James Thayer
S-DAY
A MEMOIR OF THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
A NOVEL
To my daughter
Alexandra Amy Thayer
“We may therefore be sure that there is a plan—perhaps built up over the years—for destroying Great Britain, which after all has the honour to be his main and foremost enemy.”
Thanks to
C. James Frush, Peter Lowe, Sally A. Martin, John D. Reagh III, John L. Thayer M.D., Joseph T. Thayer, Amy Wallace, Dexter A. Washburn, Peggy J. Williams, and my wonderful wife, Patricia Wallace Thayer
FOREWORD BY
GENERAL SIR ARTHUR STEDMAN
When Colonel Royce asked me to write a foreword for his work on the invasion, I readily agreed. The wounds from those dreadful days may seem too fresh, the fear and shock still too bright in the mind’s eye, for careful study. But memory is perishable. The onslaught is best recorded early, just after the clangor has stilled, before time tempers our memories.
This is an account of the most momentous episode in our history since William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey. It is also an intimate portrait of the American general Wilson Clay, whose rank as a combat commander will never be gainsaid, but whose place in the larger history of mankind’s journey will remain unsettled for many years.
For those who want to understand those dangerous days, for those who wish to smell the powder of battle and endure the burden of command, I strongly recommend Colonel Royce’s narrative.
INTRODUCTION
Germans call the day of launching a military operation S-Tag, or S-Day. There was a time when we thought Great Britain would be spared that day.
After the massing of German war materiel on the coasts of occupied France and the Low Countries in 1940, there came a long pause. For most of the next year, Hitler delayed his decision about England and apparently toyed with the idea of marching into Russia. Hope burned throughout England that the German chancellor had forgotten the lessons of Charles XII and Napoleon and that he would exhaust his country’s demonic energy on the endless Russian steppes.
That was not to be, of course. Hitler had indeed read his history, perhaps knew Frederick the Great’s warning that an attempt to seize Moscow would be “contrary to reason and common sense.” By late 1941, it became clear that the Soviet Union was forgotten and that the Germans would attempt what had not been done in almost nine hundred years: to conquer the British Isles against hostile defenders.
American troops began arriving on English soil shortly after Pearl Harbor, and by May 1942 the American Expeditionary Force was in place alongside forces from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. General Wilson Clay was commander of the American army. I was his aide-de-camp.
The term “aide-de-camp” is not often used these days, and certainly was not by the general, who simply called me his aide or his ADC. I was with him almost all his waking moments during that critical time. He ordered that I keep a journal, usually recorded by me late at night and transcribed the next day by a headquarters secretary. From that journal and from operations logs, numerous commanders’ war diaries, recently declassified documents, captured enemy records, and over five hundred interviews, I have drawn this account.
“Write a history of a battle?” asked Wellington. “As well write the history of a ball.” I have not tried. After-action reports and divisional histories have already been published, and the army’s Office of the Chief of Military History will soon release its multivolume study. Many other books on the invasion are sure to follow. I leave the retelling of field-by-field, house-by-house military maneuvers to them.
This is the story of people—servicemen and civilians, Allied and German—swept up in the turmoil of S-Day.
PART ONE
War, “the trade of kings.”
MAP
1
Legends about the great warriors always have a source, often some small event magnified by time and retelling. Down through the centuries has come the tale that Alexander, enraged by his own soldiers’ caution, grabbed a siege ladder, set it in place, and was the first to charge over the wall at Multan. Scipio Africanus, the Roman who defeated Hannibal, is said to have shamed his troops into action by charging on horseback alone into a line of Carthaginian cavalry. At Gettysburg, Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead reportedly waved his hat on the point of his sword, rallying his outgunned men to break through Union lines.
I’d often wished I could witness the birth of a legend. General Wilson Clay and a Messerschmitt offered me that chance just before S-Day.
We had landed in the general’s Cub several miles from Rye, the ancient town in east Sussex two miles inland from the English Channel. A jeep had been waiting for us, with a British driver, Corporal John Markham of the Royal Sussex Regiment, who had lived in Rye most of his life.
Local drivers met us at all stops because the signposts and milestones, some of them hundreds of years old, had been removed throughout England to confuse invaders. Everything else that identified towns had been painted over or hidden. Churches, building societies, shops, railway stations, all were rendered anonymous. Endless problems resulted. Tank columns turned around on themselves; infantry brigades became lost in marshes; truck convoys wandered miles down wrong roads.
I had slapped the general’s four-star magnetized plates on the sides of the jeep, and rifle-carrying bodyguards followed in another jeep. General Clay had just served with George Patton, who always insisted on flags flying from his vehicle, motorcycle escorts, and sirens—a regular parade. He claimed the troops needed to know he was in their area. Clay did not tolerate that pomp, but he made daily tours, no matter how busy he was.
“Look at this.” The general pointed at a ridge. “We’re skulking under those trees, and the German hasn’t even landed yet.”
I was sitting behind him in the jeep.
He said, “Not a thing moving, no reinforcing, no build-up. We might as well be in Nebraska.”
It should have been a peaceful tableau. A plow sat idly at the edge of a field. When the breeze played with patches of green winter wheat, the stalks briefly took on a silver tinge, reflecting the sun at a new angle. Rock walls rimmed the fields. We passed a stone house and barn that abutted the road, narrowing it. A small black dog emerged from the barn to bark at us.
Closer inspection revealed a land braced for battle. The wheat field was studded with poles, each the girth of a man’s leg, a defense against gliders. So many poles dotted the landscape that American soldiers had taken to calling them Clay’s spaghetti. We drove under iron bars arching fifteen feet over the road at regular intervals, also to prevent glider landings. Where the field ended at a defile of trees, an antitank ditch had been dug in the road, then covered with wood planks. A local Home Guard contingent had been assigned to remove the planks when enemy armor approached.