Early in September, 1944—D-day plus 86, to be exact—SCHAEF was desperate for captured ports through which to supply the rapidly advancing Allied armies in European Theatre of Operations.
Beaches Utah and Omaha were rapidly deteriorating. They were becoming too far distant from the fluid front. Cherbourg, the only captured port thus far in operation, was also hundreds of miles from Patton’s astonishing, slugging Third Army.
In a conference with SCHAEF Rear Admiral John Wilkes, then Commander Captured Ports and Bases, Europe, warned that the beaches would be useless by November. He had seen the ruin resulting from the storm on D-day plus 13. More violent storms, and violent storms in the winter season are not unusual, might result in complete collapse of the vital flow of supplies and men—men who were hammering the Hermans relentlessly to total defeat.
As yet the Channel Islands were still in the control of the Nazis, and the British were reluctant to destroy them by assault. St. Malo, St. Nazaire, Nantes, and Dinard were either hopelessly ruined or still controlled in isolated but vital spots by German forces. Antwerp, which was the pet hope in the PLAN, had fallen. Sixty to seventy thousand tons of Allied tonnage a day could be handled in that mighty shipping city, but not while the Huns still controlled the Scheldte. And Foxy Jerry was still holding on to the Scheldte for all he was worth.
The millions of Allied troops now on the continent required 40,000 tons of ammunition and supplies daily. “A lodgment on the continent of Europe” had been definitely established. But a good war might easily be lost if a port could not be opened—and soon!
Le Havre was a must port.
However, defending German armies realized the importance of the port of Le Havre to the Allies. They fought stubbornly to keep the attacking British back. The city was well fortified; the garrison was ample to sustain a long, rugged siege. To capture Le Havre without totally ruining the port facilities was a serious problem.
Attack from the sea was not practicable. Mines, E-boats, and shore batteries would run the cost too high for the attacking fleet; also the devastation resulting from large calibre naval gun-fire might render the port useless for too many months.
On September 9 the Allied air force bombed the city. But their targets—modern steel and concrete pillboxes on the water front, named “Scharnliorst, Prinz Wilhelm, Hindenburg” after the German fleet—were almost impregnable to air attack.
It was a stormy day, and the thousands of tons of bombs dropped by the Allies missed their targets by a quarter mile. The entire business and industrial area of Le Havre was completely demolished, and 5,000 French civilians died under the smoking rubble from the bombing, while German troops safely ensconced in their bomb-proof pillboxes 500 yards distant were completely unharmed.
Two days later the aim was better; another attack by Allied air bombers neutralized the heavy defending guns. During the lull resulting from the neutralizing bombing, British artillery hauled into position. It was the beginning of the end for the German garrison.
They capitulated on September 12—but not until they had done a thorough job of demolition on the port.
Le Havre is a tidal port. During spring tides, the tides run as high as 27 feet, and during neap tides as high as 22 feet. Tidal basins constitute 90 per cent of the shipping facilities. With no tidal basins left usable after demolition, there would be no port—or so thought Jerry.
The German is as methodical in his demolition as he is in his assault planning. But his arrogance discounts the resources of the other team, something a good coach never should do. In this case Jerry discounted Yankee ingenuity and resourcefulness.
The writer moved his reconnaissance party into Le Havre on September 13, the day after the garrison surrendered.
My instructions were to report daily by courier messenger to Rear Admiral Wilkes. He required all information regarding the condition of the outer harbor, the inner anchorage, the basins, and the beaches, as well as recommendations as to planning and procedure.
Words scarcely describe the desolation I had to report.
Air bombs had ruined the industrial section of the city, shells from the invading artillery had smashed the residential section, and the harbor and port facilities had been completely demolished by the German garrison before capitulation.
I viewed the picture first at low tide. The quay walls were sluffed and broken by the huge naval mines used as demolition charges and placed every 300 feet along the quay wall. Wrecks were everywhere, their careening superstructures sticking up slovenly through the sloppy, oily water. The entrance to the harbor was blockaded by a dozen sunken vessels, some of these blockades being 3,000 tonners or over. The caissons and gates to the demolished basins were torn and twisted, and the basins themselves filled with sunken wrecks. The inner harbor was hopelessly blocked with sunken, concrete-laden hulks, and the outer harbor was filled with deadly oyster mines. The beaches were cluttered with teltratreda, hedgehogs, and element C’s. The dredged channel leading to the entrance between Digue Nord and Digue Sud was littered with oyster mines, along with acoustic and magnetic mines for good measure.
