Painting by Ted Archer of the
attack on US LSTs during Exercise
Tiger, 27/28 April 1944
A fully loaded USS LST-507 was photographed in Brixham Harbor, England,
late in the afternoon of April 27, 1944. Less than twelve hours later, she was
torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel by German E-boats off Slapton Sands,
England.
The remains of USS LST-289 in port, after being struck by a German
torpedo.
A Sherman tank stands as a memorial for Allied soldiers killed during
Exercise Tiger at Slapton Sands, Devon. The tank was raised from the sea in
1984.
Most of us know the significance of June 6, 1944. We have
been taught, have read about, and have seen movie and television depictions of
how, on that date during World War II, Allied forces crossed the English
Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in the largest amphibious
attack in history. What is little known, however, is the devastating sacrifice
of a convoy of ships and men as they staged a rehearsal for the attack on
Normandy’s Utah Beach, a sacrifice that resulted in a greater death toll than
was later exacted during the actual invasion of Utah Beach.
Plans for the Normandy invasion had been launched in Morocco
during the Casablanca Conference, where U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt
and British prime minister Winston Churchill met with their top military
advisors from January 14 to 24, 1943. The plan was code-named Operation
Overlord, and its architects were well aware that they were setting in motion
one of the greatest military invasions ever launched, one that would include an
Allied force of some three million men, including one and a half million
Americans. Transportation for this enormous force was to be provided by a fleet
of more than 1,200 warships that would protect 4,126 landing craft and 1,600
merchant ships and other vessels. Support was also to be provided by some
11,590 airplanes and 3,500 gliders.
It was, to say the least, to be a monumental undertaking,
and there were many Allied officers who were less than confident that their
troops were ready for it. As Harry C. Butcher, an aide to Supreme Commander
Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote in his memoirs,
I am concerned over
the absence of toughness and alertness of young American officers . . . they
seem to regard the war as one grand maneuver in which they are having a happy
time. Many seem as green as growing corn. How will they act in battle . . . ? A
good many of the full colonels also give me a pain. They are fat, grey, and
oldish. Most of them wear the Rainbow Ribbon of the last war and are still
fighting it. . . . On the Navy’s side, our crews are also green, but they seem
to know how to handle their boats, yet . . . I recall that in plain daylight,
with a smooth sea with our [ship] standing still, she nearly had her stern carried
away by a landing craft . . . fitted out as an anti-aircraft ship. We were
missed only by inches—in clear daylight.
Butcher’s concerns about the readiness of the Allied forces
were far from his alone, and it was decided that in the months preceding the
actual assault a series of mock invasions fully simulating the real landings
would be staged. Numerous invasion exercises were held in various places in
southern England, with several of them being staged at Woolacomb.
During these rehearsals, landing craft would attempt to land
“invading” troops on coastlines similar to Normandy while artillery and land
forces would try to beat them back. The first of these mock invasions, to be
held in three phases in January and February 1944, was code-named Exercise Duck.
The second, Exercise Beaver, would take place in late March, and the
largest—and most controversial—rehearsal would be launched in April. It was
code-named Exercise Tiger.
The military had deemed simulated invasions necessary not
only because of concern over the readiness of the troops and the magnitude of
the actual assault but also because the real landings would be unlike anything
that had ever been attempted. The landings would not only be larger and more
complex, but they would also involve a whole new military tactic. Earlier World
War II invasions had been carried out by first sending in infantry and combat
engineers, who established a beachhead by clearing away mines and any other
human or man-made obstacles to a successful assault. Once the beachhead was
established, the armored equipment was sent in. At both Utah Beach and Omaha
Beach, which were to be invaded by American forces, the procedure was to be
markedly different. The initial assault wave would be made up of engineers and
demolition teams. Then a relatively new military weapon—amphibious tanks known
as LSTs (landing ship, tank)—would be floated in. LSTs would carry the troops,
the battle tanks, and all the other armored equipment. First developed after
the British disaster at Dunkirk demonstrated a vital need for that type of
ship, LSTs were constantly improved during World War II. They had proved to be
key to the successful invasions of Algeria and various Japanese-held Pacific
islands.
