June 5, 1944: D-Day eyewitnessed by MONITOR reporter, recounts invasion, paratroopers landing

By Richard L. Strout | Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor with the Allied Invading Forces

From the June 6, 1944 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

SHOT-BY-SHOT STORY FROM U.S.

CRUISER

Reporter, on bridge of warship jolted by exploding shells, dictates ‘the tale of the century’ as it happens - Airplane-borne gliders paint myriad cloud pattern.

ON BOARD THE HEAVY CRUISER U.S.S. QUINCY, OFF FRANCE, June 7.

Delayed - This is a round-by-round story of the invasion of France and the opening of the Second Front.
It covers the secret passage of the invasion fleet under fire and the most glorious sight of the arrival by glider of 10,000 air-borne troops.
The battle continues as this is written.
The ship jolts with the explosion of shells.
But one thing is certain.  Our beachhead is established.
The degree of organization disclosed is so amazing as to augur Hitler’s overthrow.

ON CRUISER’S BRIDGE

The story begins on the open bridge of a United States heavy cruiser(the U.S.S. Quincy), Capt. Elliott M. Senn, United States Navy, commanding.
It is 2 p.m., Monday, June 5.  I am standing under the sky.  I am dictating this story as it happens.
We have just left our anchorage.   We are headed almost due east in a single line of capital ships flanked by outriders.  History hangs on the weather.
On our left are the cliffs of England.  We are in an Anglo-America task force.  The ships’ names mingle like a chant.  Those of the British have come down through history.  The American names sing of the New World.

VAST FLOTILLA

Our vessel, with its home port at Boston, is one of the fleet’s newest and finest.  There is another task force.  The combined flotilla with landing craft will be vast.  There are French, Dutch, and Norwegian ships.
Already, another convoy is visible carrying its own barrage balloons.
The sky is overcast.  The sea is lead-colored by quiet.  There is hardly any wind.  Even a squall no worse than last night’s would hamper landing craft, result in thousands of casualties, maybe upset the whole show.  Well, we have done what we can - the weather is nature’s business.
This high, open bridge covers three sides.  Forward and below are decks and gun turrets.  The biggest turrets carry triple sticks of long-range, dangerous-looking guns.
The prow comes to a a razor edge.  Like most of man’s weapons, this appears beautiful.  It is slim as a race horse, rhythmic as poem.
It is so new that 1,000 of the crew are green.  They speak every American accent.  This spot is a magnificent grandstand seat for history’s greatest show. Well, we have done what we can - the weather is nature’s business.

LANDING CRAFT OVERTAKEN

5 p.m. We have overtaken and are passing the landing craft fleet formerly seen on the horizon.  They make slow headway, their barrage balloons, tied front and stern of larger craft, tug ahead as though pulling.
These craft are chock-full of assault troops and supplies.  They will catch up to us as we anchor in the night.
6 p.m. We have hoisted a fresh, clean battle flag.  It will fly there till the engagement is over.  Blue-coated figures in steel helmets are sweeping the sky and sea around me, chanting observations like football quarterbacks.
The air is tense and the men are consciously trying to break the suspense by horseplay.  This has gone on for weeks.

“NOW IT’S COMING!”

Our ship has known its mission and has been sealed.  Now it is coming.  The gun crew is skipping rope.
We are leaving England.  The great adventure begins.  The coastline fades as we steam slowly. Right under the haze close to the distant shore is another line of vessels, alternating big and little ones, moving our way almost stealthily under the shore line.
We look and wonder.  Something marvelous is going on.  All the world’s ships seem to be going our way.
Rumors fly about.  Yesterday at the peak of uncertainty came the radio news that a New York press association had falsely reported the invasion already under way. I have been asked anxiously dozens of times if this kills the whole thing.
7 pm.  A voice breaks the silence over the loudspeaker system.  A battle message has been received for this task force.
“I will read it,” says the voice.  It is terse, pungent, without false heroics.
“Let’s put the Navy ball over for a touchdown,” it concludes.  The sailors chuckle.

FINAL PRAYER

And now the chaplain offers the final prayer before the battle.  All over the ship, out here in the breeze and down in the engine room beneath the surface of the sea, the men pause with bared heads.
The voice goes over the ship and into the evening air: “Our help is in the Lord.”
“Ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find,” the solemn voice concludes.
8:30 p.m. - Zero hour tomorrow is 6:30.  There will be general quarters tonight (which means battle stations) from 10:30.
That is the loud-speaker announcement.  A hush falls on the crew.  Only two hours before night-and-day watch set in with compartments sealed water-tight.