From Rue Strassbourg to the water front the entire southern section of the city was flattened. All along Rue Gobelin to Ste. Addresse was the same smoking, stinking rubble, the same desolate ruin. And this had formerly been the business district of the great shipping center of Le Havre, pride of the French Line, home port of the Paris, lie de France, and Normandie, and the entrance of the famous trans-Atlantic Cable terminal to Europe.
The railroad yards and bridges crossing the basins were a mass of twisted wreckage, resembling nothing so much as a huge platter of french fried onions. Here and there a ghostlike signal tower weaved crazily. Shipyards, E-boat pens, drydocks, all were demolished beyond belief.
No—Le Havre looked like a bad bet.
I should, I said to myself, send a brief dispatch to the Admiral: “This port no bargain. Suggest British keep it.” But I didn’t.
The French citizenry were unhappy; apparently they took a dim view of having their city liberated in this manner. Some few of them were downright unfriendly and sullen. But the general picture was of sober, melancholy people following endless funeral processions, slogging through mud to funeral services in cold, windowless, broken churches.
I mentally agreed with Colonel Leslie, the Commander of the British Occupying Forces, who aptly remarked, “If liberation means destruction of one’s family and home, it takes a broad viewpoint to welcome it.” And, I thought, it will take some first-rate “public relationing” to conciliate these sad, unfortunate allies of ours.
In all fairness, the citizens of Le Havre had a legitimate gripe. They really were a beaten people, homeless, destitute, and hungry.
One of the phenomena of World War II was the War Memorial of World War I at Le Havre. Situated almost in the very center of the worst devastated area, its beautiful granite, inscribed with the names of French heroes who had died “pour La France," was practically unscathed. After our entry many memorial services were held at this monument by the Allied Forces, and it became a shrine to the discouraged people of the ruined city.
The result of all this preliminary survey of the prospective port was most discouraging. Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base at Le Havre would be confronted with serious problems.
First, it would take 7,500 Naval personnel to rehabilitate and operate this ruined port—maybe more, afloat and ashore. Where could that number of men be housed?
Then there was the question of mine sweepers, patrol craft, harbor craft, landing craft—where to moor them, repair them, subsist them, hospitalize them?
And since any naval advanced base in a combat area must necessarily have enough reserve personnel for replacements, in case of a serious air attack by the enemy, normal requests for personnel must be multiplied by two. To insure safety of supplies, the safety factor must be even greater than normal.
The Base organization ashore, with all its elements, would itself be a major problem.
First on the list would be the Port Director’s outfit, including Convoy and Routing, Pilots and Operations.
There would be the Harbor Entrance Control Post, which must include radar sweep with proper patrol and screening craft.
Communications, with a cross-Channel hook-up, would be a vital element. Until the Army could re-establish the land wire lines, a suitable contact with Paris, Cherbourg, and the Beaches must be established. Furthermore all dispatches would have to be in cipher or code, even down to dispatches concerning the supply of toilet paper, or the new methods of BuMed for treating sailors for psycho-neurosis. All those dispatches might require dozens of qualified, critical personnel to decode.
The Salvage job would be enormous, and Commodore Sullivan and all his technicians would have to be housed and subsisted. Their vital salvage craft must be moored in sheltered water, and these too must be subsisted and repaired.
Then there was the problem of Engineering and Repair for Base vessels and those in the turn-around. The number of mined vessels, torpedoed vessels, or ships with their bottoms torn out by submerged obstacles or wrecks would be high—an estimate that later proved to be most correct.
Construction and Maintenance, including barracks, pontoon work, and transportation, would require the labor of at least 2,000 Seabees. And while everyone knows Seabees can sleep anywhere and eat anything, still somebody has to provide the “anywhere” and “anything.”
Then, mine disposal squads would be required to clear basins of pea mines. Removal of booby traps and land mines, before a command of curious bluejackets started wandering around, would save hundreds of lives and maybe several times that many limbs.
Security, including Intelligence, would be an important item. For one thing we would need a shore patrol to keep hungry sailors from eating up the scanty food supply of the French civilians.
Medical attention had to be considered. There would have to be a hospital with beds enough to care for survivors from mined and damaged vessels. Also, with only a few hours of daylight in the winter, and with barracks cold and drafty, there’d probably be a lot of cat fever in this cold hole—not to mention dysentery or typhoid, what with the ruptured water mains and the sewage all fouled up.
The next problem coming up would be a supply dump with sufficient capacity to furnish spares and equipment for all the harbor craft. And as for the personnel—well, 7,500 men can use an awful lot of clothing and small stores.