The site for Exercise Tiger was carefully chosen, the
criterion being a place that closely resembled Utah Beach. And the beach
bordering the village of Slapton, Devon, on Lyme Bay, east of Plymouth, fit the
bill perfectly. Like the Utah Beach area where the actual invasion would take
place, the locale known as Slapton Sands featured a broad gravel beach that
fronted a wide expanse of land, which in turn fronted a lake. Like the Utah
Beach environs, the area around Slapton Sands was characterized by hedgerows
and narrow lanes.
In November 1943, the villagers of Slapton along with those
in neighboring Torcross, Strete, East Allington, Blackawton, Sherford,
Stokenham, Blackpool Sands, and Chillington received astounding news. Under
authority of the 1939 Compensation (Defence) Act, the British government ordered
that 3,000 people, 750 families, 180 farms, and numerous village shops be
totally evacuated within six weeks. All household goods, animals, farm
machinery and other agricultural implements, and as many crops as could be
quickly harvested were to be removed. In return, the British government
promised to pay all costs connected with the evacuation, pledged that it would
do everything it could to find and pay for accommodations for the evacuees, and
would pay for any damages to the villagers’ property incurred during Exercise
Tiger operations.
The residents of the area were shocked. After repeated
explanations from government and military officials, most came to understand
the need for rehearsals for the upcoming vital invasion. But why Slapton and
the surrounding villages? Why such a rich agricultural area when the need for
homegrown food was greater than ever? But there was no room for argument. The
government made it clear that the residents had no choice. The stage was set
for Exercise Tiger.
This notice was posted several weeks before the evacuation:
NOTICE
The public are
reminded that requisition took effect from 16th November, from which date
compensation is calculated. They will not, except for special reason, be
disturbed in their possession until December 21st, but from that date the
Admiralty may at any time, and without prior notice, enforce their right to
immediate possession. It is therefore essential that EVERY PERSON SHOULD LEAVE
THE AREA BY DECEMBER 20TH.
On December 21st the
supply of electricity in the area will cease. The present measures for
supplying food will not be continued, but will be replaced by arrangements of a
purely emergency character. The police stations will be closing during the
present week.
The giant series of rehearsals for Exercise Tiger commenced
on April 22, 1944, with the first assault landings scheduled the morning of the
twenty-seventh. According to English author Ken Small, who devoted more than
twenty years to attempting to unlock the secrets of Exercise Tiger, and others,
the initial rehearsal was characterized by the same type of tragic blunders
that would mark the entire operation. According to Small, because of concerns
over the battle readiness of the officers and troops and in order to simulate
real battle conditions, Eisenhower had ordered that live ammunition be fired
over the heads and in front of the “invading” troops. But vital errors were
made in conveying the radio frequency numbers to be used in establishing
communications between the ships that were shelling the beach with live
ammunition and the troops that were being landed. The situation was made even
more disastrous when the troops hit the Slapton Sands beach a full hour after
their scheduled arrival. The result was that dozens of soldiers were killed
when the shellings and the landings took place at the same time. And even more
men lost their lives when, again because of a lack of communications caused by
the radio frequency errors, some fired at one another in mock combat without
realizing that their ammunition was live. For years the U.S. Department of
Defense denied that these “friendly fire” incidents ever took place. And they
were but a prelude to a much greater disaster that lay ahead.
The stage for that tragedy was set in the beginning of the
last week of April 1944, when a convoy of eight huge LSTs carrying thousands of
troops in the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Amphibian Division made their
way toward Slapton Sands. Also packed from stem to stern on each LST were tons
of heavy equipment, including tanks, amphibious vehicles, trucks, and other
military vehicles to be used in the actual invasion. They began plowing their
way toward Lyme Bay and Slapton Sands. The eight ships (in order numbered 515,
496, 511, 58, 499, 289, 507, and 531) proceeded in a single line with each
vessel some four or five hundred yards behind the ship in front of it. Among
the orders that commanders aboard the LSTs had been given was “Attack by enemy
aircraft, submarines and E-boats [fast-moving surface vessels carrying either
two or four torpedoes, “E” standing for “enemy” in the parlance of British and
American sailors] may be expected en route to and in the exercise area.” Even
though the probability of such an assault seemed slim, several general alarm
drills had been held on April 26 and 27. But although the troops and the
sailors had been sent scrambling to their assigned positions, they had received
absolutely no instructions about procedures for abandoning ship or what was
expected of them in the event of an attack.
