The Far Shore Read online

  Commodore Howard Flanigan, of the American Navy, had always been somewhat less than wholly reverent in his attitude toward higher authority. In fact, when first I saw him in July of 1910, he was even then being punished for this very shortcoming. Flanigan’s classmates had all been released from the rigid disciplines of the Naval Academy by graduation the month before and were now enjoying the heady freedoms of the junior officers’ messrooms in the Fleet. But Flanigan himself was ingloriously being held over at Annapolis without his diploma because of some final flouting of the innumerable Regulations governing midshipmen, till higher authority at the Naval Academy should decide what ultimately to do with him—or to him.

  At any rate, Flanigan, who should already have been graduated and at sea when I entered Annapolis as a plebe, wasn’t. Instead, there he was still at the Naval Academy, still a midshipman, assigned temporarily to the depressing task of drilling the newly entered plebes. I learned about Flanigan then and there—a crackling mass of high voltage energy, competent, strict, brusque in speech, authoritative in manner. In fact, in the eyes of the new plebes, including mine, if God himself could speak with half the authority of Howard Flanigan, He must indeed be an omnipotent Deity.

  In the intervening years since 1910, I had not once set eyes again on Howard Flanigan. But somewhere along the way, in the middle 1930’s, apparently Howard Flanigan’s lack of proper reverence for higher authority decided him that thirty years of living that way was enough. Suspecting perhaps that his shortcoming might stand in the way of his further promotion, he chose to retire as a Commander in 1936, to take on as a civilian the task of organizing the New York World’s Fair, then only a nebulous idea being promoted by Grover Whalen. No doubt higher authority in the Navy and Howard Flanigan both breathed a sigh of relief at their parting—to neither did it ever occur that they should meet again.

  But through the good offices of Adolf Hitler, they did—involuntarily I’m sure, on both sides.

  For when in 1944, I reported in London to Admiral Stark, there selected by Stark himself as his wartime Deputy Chief of Staff sat Howard Flanigan, restored to active duty, hurriedly given back all his lost promotions, now a newly made Commodore. Thirty-four years had not in the slightest blurred my indelible youthful image of him—I recognized him instantly—the same manner, the same brusqueness, the same competence, the same authority, and I swiftly learned, still the same unawed irreverence toward higher authority—this being widened now to take in the upper echelons of the British civil and military hierarchy.

  Howard Flanigan, it was plain for all thereabouts to see, ran the office of the Commander, American Naval Forces in Europe, not because he was Stark’s Deputy Chief of Staff, but because he was Howard Flanigan. It was evident he liked it. Soon I learned Stark liked him, trusted him, left decisions in his hands, relied on him to get what action was necessary. In all directions regardless—British or American, civil or military, Army, Navy, Air—Howard Flanigan was the U. S. Navy in London. A casual awareness of what was going on at 20 Grosvenor Square showed me that, long before I finished the reading of The Book. I began, in fact, to wonder from all I saw going on around me, if Stark himself wasn’t after all just a figurehead in his own office, till later I learned there was a little more to it than that—Stark apparently was letting Flanigan function practically as Commander, American Naval Forces in Europe, while he confined his own activities to that rarefied diplomatic atmosphere above in which moved only a very few persons—one president; one prime minister; some kings and queens, with and without countries; a few ambassadors; and the exalted figures of the combined Chiefs of Staff—a realm into which, except on one occasion, I got not even a glimpse—nor, I suspect, did Howard Flanigan.

  I finished reading The Book, including a careful re-reading of Operation Mulberry and all its accessories. I so reported to the Deputy Chief of Staff. What next should I do? Flanigan called me into conference. Probably not in thirty-four years, since last I’d heard him shouting “Squads right!” into my befuddled ears at Annapolis and I’d gone “Left” instead of “Right,” had he had occasion for a word with me. But now things were different—the gap in rank between a senior captain and a newly made Commodore was as nothing to that between us when first We’d met. And now, aside from that, I learned Flanigan had another side to his personality—he could when he desired, be the most charming fellow you’d ever met—Flanigan, dressed for Ascot, might easily have been chosen as the typical polished English gentleman by the English themselves. Which, I think, was one of the reasons Stark chose him for the task—it was a revelation to watch Flanigan as Deputy Chief of Staff, in Stark’s name steam-rollering his fellow Americans on the one hand, and on the other beguiling his British opposite numbers—in either case, of course, only when necessary to get things headed in the direction Flanigan felt they should go.

  Flanigan spread a map of France out before us, wanted to know if now I thoroughly understood Overlord?

  I did—backward and forward by now. Briefly, then, we ran over the highlights on the map.

  It was to be the Navy’s job to land Montgomery and the British before Caen, Bradley and the Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches at the base of the Cherbourg Peninsula. Montgomery, closest to Paris, was then to delude Rommel into thinking the British were striving desperately to break through and be on their way to not so distant Paris. But actually he was not to get away from Caen and his supplies—merely to attract to his British front all the Germans he could, and thus leave Bradley as unhindered as possible while Bradley and the Americans drove for the first real objective, the port of Cherbourg, at the northern tip of the Cotentin Peninsula. Cherbourg was to be taken by D + 17.