Last but not least, Administration alone for an outfit like this would be a problem of magnitude. The chaplains and welfare officers would have plenty to do, since there was no recreation ashore in the city. There’d have to be post offices; you couldn’t forget all the merchant sailors who would be purchasing money orders by the thousands—and as many more who would be demanding their pay in American dollars or British pounds, and then converting it into francs ashore. The public relations and legal sections would have their time well occupied, too, what with jeeps and trucks tearing through the narrow streets with no sidewalks, and with the French citizens already not too friendly. And since the narrow sidewalks were already completely full of rubble from the demolished buildings, there was no place for the civilian population to walk or to ride their precious bicycles except out in the narrow streets. Yes, there’d be plenty of legal work for the occupying American Forces.
Still, after commanding the USNAAH at Falmouth, Cornwall, and after the more confused situation at Utah Beach, these problems did not appear insurmountable. In addition there were also sonic favorable circumstances.
For instance, Rear Admiral Wilkes was an intelligent, reasonable man to serve, as was also Commodore Sullivan, with his able assistants, Colonel Way and Commander Wiley Roten. They would handle the removal of underwater wrecks. Unquestionably this was the ablest combination in the world on this type of work. The British forces were most willing and cooperative, as were also the brilliant and intelligent French engineers. The Army, under the able direction of Brigadier General William Hoge, were a rugged, experienced Port Command.
Anyhow, the prospective Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base, Le Havre, was confronted with several firm premises on which to base plans. First, Le Havre must be rehabilitated; second, its immediate use as a port was mandatory; third, the personnel, tonnage, and vehicles disembarked at Le Havre and Rouen must equal that of Beaches Utah and Omaha by January, 1945, at latest.
It was as simple as that. That is, it was before the historic Battle of the Bulge, when Hitler attempted his last desperate attempt to secure a conditional surrender. But that was still in the unsuspected future, so on 14 September I sent the following message to Commander Ports and Bases France:
Problems involved in rehabilitation of Le Havre not insurmountable. Recommend minesweepers start clearing outer harbor at once. Salvage personnel and equipment necessary for speedy clearing of inner harbor must be substantially greater than that which was necessary for Cherbourg. Ten tidal berths inside breakwaters can be made available within ten days. Alternate channel to entrance can be used at high tide pending removal of oyster mines from dredged channel.
Estimate four divisions of LET’s and four Rhinos necessary for unloading transports and MT’s pending clearing of quayside space by Army engineers for alongside moorings.
Beaches inside breakwaters can be used in any weather. Will clear outside beaches for use of landing craft; use doubtful in stormy weather, except in extreme emergency. Estimate ten or twelve LST’s can be beached and discharged each tide as soon as beaches inside breakwater are cleared of obstacles and entrance to harbor cleared sufficiently to allow vessels of that tonnage to enter. Optimistic guess estimate—eight days.
Basins and alongside tidal berths might be made available in not less than six weeks; repair of gates and locks limiting items.
Pontoon pier to accommodate four large Troopers or Liberties can be installed by Seabees in three weeks if Army can procure piling.
Base facilities limited. Lighting and water must be supplied by temporary Naval installation until repairs to power plant and city utilities can be effected—probably thirty days from this date.
Following operations can be commenced immediately and simultaneously: sweeping outer harbor and alternate channel; clearing beaches for landing craft and ships; building pontoon pier; establishing Base activities ashore.
Immediately alternate channel is swept to allow lifting craft to approach harbor entrance, removal of wrecks in inner harbor can be started. Salvage party under Colonel Way reports narrow entrance perhaps a hundred feet wide can be cleared within twenty-four hours after arrival of lifting craft and salvage tugs. This will allow sweepers and lugs to enter inner harbor to clear channel to tidal berths. Five to six days from this date possible. Recommend vessels of small beam and draft be loaded with Liberty ship moorings and jewelry for ten berths, with fore and aft moorings.
Daily conference laid on with Army Port Engineers, British Royal Engineers, French Port Engineers. Will advise daily plans and progress.
Almost before the officer courier could arrive in Cherbourg with this communication, Naval personnel were arriving in Le Havre. The 1006th Seabee Battalion motored into the ruined city bringing with them lumber, space heaters, generator sets, and water purifying equipment. Port Director personnel, comprising part of the original Drew-Six outfit formerly destined for the Chastity operation in Cuberon Bay, arrived next day under Commander Charles A. Olsen, U.S.N.R.
Sweepers under Command Minesweepers West, a doughty and seasoned British Naval officer, raised gouts of water with their detonations early in the dawn the following morning. Hard on the heels of the saucy little sweepers, two lifting craft crept warily to the breakwater entrance at nightfall.
Whenever the minesweepers signalled that it was safe, frantically working divers almost in their wake rigged slings on the sunken hulks blocking the entrance.