Protection for the convoy was the responsibility of the
Royal Navy. Two British destroyers, three motor torpedo boats, and two motor
gun boats were assigned to patrol the entrance to Lyme Bay, and several motor
torpedo boats were sent to monitor the Cherbourg area, where German E-boats
were based. Leading the convoy itself was HMS Azalea, a 205-foot Royal Navy
corvette, armed with one four-inch cannon and several anti-aircraft guns. A
second British vessel, the World War I destroyer HMS Scimitar, was assigned the
task of flanking the flotilla of eight LSTs for added protection.
Shortly after midnight on the twenty-eighth, just as the
convoy was entering Lyme Bay, HMS Onslow, one of the destroyers patrolling the
area, spotted an E-boat racing across the bay. The German vessel was moving too
rapidly to be pursued, but the Onslow reported the sighting to British
headquarters at Plymouth. Minutes later, the Onslow’s radar detected three
groups of E-boats some ten miles outside the Lyme Bay entrance. This news was
also immediately conveyed to headquarters, which relayed the information via
radio to the Azalea and the eight LSTs.
The Azalea got the message, but those aboard the LSTs heard
nothing. Once again, errors had been made in conveying radio frequencies, and
the radiomen aboard each of the LSTs were tuned to the wrong wavelength. For
the same reason, the LSTs did not receive another bit of news: the Scimitar had
experienced mechanical problems and had put into Plymouth for repairs. Only one
destroyer, and a slow one at that, was now protecting the convoy.
By about 1:30 a.m. on the twenty-eighth, the convoy was well
inside Lyme Bay. Aboard the LSTs, preparations were being made for the most
efficient landing of troops and the hundreds of vehicles once the beach at
Slapton Sands was reached. Suddenly, out of the darkness, nine E-boats
appeared. On routine patrol out of Cherbourg, their commanders were startled to
see a long line of Allied ships.
Called Schnellboots (literally, “fast boats”) by the
Germans, the E-boats were a special kind of war vessel. Because of restrictions
imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that limited the size of military
ships built by Germany, the E-boats were thirty-eight yards long and were
powered by three Daimler-Benz engines totaling 6,150 horsepower. This made them
extremely fast—ideal vessels for hit-and-run raids. In addition to torpedoes,
most E-boats were equipped with two or three twenty-millimeter cannons. Some
were armed with either a thirty-seven-millimeter or a forty-millimeter gun.
The E-boats that came upon the LST convoy had left Cherbourg
at about 10 p.m. on the twenty-seventh and had been undetected by the British
destroyers and smaller vessels responsible for monitoring the area. Later, one
of the E-boat commanders, a German lieutenant named Günther Rabe, described
what happened in Lyme Bay some three and a half hours later. “We crossed the
convoy route without any sign of ships,” Rabe recalled, “and cruised easterly
in the inner bay. Shortly before [2:30 a.m.] on the twenty-eighth we saw in the
southeast, indistinct shadows of a long line of ships that we did not
immediately identify as LSTs. . . . We thought at first they were tankers, or
possibly destroyers.”
As the Germans came within firing range of the LSTs, each
E-boat slowed down to ten knots and launched two torpedoes. Manny Reuben, a
petty officer aboard USS LST-496, the second LST in line, was on the bridge of
the vessel when, as he later recalled, someone shouted, “I can see a bow wave.”
Then, as he remembered,
We all saw it. A
speedy craft, low and slender, was indistinctly seen, about 1,000 yards off our
port bow, slipping through the silky smooth water. We fired many rounds at it
with our standard 40-mm battery but observed no results, although it was
clearly outlined by our tracers. The captain zigzagged, trying to keep our
stern directed toward flares and a searchlight that flashed off after a few
seconds. Our lookout reported a torpedo passing forward of our bow. An excited
soldier in a half-track on our deck fired its 50-mm machine gun to the port
quarter at what he imagined was an E-boat. It was too dark to tell. His slugs
struck LST-511 behind us, causing—I later learned—many severe wounds. We also
had several holes slanting upwards, from the low-slung E-boats shooting high at
us with their 20-mm and 40-mm cannon. One of these shells hit our galley and
another creased my head, knocking me out.
