure a beachhead, and capture the port of Cherbourg, while V Corps and British and Canadian units made landings farther east in the area north of Bayeux. The 4th Infantry Division, newly arrived from the United States, was designated to make the assault on the VII Corps beach, aided by airborne landings of the 824 and 101st Airborne Divisions. Naval and Air Force units would support the attack by bombardment of enemy defenses and communications, and Service of Supply organizations would mount and supply the operation.
On 14 February 1944, Major General J. Lawton Collins, the original VII Corps Chief of Staff, returned to take command of the Corps. As a division and corps commander in the Pacific theater he had already conducted several successful campaigns against the Japanese, and with an experienced and masterful hand he now took over the guidance of the biggest military operation of his career.
Preparation for D-Day
Corps headquarters fairly teemed with activity. Plans were developed, each increasingly more detailed than the last, providing against every need and every emergency. Training was even more intensified as individuals learned and rehearsed the particular tasks each was to do, physically hardening themselves to meet the rigors of combat. Supplies and equipment accumulated in English bases. To facilitate coordination of details of the planning with the naval force which was to provide the lift, escort, and support for the operation, a planning group from the corps staff established planning headquarters adjacent to the offices of U.S. Naval Force "U" in Plymouth. Air support plans of the Ninth U.S. Army Air Force were integrated with plans for naval bombardment, and both fitted into the overall plan for the operation.
As the preparations advanced, joint training exercises for small units of the Army, Navy, and Air Force were held. The most critical events expected in the Normandy invasion were carefully rehearsed as larger units were brought into the problems. Precise details of coordination were arranged and rehearsed, such as how contact would be established between the two airborne divisions and the seaborne assault troops and what aerial bombardment and naval gundire would be brought on the known enemy defenses. Timing was worked out, routes of advance and contact points were selected, and every conceivable aspect of the coming battle was gone over time and again.
New information on the enemy situation was being received almost daily. So was information on new developments in our own techniques and equipment. Several details of the plans had to be changed as the result of this added knowledge, but everybody put forth his best effort and the adjustments were made rapidly. The spirit with which the troops accepted these changes and put their whole-hearted application into each improvement was a good indication of the full confidence they had in their leaders.
Training exercises increased successively in scope, culminating in the full scale dress rehearsal held in April on the Devonshire coast. Conditions were set up as nearly as possible like those to be encountered on the French coast and every detail of the operation was conducted just as it would be in France. This was our last "dry run". The next time would be for keeps.
Final revisions and corrections followed, last minute details were decided. Then, in the latter part of May, the largest military force ever to sail into action began to assemble in the Marshalling camps along the south coast of England. Our reinforced VII Corps, known during the assault phase of the operation as Assault Force "U", loaded its 30,000 troops and 3,500 vehicles on 4 troop transport ships and over 200 large landing craft at Plymouth, Brixham, Torquay, and Dartmouth, and there awaited orders to sail.
D-Day had been set as June 5th, but the forecast of unfavorable weather for the landing on that date resulted in the decision to postpone the attack one day. Beginning on June 4th, and following carefully arranged Naval plans, the great armada made up of the several assault forces of the Western Naval Task Force sailed out into the English Channel, slowest convoys first, fastest ships last. All were escorted, protected on the sea by units of the American and British Navies and in the air by a cover of Allied aircraft. Apparently either the German command was caught off guard or the German air and naval forces in France were so battered by the incessant Allied aerial bombardment that they were unable to oppose the crossing, and in the darkness of the short summer night these thousands of ships and boats assembled unmolested in their designated areas just off the French coast. Then, at the appointed hour, the naval crews went quietly about their well-rehearsed task of transferring the first waves of troops and equipment to the small, speedy landing craft which would carry them to the beaches.