Now divers can’t work when minesweepers arc detonating big mines anywhere within several miles. And minesweepers can’t work in rough weather—and divers can’t work in rough weather. So how they both accomplished their missions under the weather conditions and in the set target date is still a big mystery to me—and a bigger tribute to them.
The process of removing sunken wreckage is interesting at any time; a job like that done at Le Havre is doubly interesting.
Slings which have been rigged at high tide are, at the next low tide, hooked onto the cables drooling from the sturdy tusks of the lifting craft. As the tide rises, cables creak and groan. Tugs haul and strain. Cutting torches hiss and sputter.
It moves—or slides reluctantly out of the channel! An eighty foot opening on the first tide becomes a hundred and twenty feet on the second—enough to let the sweepers enter, followed by more salvage tugs on the next high tide. Around the clock, aching bodies and tired minds clear the narrow channel. With time pressing, they buoy a wreck which will have to remain until there is more time for its removal. Threading such waters will require careful maneuvering by prudent and skillful pilots, but it can be done and the ship can enter the precious moorings in sheltered water inside the breakwater.
Once Liberties or Troopers get into sheltered water where landing craft and DUKW’s can ferry their cargo ashore, the problem of unloading is simple to these veterans from the beaches of Utah and Omaha. It takes longer, of course, and requires an extra handling than when done in an alongside berth, but vital supplies can continue to flow uninterrupted in all weather.
The operations I have just described in the above paragraphs took just four days!
Simultaneously Army engineers ashore were laying track, repairing bridges and railheads. Beaches for LST’s were cleared of mines and obstacles. Bulldozers smoothed the sand and shale at low tide to make proper grades for drying out and unloading. The skilled quay walls were sounded. Piles driven here would keep a ship clear of the rubble; a pontoon camel there would allow her to come alongside safely except in extreme low spring tides. Seabees commenced assembling the pontoon pier, eighty feet wide and eighteen hundred feet long. British Royal Marines constructed the Bailey Bridge; this ingenious device with a ramp hinged to the shore allowed traffic to enter or leave the giant steel float at any state of the tide. French engineers with the aid of American equipment were lifting the sunken, broken gates of the locks and basins.
For the sake of brevity that 13th day of September, 1944, which marked the arrival of Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base at Le Havre will hereafter in this record be designated as F-day (“F” standing for FUBAR, which is an abbreviation of “Fouled Up Beyond All Repair”).
Well, on F-day plus six, the first Liberty ship entered the inner harbor. By this time Commodore Sullivan’s tireless salvage crew had widened the opening between the wrecks in the entrance to about three hundred feet. This was at extreme high tide, of course; it might be only two-thirds of that distance at low spring tides. A trot of twelve mooring buoys had been laid in the southern part of the harbor, which would allow eleven Liberty ships or Troopers to moor bow and stern. The Army had said that we needed wet berths for fourteen ships; we Navy people knew we could moor twenty-two by the simple expedient of double berthing. That confidential knowledge, however, we kept as an ace in the hole in case the Army got gusty by reporting to SCHAEF that they could unload more ships than the Navy could berth.
Daily conferences with the U. S. Army indicated that by F-day plus thirty the port of Le Havre would be required to meet a target tonnage of 6,000 tons daily. That’s a lot of supplies to unload from wet berths with the limited ferry craft which could be spared from the overworked beaches on Normandy.
Meantime the problems of the Base organization were increasing.
Even the ablest officers, accustomed to bivouac themselves and their men in meagre quarters on more meagre rations, were encountering difficulties. The housing situation, already acute on F-day, had reached an almost impossible pass on F-day plus eight. The ruined city was attempting to house the homeless population in every available structure. Yet Navy personnel increased each day as the vital Communications, Repair, and Administrative components joined the frantic, slugging activities.
The Army was squawking because the Navy had requisitioned all prime ruins. There were only 5,000 Navy compared to 20,000 Army personnel who must be quartered, and it was no fair, said the Army, that the Navy had all the best quarters and office buildings. It took a lot of Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base’s valuable time to convince the Army that the best way to correct the situation was to get in and pitch—rebuild the ruins to make them more livable.
It was, we hinted, no use to sit on your ditty box and grouse. Why when the Navy entered the city, there hadn’t been a piece of glass in a single window—nor a single window to put it into! General Hoge and his able assistants, Colonel Salmon and Major Israel, soon caught on to the idea.
It is surprising how smoothly things can run, when all hands pitch in and co-operate. In a matter of two conferences all hands were satisfied—if not entirely comfortable.