The cannon fire from the E-boats was doing damage, but
aboard his vessel Rabe was surprised that the two torpedoes he had launched had
not struck home. For the first time he began to suspect that perhaps the Allied
ships were shallow-draft LSTs and that the torpedoes had passed harmlessly
underneath them. Aiming higher, he launched two more torpedoes at the last ship
in the convoy. “[At 2:30 a.m.],” he later reported, “We saw that we had hit the
target. Fire was spreading from bow to stern rapidly, and a dense cloud of
smoke rose from the ship.”
The ship that Rabe had hit was USS LST-507, and the result
was something that Eugene Eckstam, a young doctor aboard the vessel, would
never forget.
General Quarters
rudely aroused us. . . . I remember hearing gunfire and saying they had better
watch where they were shooting or someone would get hurt. . . . I was stupidly
trying to go topside to see what was going on and suddenly “BOOM!” There was a
horrendous noise accompanied by the sound of crunching metal and dust
everywhere. The lights went out and I was thrust violently in the air to land
on the steel deck on my knees, which became very sore immediately thereafter.
Now I knew how getting torpedoed felt. But I was lucky. The torpedo hit
amidships starboard in the auxiliary engine room, knocking out all electric and
water power. . . . I checked below decks aft to be sure no one required medical
attention there. All men in accessible areas had gone topside.
The tank deck was a
different matter. As I opened the hatch, I found myself looking into a raging
inferno which pushed me back. It was impossible to enter. The screams and cries
of those many American troops in there still haunt me. Navy regulations call
for [closing and locking] the hatches to preserve the integrity of the ship,
and that’s what I did. [It was] one of the most difficult decisions I have ever
made, and one that gave me nightmares for years—and still does . . . but
knowing that there was absolutely no way anyone could help [those below in the
tank deck], and knowing that smoke inhalation would end their miseries soon, I
closed the hatches. . . .
We were forced to
leave the ship. . . . Gas cans and ammunition exploding and the enormous fire
blazing only a few yards away are sights forever etched in my memory.
LST-507’s nineteen-year-old motor mechanic’s mate, Angelo
Crapanzano, had his own vivid memories. When he heard his ship’s guns firing,
Crapanzano approached an officer to ask him what was happening. The officer
replied, “I guess they’re trying to make it as real as possible.” The officer’s
words were hardly out of his mouth when, as Crapanzano later recalled,
There was a deafening
roar, and everything went black. I felt myself going up and down, hitting my
head on something. I must have blacked out for a few seconds, but then I felt
cold water around my legs. I scrambled up the ladder. The six guys in the
auxiliary engine room, just forward of where I was, never knew what hit them. .
. .
When I got topside, I
couldn’t believe what I saw: The ship was split in half and burning, fire went
from the bow all the way back to the wheelhouse. . . . And the water all around
the ship was burning, because the fuel tanks ruptured. And the oil went into
the water. . . . We had fifteen Army ducks [amphibious vehicles] and every Army
duck had cans of gasoline on them, and all that was going into the water, so it
was like an inferno.
Four ships ahead of LST-507 on USS LST-511, medical officer
Clifford Graves looked on in horror as LST-507 erupted into flames. “Suddenly,”
he later wrote, “there was [another] explosion. It had a dull sound, as though
a great heavy mass had fallen onto a heavily carpeted floor. The LST behind us
[531] burst into flames all at once. She seemed to have disintegrated with that
one burst.”
Gazing in horror at USS LST-531, seaman Thomas Holcombe,
aboard one of the other LSTs, saw “trucks, men, and jeeps flying through the
air.”
Less than ten minutes after being torpedoed, LST-531 sank to
the bottom.
In the explosions that had destroyed both LST-507 and
LST-531, almost every lifeboat had been obliterated. Faced with only one
choice, those aboard these ships who had survived the blasts were forced to
jump into the waters of Lyme Bay. “Now we’ve got to go into the water,”
Crapanzano remembered.
There were a lot of
guys on the front end of the ship, and the tank deck was burning right under
them. . . . A lot of guys didn’t want to jump into the water right away. I
didn’t want to either. It got so hot on the deck that [our] shoes started
smoking, because the tank deck was burning fiercely, and that’s all metal. It’s
just like a gas jet stove, and all the heat’s going up to the top deck. . . .