LAST MINUTE PREPARATIONS

Hurried last-minute preparations are made.  I walk through the compact crew compartments.  Some men sit by themselves, others write letters home, some are on bunks in the canvas tiers.  The voices are cheerful.
I turn in for a final nap.
10:30 p.m.  The boatswain just piped, followed by the electrifying cry “All hands, man your battle stations!” Now the bugle blows, “general quarters,”
Now we are ready.

SKY OVERCAST

The sky is overcast.  Somewhere up there the moon is one night from being full.  Behind us are a few red streaks of sunset.  Will this thick cloud conceal us? Is it possible German planes haven’t spotted these great ship lines? All afternoon the number has been swelling.  But the enemy has given no sign.
Midnight.  It is June 6, D-Day.
The breeze has freshened.  France is off ahead.  There is a spurt of distant tracer bullets and a falling meteor, that is really a falling airplane.
There is a gray light and we can see one another.  We keep peering out, wondering when the enemy will go into action, but nothing happens.

MINES SWEPT CLEAR

Here is a wonderful thing: Out here in the open Channel we are following mine-swept safety lanes clearly marked even a landsman can read them, for there are little pinpricks of buoys.  Nothing that has happened has given me the sense of extraordinary preparation.
We steam slowly.  Our ship is flanked by shadowy destroyers.  Only occasionally does as muffled signal flash, and even on ship in the corridors, there are only dim red battle lights.  Now and then there is a hint of moon in the cloud blanket.
1 a.m.  For an hour, airplanes have gone over us.  Occasional star shells fall off there in France.  Once the moon glowed out and cast us in full relief and a silvery patch.  As I dictate this, suddenly a batch of lights twinkles like July 4 sparklers.  Antiaircraft stuff!  Now it is gone.
I keep thinking of home.  It’s 7 p.m. there now. The family is just finishing supper.  It’s the same in millions of American homes, children doing home work, mothers at dishes, fathers reading papers.  And here we are on the dark sea moving at half speed toward history.

12 MILES OFF FRANCE

2 a.m. France is just over there 12 miles off.  There must be hundreds of ships around us.  It is impossible to say.  I couldn’t have believed we would get so far undetected.  The Germans must know we are here.  But nothing happens.  Just bombers.
A few minutes ago a great flock came back from France flying low and scudding past like bats showing the prearranged signals of friends.
Behind tight wedges come stragglers, some with limping motors.  Again and again the lights blaze on the French coast.  The moon dodges in and out.
Something extraordinary in bombing must be going on.  When I was a child, I could see the distant glow of fireworks at Coney Island.  This is like that.  Just as I dictate, a fountain of sparklers sprays upward - dotted lines of tracer bullets shoot out.  This must seem pretty bad on shore, but they don’t know what’s to come.
3 a.m. We have arrived.  And the slower landing craft meet us here.  Then we go in with them to six miles offshore.
There will be simultaneous attacks by the Americans and British.  Our beachhead is the one farthest north, the one nearest Cherbourg.
Here on the open bridge I hear the order, “Be ready to fire.”

‘WHY DON’T THEY JUST FIRE?

It just doesn’t seem possible that they don’t see us.  If they do, why don’t they fire?
This must be the greatest concentration of bombing in the war.  Everything is going off.  We strain to read its meaning.
The only thing we know is that we are Act 2.
Our performance is to reverse Dunquerke.
4 a.m. Well, this is the most spectacular bombing display of all.  This must be the commotion kicked up by our parachute landings.
As I write, the roar of planes is like an express train going over a viaduct.  I dicate this to Chief Yeoman Charles Kidder.  As I speak now, flares blaze out in 15 to 20 clusters.
CAN READ WATCH BY FLARES

I can read my watch. Flares still drop.  They coil out long wriggling trails of white smoke.  The water seems jet.  I am so wrought up I can hardly hold still.  The tension on the ship is reaching a peak.
We are going inshore.  The bombs on land are so near and so big I feel the concussions.  Our big guns are trained ahead.
Everybody is tense for the shore battery that doesn’t come.
The moon is gone and it is darker than it has been.  We are getting an acrid smell of torn-up soil.  The eerie flames have gone out.
Well, here we go!
4:50 a.m.  We are a few miles offshore. And no comment from the enemy.  More fireworks stuff.  I never imagined anything like it.  The most horrible thing was two falling planes - ours.  I suppose - that crashed down with great bubbling bursts of oily flames when they hit.

