The Far Shore by Ellsberg Edward

Author:Ellsberg, Edward [Ellsberg, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781480493643
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

So with the gale still howling, the Bristol flotilla, already underway, kept on through the night for the Channel. As dawn broke, the forces from all the ports round about Plymouth slipped to sea during the early morning of June 5. And as the day wore on, from all remaining Channel ports, in spite of the storm, the other squadrons sailed. From the heights behind Portsmouth, I watched the ships there weigh anchor—so many ships, so tightly packed into the wide waters north of the Isle of Wight, that the mere getting them underway without innumerable collisions was an unbelievable feat of seamanship.

Soon our 4000 ships, the largest armada ever in history to put to sea bent on invading an enemy coast, was streaming eastward along the shores of southern England, bound for the Channel rendezvous. This was a specially buoyed circle in the open sea, marked on everybody’s chart, and called YOKE, ten miles in diameter, well to the southeast of the Isle of Wight. From YOKE, during the night, completely blacked out, that tremendous fleet moved silently on in ten columns abreast for Normandy, each vessel following the dim will-o’-the-wisp light faintly marking the stern of the ship ahead.

Over them, at from 3000 to 5000 feet, now flew Leigh-Mallory’s air umbrella of fighting planes alert to protect them from air attack, though it was hardly expected Goering’s badly pummeled Luftwaffe would come out. Ahead of them, with electronic, acoustic, and mechanical sweeps all in operation, covering the ten lanes in which they moved, steamed ten squadrons of mine-sweepers, sweeping en echelon for such mines as could be swept. Amongst the transports, vigilant to scurry toward the first sign of any explosion erupting beneath a troopship, tossing like corks as they fought the seas, came the fifty Coast Guard picket boats, the smallest vessels in the fleet, ready with life rings and scramble nets to drag from the water the floundering G.I.’s from such transports as were unfortunate enough to meet a mine that could not be swept.

Astern of the sweepers came the naval barrage vessels, by far the largest ships in the movement. First steamed the seven dreadnaughts—four British, Warspite, Nelson, Rodney, and Ramillies, to cover the three British beaches to the east; and three American, Texas, Nevada, and Arkansas, to cover Omaha and Utah Beaches. Then astern the battleships rode the cruiser force of four British and three American cruisers. Finally on the flanks steamed a mixed flotilla of over forty destroyers, British and American, to protect against both E-boat and U-boat attack. Later, close in on the Far Shore, these destroyers would join the battleships and cruisers in the naval barrage scheduled to precede H-hour. And finally, lending a bizarre effect to the armada, overhead floated thousands of barrage balloons, streaming astern each vessel to foul up any Nazi fighter trying to slip in beneath the air umbrella on a strafing mission.

The weather was not good. As predicted, somewhat before darkness fell, the wind moderated

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