I run to the railing
and I look down and I see all those guys in the water already. Now I say, “what
am I gonna do? I’m gonna jump and I’m gonna hit somebody.” Then I’m saying—this
is all in a split second—“when I jump in the water how deep down do I go before
I come up? Or do I come up right away?”
[What I know] because
in the engine room you had to take readings of a bunch of gauges . . . . was
that the reading on the salt water coming in was 43 degrees. What I didn’t know
was what 43 degrees felt like. So when I hit the water, it took my breath away,
that’s how cold it was.
Hundreds of the soldiers and sailors from LST-507 and
LST-531 died from hypothermia in the frigid water. And there was another
terrible problem. Not only had there been no abandon-ship drills conducted on
the LSTs as they made their way to Lyme Bay, there had been absolutely no
instructions given to the soldiers on the proper way to put on their inflatable
life belts. Already loaded down with backpacks and rifles, the soldiers found
it easier to put their life belts around their waists instead of under their
armpits as they should have done. The horrible result was that their high
center of gravity pitched scores of men face down into the frigid water, where
they drowned. “The worst memory I have,” crew member Dale Rodman of LST-507
later exclaimed, “[was] setting off in the lifeboat away from the sinking ship
and watching bodies float by.” LST-507 and LST-531 were not the only
unfortunate vessels in the bay. As torpedo wakes surged past both sides of USS
LST-289, its captain, Lieutenant Harry Mettler, began zigzagging his vessel
furiously. Just when it looked like the evasive action would be successful,
another torpedo was sighted heading for LST-289’s stern. Immediately Mettler
ordered full right rudder, but it was too late. As petty officer Martin
MacMahon, stationed on LST-289’s deck, later reported, the torpedo struck his
ship “like an earthquake.” When MacMahon looked behind him he saw that the
entire rear section of the ship was “smashed and curled over the navigation
bridge.” Everyone on the bridge had been blown off onto the deck, many of them
terribly injured. Miraculously, Mettler was not badly hurt. Observing that the
forward end of his ship was free of damage, he came up with what proved to be a
brilliant plan. Immediately he ordered that the two small landing craft aboard
the LST be lowered and that towlines be attached to them. Although it took
hours, LST-289 was eventually towed to shore.
As Graves later wrote, LST-511 was even more fortunate.
The convoy was now
broken up. . . . It was every ship for itself. We headed for the nearest land
which was 20 miles away; . . . I found out later that the captain of our ship
had no chart, and no idea of the minefields that had been laid down by the
British. Even if he had been able to call for help, it could never have got to
us in time. The corvette that was supposed to be our protection, we never saw.
We sat and waited for
the torpedo we knew would come. Our work was done. There was nothing to do but
wait. But the torpedo never came. The only way we would figure it was that they
had run out of torpedoes. Nothing else was there to stop them. At about six
o’clock in the morning, in the grey mist, we were able to make out land. An
hour later we were at anchor in the little harbor of Weymouth. Columbus himself
wouldn’t have been happier at the sight of land than we were that morning.
Graves had been right about the corvette assigned to protect
the convoy. Throughout the entire disaster, from the time the surface firing
began, through the torpedo strikes and the sinkings, the LSTs received no help
from the Azalea. Remarkably, the corvette’s captain later reported that he saw
no E-boats and received no calls for help from the LSTs (that, at least, was
understandable given the tragic wavelength errors). And Graves was also correct
in assuming that his ship and shipmates had been spared because the E-boats had
run out of torpedoes—that, and the fact that the whole operational policy of
the German raiders was to hit and run as quickly as possible.
As they sped back to Cherbourg, the commanders of several of
the E-boats were still uncertain as to what type of Allied ships they had
torpedoed. But they could not help but be aware that they had made a major
strike. What they could not know was that theirs was to be the most successful
E-boat raid of the entire war. The carnage they left behind was horrific.
Hundreds of soldiers and sailors had been killed in the explosions. Hundreds of
others had drowned. Scores of frightened men remained in the sea, waiting to be
saved.
Although the Azalea was still nowhere to be seen, two sister
ships of the Onslow did arrive to help in a rescue effort. “We arrived in the
area at daybreak, and the sight was appalling,” a warranty officer aboard one
of the British vessels later wrote. “There were hundreds of bodies . . . in the
sea. Many had their limbs and even their heads blown off, but some were still
alive. We took aboard all those we could find living and applied first aid and
resuscitation. . . . Small American landing craft with their ramps down were
literally scooping up bodies, driving them ashore, and dumping them on the beaches.