GUNS POINT AT BEACH

All nine big guns are pointed at the beach.  It’s getting lighter.  There are yellow streaks in the cloud blanket.
5:30 a.m. It’s come!!
This is the bombardment.  My ears pound.  Our big guns are just under me and every time they go off - as just then - I jump and the ship jolts.
We all have cotton in our ears but it is noisy just the same and we feel the hot blast on our faces.
We got word it would be at 5:30.  We crouched behind the rail for the first one and are bolder now. We will pound the beach for an hour picking up where the bombers quit.

SHORE GUNS INFLUENTIAL

Enemy shore batteries are ineffectual so far. They produce only geysers of water.
I hear the crunch of our neighbor’s big guns.  We all are pounding away for miles off the coast.
Here is the picture:
Dawn is breaking: There’s more light every second.  The sea is calm as a lake.  The sky is mostly overcast.
By moving around the semi-circular bridge I can see two things of the horizon.  We are in a sort of bay.  We have moved in and the landing craft are coming in.

ON GERMANY’S DOORMAT

Dawn found us on Germany’s doormat like the milk bottle.
The big ship to our left is firing tracers and they go in like pitched baseballs.
The whole bowl of sky echoes with our din. While we are concerned mostly with our own beach, we see tracers from other ships zipping ashore, see the flame from guns, and a few seconds later get the report.
I can see the flag waving at our mast, and the long streaks of sun-touched cloud are like its stripes.
6 a.m. We bang away regularly like a thunderbolt worked by clockwork.  The individual drama goes on all around.  Somehow I never imagines it would be like this.

DISTANT VIEW

I thought it would be all a motion-picture closeup.  Actually the immensity of sky and land dwarfs everything and you have to strain at binoculars to see what is going on.  I guess that is true, of all battles.
If you are right in them, you can’t figure what is happening.
But here are the details.
An airplane laying a smoke screen for the landing just crashed.  It looked as though it was hit in midair.
We are smashing in salvos at specific objectives, and every time the guns go off, the whole ship jumps and I do too.
A sound like milk cans is shells being ejected from the five-inch batteries.
Our third salvo appears to have silenced one shore battery we move to the next.
Now at 6:30  the landing craft should be hitting the beaches.

H-HOUR

It is H-hour.
7 a.m. An American destroyer has been hit.
It is heart-breaking to watch.  The enemy fire splashes again and again.  We shift our guns to knock off a battery.
A whaleboat leaves the destroyer.
Distress signals blink.  A cloud of steam or smoke appears.  A sister ship moves in right under the fire to pick up survivors.
Forty minutes later the same din, the same animated scene.  A line of ships goes ashore. And empties are coming back.
A little French village with a spire nestles at the cliffs that look so like England across the Channel.
The drama has shifted from ship to harbor.
Things probably are moving fast, but it seems agonizingly slow.

FINE WEATHER

8 a.m. The sun shines gloriously.  This probalby is the best weather ever picked for invasion - cloudy at night, bright by day now.
Our destroyers are practically walking on the beach, blazing into the cliffs as they move.  We get radio words that one emplacement is concrete and the destroyer can’t rack it.  Our turrets sweep round.
Bang they go! Now a second time!
It is almost impossible to stand still, so great is the will to urge that long new line of invasion barges forward.  Any one of the runny little amphibious beetles makes a story in itself.

LIKE AN ANT

It is like picking out a particular ant.  Here in my binoculars I see an ugly squarish little craft making for shore with a lace of foam in front.