On their part the French citizens soon discovered that the American Bluejacket or G. I. was a pretty good Joe-—a man who shared his food or cigarette rations with them, a man who loved little French kids who were hungry. The sullen attitude of the populace rapidly became genial and friendly. Their willing shoulders to the wheel hoisted many a loaded wagon out of the ruts of the muddy turmoil of Le Havre’s complicated politics and problems.
On November 1 (F-day plus 48) the target tonnage of Le Havre was increased to 8,000 tons daily. We were informed that in addition the port must disembark 300,000 troops during the month of November. 240,000 tons of supplies and 300,000 soldiers, plus their equipment and vehicles, which did not count in the tonnage, wasn’t hay.
Hut the pontoon pier was completed and the wet berths were full, with almost all ships double berthed. DUKW’s and ferry craft unloaded the convoys around the clock. Salvage and French engineers promised the basins by November 15—or at the very latest by Christmas.
British Salvage finally moved the big sunken 10,000 ton tanker which had been blocking use of the Seine to Rouen. In fact Admiral Wilkes was already raising hell because the Port of Rouen was not operating, and ordered me to open it as a sub command of Le Havre. Commander Ed Morris was designated as my sub-base commander at Rouen.
So the mines were swept from the Seine, but they weren’t the only trouble. “Old Papa Seine” has a habit of changing his course frequently. And now, what with four years of German occupation and no world traffic in this great river, a whole set of new channels had to be plotted.
But something that has to be done just has to be done. Rouen could, and in no time did, unload as much tonnage as Le Havre. Ships could be piloted up the Seine at high tide, unloaded like blazes, and returned to the “Pasture” at Le Havre at a closely following high tide.
By F-day plus 78 Le Havre and Rouen were unloading more supplies and troops than the Army needed.
And then all of a sudden the unsuspected future became the most immediate present. It was just that moment that Hitler picked for his Battle of the Bulge. . . .
It was 2:30 that December day, and snowing hard, and Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base, Le Havre, had just returned from a call on the Admiral’s stall. Standing before the meagre fire in the little French grate at my house on Rue Phillipe Barrey, I was just removing my snow covered blouse. In burst Lieutenant Gerald Danzig, my aide, accompanied by Lieutenant Steve Nolan, the administrative officer. Not only were they excited, they were highly impatient. It was evident that these two officers were bearers of no good news.
“Just heard, Skipper, that the Krauts have broken through at Aachen, or whatever that place is called! Report has it that the entire First Army is surrounded and the Boche are headed for the big Army supply dumps at Liege. Two hundred thousand tons of supplies at those concentrations—and that’s a lot of supplies! Montgomery in the North entirely cut off from Bradley in the southern sector!”
Other officers entered the sober conference. They watched the slow fire in the grate, glanced toward me without removing snowy clothes. This would be rugged business if the
First Army was lost. That supply dump at Liege was the biggest on the continent; it represented more supplies than Le Havre and Rouen could off-load in a month. Wasted would be all those weeks of tiring, punishing work, all the worries and all the men who had died on mined ships. Not nice, but— —“C’est la guerre!"
I think it was a young British officer who first broke the silence of that circle of officers surrounding the small grate of the Commander U. S. Naval Advance Amphibious Base, Le Havre. He said:
“You blokes can do it. It’s only a matter of a few days, with your Bradley and our Monty. The damned Huns can’t match them. Nor can they match your set-up here at Le Havre.”
Then Olsen, the Port Director, casually said, “Skipper, what we did last week is nothing to what we will do next week. Thirty ships a tide is nothing to what we can do if we put our shoulders to it. Them Jerries (he pronounced it ‘Yerries,’ which Ollie always did when he was excited)—them Jerries know they are beaten, and so do we. You get the ships here, Skipper, and I’ll guarantee to get them in and off-loaded.”
And his promise was sound. We did. You can’t beat Yankee ingenuity and resourcefulness—not even with automobile, steel-coal, or railroad strikes.
It’s the people who count—not the Navy or Army officers—not the demagogues of union or industrial leaders—not the Republicans or Democrats—not the dictators!
No, it’s the people who count—good, hard slugging, hard thinking people who are willing to work unselfishly for the principles of free men.
A graduate mechanical engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Commodore Arnold served in the Naval Reserve in World War I. Commissioned in the regular Navy in 1918, he served 6 years in Submarines before returning to the Volunteer Naval Reserve in 1926. In 1933 and 1934 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Returning to active duty in 1940, Commodore Arnold was administrative officer, supervisor of Shipbuilding, Bethlehem Steel Company at Quincy, Massachusetts, until ordered to command the advanced amphibious base at Falmouth, England. Later he commanded the U. S. Naval Advance Base at Le Havre, France, during the Normandy campaign.