. . . Of all those we took on board, there were only nine survivors.”
The rescue effort had actually begun even before the two
British ships arrived. LST-507’s Dale Rodman had managed to climb aboard the
one lifeboat that had survived the destruction of his ship.
We pulled away from
[our]
sinking LST and began to pick up people from the water. I was startled to
see scores of dead soldiers floating in the water with their packs and
lifebelts on. The backpack and the lifebelt around their waists made them top
heavy and they were lying on their backs with their heads underwater. They had
been knocked unconscious by the impact of hitting the water when they jumped
overboard with their belts inflated, and they had drowned before they regained
consciousness. Those of us on the lifeboat located what survivors we could in
the darkness from the sound of their cries for help. Altogether there were
between fifty and sixty survivors aboard when we were picked up by a British
destroyer, HMS Onslow, at about 6:30 A.M. As I climbed to safety, I looked out
over the water and saw hundreds of bodies still floating there.
Once it became clear that the E-boats had left the scene,
the overall commander of the convoy had ordered all the surviving LSTs to head
immediately for Slapton Sands. But Lieutenant John Doyle, captain of USS
LST-515, could not bring himself to obey the order. How could he leave men from
the other ships behind to die in the sea? Ignoring the consequences of
disregarding a direct command, and with the overwhelming approval of those
aboard LST-515, he began to search for survivors. Sadly, there were only a few
who could be rescued, among them Ralph Bartholomay, a naval gunner on the
stricken LST-507.
Describing what he experienced after he had been in the
water for some time, Bartholomay later recalled,
I spotted some
wreckage with a few people hanging on so I swam over. There were the first live
persons I had seen in a while and it was encouraging. We were holding on to a
small piece of wreckage that wasn’t too stable and one fellow was trying to sit
up on it. Every time he tried, the object turned over and would spill us all
into the water. It seemed almost like a game. No one became angry, we were all
too tired. This is where I started to say the Lord’s Prayer over and over. I
was beginning to get drowsy, a bad sign in cold water, and praying supplied
some hope. I was starting to slip in and out of reality, with the unreal parts
getting longer, when I heard the faint sound of a boat engine with someone
calling out. Maybe some day I will hear a more welcome sound, but that night it
sounded like the answer to a prayer. When the boat came close enough, I saw it
was the LST-515 come back to pick us up. I mustered what strength I had left
and swam over. It was the longest ten yards I ever swam.
Bartholomay and several others owed their lives to Doyle’s
determination to follow his conscience and disobey a command. As for Doyle, he
not only escaped reprimand, but was eventually officially commended for his
actions.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 749 servicemen
were killed during Exercise Tiger. Eventually, other reports placed the death
toll considerably higher. Whatever the exact figure, this largest training
disaster of the war was only the beginning of the Exercise Tiger story. For
decades, the story of what had taken place at Lyme Bay was kept totally secret.
The public was never told what had occurred. When relatives of those who had
been killed tried to find out what happened to their loved ones, they were met
with a wall of silence. Eisenhower, the man in charge of every aspect of the
training exercise, never said a word about it in his best-selling memoirs.
The veil of secrecy began as early as mid-morning on April
28, 1944, when most of the surviving ships of the LST flotilla reached shore.
“When we got closer to land,” Corporal Eugene Carney of the 4th Infantry
Division recalled, “we saw a long, sloping road leading down to the water. Ambulances
were lined up bumper to bumper—a pitiful sight. We were unloaded from the ship
and put into trucks before the dead and wounded were removed. We were told to
keep our mouths shut and were taken to a camp where we were quarantined.”
The secrecy continued when the wounded survivors of Exercise
Tiger were taken to area hospitals. Captain Ralph Greene of the U.S. Army
Medical Corps served in the laboratory of the 228th Station Hospital at
Sherborne, Dorset. On the morning of April 28, he was going about his regular
duties when an announcement was made that all personnel in the hospital were to
assemble in the facility’s recreation room, where they would be addressed by
the hospital’s commander, Colonel James Kendall.
What a tense Kendall had to say came as a complete surprise.