It reaches the beach, the white disappears, it waddles up.  I can’t see, but it’s guns are probably going.
On the sands are hulks of other boats - motionless.  They have hit mines.
9 a.m. No sleep - and a plate of beans for breakfast.  It seems as though it must be afternoon.
Our radio has just picked up a German radiocast denying any troops are ashore.  They seem thoroughly befuddled.
They say we made attempts at Dunkerque and Le Havre.  It seems a complete surprise.
Noon.  Everything depends on speed.  We have a landing but we had that at Dieppe.  Can we stck and can we go in fast enough to pinch off Cherbourg.
The whole drama is in that line of ships.  What it looks like is an ant line.
One line moves an army with crumbs and another returns to the crust.  Here they are moving like that - little black shipos, but all sizes.

UGLY BUT BEAUTIFUL

A big one with a whole rear end that unfolds on the beach or a little one with a truck or two.  They are all pretty squat and ugly - and the most beautiful sight I ever saw.

Yet it looks so quiet and peaceful.  The splashes of water look like top splashes. Except, when the splashes come in our direction.
There is one persistent battery that keeps trying to get to us.  It quiets after we fire and then comes on again after we shift to something else.
One earlier target we got in the first salvo.

COMMUNICATIONS JARGON

2 p.m. I have just had on the head phones in the communications room.

Shore groups with walkie-talkies are telling the parent control what they find.

It is all in a jargon of communications nomenclature.  The parent voice calls out loudly and commandingly through the static.
More and more crackling static.  Suddenly a quiet voice identifies itself.
“I am pinned down.” says the quiet voice.  “I am between machine-gun pill-box cross-fire.” So that’s it.
And now our radio leaves him.
A station reports that “firing from the bluff is continuing.” It reports taht the water obstacles are being taken care of.  The incoming tide is helping.
That’s what a battle sounds like under the scream of shells.  We can’t really tell what’s happening. We are in it, but we might be losing for all we know.

BBC TELLS THE NEWS

4 p.m. Well, things are going well.  We know because we have just heard a BBC broadcast!  BBC seems delighted.  It says reports are splendid.  O.K. by us.
That far bluff is still spitting fire, though, and the elusive shore battery has splashed us with water. What does BBC advise?
But we are so weary now we are going to sleep on our feet anyway.
6 p.m. Six of the clumsy LCM’s go by - the most angular craft ever built.  Their front end, that ought to be high, is low, and vice versa.  Not even its mother could love it.  They are like wallowing watering troughs.
They carry a five-man crew and will lug a tank ashore.  They come in abreast closer than anything so far.  Those six somehow epitomize the whole affair.  I can pick out figures - almost faces - with my glasses. To the men on shore they must look like ministering angels.

CAPTAIN’S ARMS AKIMBO

I can see the burly captain and even at this distance notice his arms akimbo.  He is contemptuously looking at our towering warship and staring it out of countenance.
Then he sweeps the battle with uncomplimentary eye - the very image of a Hudson River tugboat captain.  If I talked to him, I bet he would have a tough Jersey accent and would take back talk from nobody, see - not from the Germanys, nor from a warship.
We let go an eight-inch-gun salvo over his right eye that must at least establish a feeling of joint respect.
All the time I have been typing, the ship has been blasting ahead.  The typewriter jumps with the jolt.

PARATROOPERS COME IN

Midnight.  We are, I think, winning the battle.  And here is the place to stop, because I have just seen the most glorious sight of all.  The paratroopers have come in.  It was a scene of almost unbelievable romance and it probably revolutionizes warfare.
Right out of the east came suddenly a bigger and bigger roar of sound, as if all the planes in England were droning, and then there appeared line on line of big bombers, each towing a glider.
They curved over us in a mighty crescent and sped over the shore into the sunset.
Then, as the first batch passed and the second appeared, the bombers of the first were coming back again singly, this time having released their gliders filled with crack troops to reinforce the weary invasion companies that have battled all day.
Just at 11 o’clock, a new batch, even bigger than before, skimmed over in the late dusk of double summer time.  They were so close you could see the rope that bound plane and glider taut as a fiddle string - all in perfect formation.
In each of the three earlier flights, there were many planes and as many gliders.  Just now there are even more.

FANTASY OUT OF FUTURE

It was a fantasy out of the future.
Last week, when correspondents on the battle fleet were briefed, we were told something about airborne troops.  It seemed fantastic - the number was so large.  But I am beginning to believe it.
What a sigh that overhead reinforcement must have been to the muddy, blackened men below.  It had the dash and elan of a cavalry charge.
After seeing the things I have in the past 24 hours, I know one thing now - the road may be tough but we can’t lose.