He announced,
We’re in the war at
last. In less than an hour we’ll receive hundreds of emergency cases of shock
due to immersion, compounded by explosion wounds. SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters,
Allied Expeditionary Force] demands that we treat these soldiers as though
we’re veterinarians: you will ask no questions and take no histories. There
will be no discussion. Follow standard procedures. Anyone who talks about these
casualties, regardless of their severity, will be subject to court-martial. No
one will be allowed to leave our perimeter until further orders.
It was an astounding announcement, and if Greene or any of
his fellow hospital staff members had any doubts about the seriousness of the
situation, they were removed once they looked out one of the hospital’s
windows. The entire compound had been surrounded by counterintelligence troops,
each man carrying a bayoneted rifle.
About half an hour later, a host of ambulances and trucks
began pulling up to the hospital. “They were filled,” remembered Greene, “with
wet, shivering, blue-skinned, blanketed, and bandaged young Army and Navy men.”
In the hours that followed, hundreds of men, many of them in great pain, were
treated by the doctors, nurses, and orderlies without a single word being
exchanged between them. Many of the patients responded quickly to the
treatment. Many others required longer hospitalization. Others died.
A few days later, the bizarre episode ended as abruptly and
as mysteriously as it had begun when all the remaining patients were suddenly
removed from the hospital. Neither Greene nor any of his fellow personnel had
any idea of where they had come from or where they were taken. The code of
silence remained unbroken.
Unbeknownst to Greene, the same scenario had been played out
in other hospitals and casualty stations throughout the southwestern corner of
England. Wounded soldiers had suddenly arrived, hospital personnel were
forbidden to talk with them, armed troops surrounded the hospital, and within
days, whatever patients remained in the hospital were abruptly taken away.
So powerfully had the military authorities emblazoned the
need for secrecy on the survivors of Exercise Tiger that for decades they did
not discuss it publicly. In an interview he gave more than thirty years after
the events at Lyme Bay, Crapanzano stated that in all the years following the
disaster he never told anyone about it, not even his psychiatrist.
In 1974, many of the secrets of World War II became
available through the passage of the Freedom of Information Act. By this time,
the Exercise Tiger episode had been so long and so thoroughly buried that,
despite the FOIA, it remained largely unreported. Greene, however, had never
forgotten what he termed “that curious day” at the 228th Station Hospital. And
in the early 1980s, while gathering material for a book he intended to write on
the effects of malaria and hepatitis in World War II, he unexpectedly got the
opportunity to try to satisfy a mystery that had perplexed him for more than
forty years.
Stumbling upon previously unrevealed accounts of Exercise
Tiger, he decided to put his book on hold while he attempted to contact
survivors of the episode named in the documents he had encountered. What he
discovered was that those who responded to him, including Eugene Carney, were
enormously relieved to at last be able to relate their stories.
These initial accounts, when revealed, elicited a response
from the British and American media that perhaps should have been expected.
Typical of the statements included in newspaper reports and in a three-part
report aired by a Washington, D.C., television station were such proclamations
as: “It was a disaster which lay hidden from the world for forty years . . . an
official American Army cover-up.” “That a massive cover-up took place is beyond
doubt. And that General Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized it is equally clear.”
“Generals Omar N. Bradley and Eisenhower watched the ‘murderous chaos’ and were
horrified and determined that details of their own mistakes would be buried
with the men.” “Relatives of the dead men have been misinformed—and even lied
to—by their government.” “It was a story the government kept quiet . . . hushed
up for decades . . . a dirty little secret of World War II.”
Strong words—but was it really a cover-up? Or were there
legitimate reasons why Exercise Tiger was cloaked in secrecy? In the 1980s,
when more information about the ill-fated exercise became available, it became
clear that there might well have been an important reason for strict suppression
of information immediately following the disaster. Records revealed that among
those aboard the eight LSTs were ten officers who had so-called Bigot-level
clearance for the invasion of Normandy. That meant that they knew such vital
details as the date and location of the assault. If, following the E-boat
attacks, these men had been captured and made to reveal what they knew, it
would have jeopardized the invasion.
In the days following the Exercise Tiger disaster, divers
were sent to Lyme Bay to check the bodies lying at the bottom of the bay, in
the wreckage of the sunken LSTs, and in the tanks and other vehicles that
rested there. The divers removed the dog tags from every body they found.
Remarkably, when these tags were checked against the roster of those who had
been aboard, it was discovered that every one of the “Bigoted” officers had
been killed and had taken the secrets of D-Day with them.
There could have also been other reasons for the suppression
of information immediately following the disaster. The military may well have
been determined to keep secret any clues that might link the rehearsals at
Slapton Sands to the planned invasion of Utah Beach. But a giant question
remains. Why the cloak of secrecy for the better part of forty years after
World War II had ended? And why, in 1954, when the United States erected an
obelisk to thank the people of Slapton Sands and its neighboring villages for
leaving their homes, was there absolutely no mention of the hundreds of lives
that had been lost?
Another mystery that remains is more macabre. What happened
to the bodies of the men who sacrificed their lives in the D-Day rehearsal?
According to Slapton Sands resident Ken Small, who in the early 1970s conducted
an extensive search for records of their interment, the only thing that is
known is that some of the remains were buried near Cambridge, England, at a
place called Madingley Hill. Other than that, according to Small, there are
“virtually no records of the disposal of the bodies.”
We do know, through accounts by survivors such as Eugene
Carney, that immediately following the tragedy, scores of bodies were buried in
temporary graves. And there is a seemingly reliable eyewitness account from a
woman who swore that she saw a mass unmarked grave in a meadow close to Slapton
Sands in which soldiers in American battle dress were buried. According to the
woman, who visited the site often, the bodies were never exhumed. The U.S.
Department of Defense, however, disputes that part of the woman’s testimony. According
to the Pentagon, approximately 450 bodies were never recovered and still lie on
the bottom of Lyme Bay. The Department of Defense agreed that more than three
hundred bodies were buried in that mass grave, but by 1956 all had been
secretly transferred to various official cemeteries. Again, if true, why the
need for secrecy?
What is unmistakable is that the operation known as Exercise
Tiger was a major disaster from the very beginning. Even when the exercise was
well over, the tragedy continued, as evidenced by the fate of Exercise Tiger’s
last casualty—Rear Admiral Don P. Moon. Moon, the officer in charge of the
naval part of the invasion rehearsal, was severely reprimanded by his superior
in the presence of his own officers and reduced to a lesser command. He never
recovered. Months later he took his own life, the only high-ranking American
officer to commit suicide during World War II.
The story of Exercise Tiger, deliberately hidden for so long
and mostly forgotten today, is one that needs to be remembered. Out of the many
tragic blunders that were committed came changes vital to D-Day’s success.
Radio frequencies were standardized to prevent the type of tragic errors in
communication that had plagued the ill-fated rehearsals.
The conveyance of detailed instructions for the proper use
of life belts was made mandatory on every type of naval vessel. New, more
effective procedures for the rescue of survivors in the sea were created. All
proved invaluable in the Normandy invasion. Most important, what must be
recaptured from the lost pages of history is the story of the sacrifices made
by so many who gave their lives to give their country and its allies their best
chance of victory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolkoski, Joseph. Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and
Airborne Operations on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole
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Butcher, Harry C. My Three Years with Eisenhower: The
Personal Diary of Harry C. Butcher. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946.
English, Susan, and Aaron Elson. A Mile in Their Shoes: Conversations
with Veterans of World War II. Maywood, NJ: Chi Chi Press, 1998.
“The Evacuation of the South Hams by Jane Putt.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/25/a8633225.shtml.
Greene, Ralph C., and Oliver E. Allen. “What Happened Off
Devon.” American Heritage; February/March 1985.
Lewis, Nigel. Exercise Tiger: The Dramatic Story of a Hidden
Tragedy of World War II. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990.
MacDonald, Charles H. “Slapton Sands: The Cover-up That
Never Was.” Army 38, No. 6, June 1988.
Naval Historical Center. Oral Histories—Exercise Tiger, 28
April 1944, Recollections by Lt. Eugene E. Eckstam, MC, USNR (Ret.), adapted
from “The Tragedy of Exercise Tiger,” Navy Medicine 85, no. 3 (May–June 1994):
5–7.
Small, Ken. The Forgotten Dead. London: Bloomsbury, 1988.
Stokes, Paul. “Veterans Honour 749 Who Died in D-Day
Rehearsal.” Daily Telegraph (London), April 29, 1994.