  Meanwhile, Operation Mulberry, consisting of two artificial harbors to be brought by the Navy from Selsey Bill to the Normandy beaches, was to handle ashore all the fighting equipment and supplies needed to hold off Rommel while Bradley was taking Cherbourg. It was hoped that by D + 47, a month after its capture, Cherbourg would be reasonably usable as a port—till then, Operation Mulberry must carry the load—or all was lost.

  Immediately after taking Cherbourg, Bradley on D + 22 was to turn southward down the Cotentin Peninsula, punch a hole through the German lines somewhere around Avranches and then hold off Rommel while Patton, freshly brought from England, and his Third Army were poured southward through the gap into Rommel’s rear.

  Came next an unbelievable twist.

  Germany, the Siegfried Line, Paris and most of Occupied France, von Rundstedt’s reserve army based in Holland—all the enemy and every obvious objective we had to take or knock out to win the war, would lie then to the eastward of Patton’s Third Army. But Patton, however, was not to turn to the eastward toward Germany, toward any of those objectives—he was instead to turn westward—toward America! Westward of him at Avranches would lie the Brittany Peninsula—of no great value any longer to Germany, but priceless to us as we then saw it. For round about the western end of the Brittany Peninsula facing the Atlantic lay three major French ports—Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire, through which in World War I, we had mainly supplied our army. Once again we must have ports at any cost—the drive against Germany must wait while we captured more ports to sustain our invasion. Montgomery and Bradley together now, still sustained solely through Mulberry, were to do nothing for weeks but hold Rommel to the eastward off Patton’s back, while Patton’s Third Army went west, away from the major enemy, to drive down the Brittany Peninsula and take the ports of Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire. He was given until D + 42 to do all that.

  But here Flanigan stopped. Never mind Patton or the land operations any more—here was where I came in. I had the background up to this point well in mind? I had. Well, by D + 42, Patton might or might not actually have captured Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire, but if he hadn’t, you could rely on him to have their garrisons all so closely bottled up they’d be unable to get out into the open Brittany Peninsula to bother anybody any more.


  But whether we had those three ports then or not, neither Cherbourg (which already presumably we did have) nor these three would be anything for a long while but unusable heaps of demolitions—useless to anybody as ports. The Germans would attend to that. It would be someone else’s assignment to clear those ports—mine was to be to help rig a port on the Atlantic, to assist immediately the Mulberry harbors in the Channel to carry the load till Cherbourg, Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire would take over.

  Had I read the part Quiberon Bay was to play in Operation Overlord? I had. Did I see Quiberon Bay on the chart before us, lying between L’Orient and St. Nazaire? Yes, I saw it. All right—I was to turn to on Quiberon Bay as my particular assignment—there on D + 42 we were to tow from England around the by then immobilized Brest Peninsula and start setting up the equipment for a harbor independent of the Mulberries in the Channel—and very different.

  Quiberon Bay was swiftly to become our major temporary port. Quiberon Bay was a vast natural anchorage protected by Belle Isle and other off-lying islands. It was the ancient rendezvous for centuries back of the entire French fleet in the long-vanished days of sail and three-decker ships-of-the-line. It was naturally much better suited for landing supplies than over the exposed Channel beaches where we were going to spot the two Mulberries. All we really needed to create a port in already protected Quiberon Bay was some type of wharf equipment to be towed around from England once the Nazis on the Brittany Peninsula were contained. It would be simple. No breakwaters would be required. I was directed to turn to and study Quiberon Bay closely, and then the pier equipment already gathered in England for the job. Between Quiberon Bay on the Atlantic and Operation Mulberry on the Normandy Beaches, we could keep the invasion armies supplied through the long months ahead, till Cherbourg, Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire, rehabilitated no matter how badly sabotaged before surrender, could finally take over the load permanently.

  I nodded. I understood. I turned to, to study closely the charts of Quiberon Bay and the equipment gathered for it. Flanigan, with Quiberon off his mind, went back to struggle with his quota of other headaches for that day.

  Since I was never to see Quiberon Bay, nor for that matter were any others of the half million Americans in the vast army that was to have been landed through it for the major assault on the Siegfried Line, I’ll pass over the intricacies of that operation in Quiberon, save to say that it was a big wheel in the original plan. Operation Mulberry was at best expected to keep the invasion going, although metaphorically only on one cylinder, till D + 42, when with Quiberon Bay coming into action, we could start to hit on all six and really turn to, going eastward, on chasing the Nazis out of France. Ultimately, when all the regular French ports were back in service, we’d trade our temporary ports—the Mulberry harbors and Quiberon Bay—for the latest 1944 eight-cylinder model of supply, those four captured and restored French ports, and start driving across the Siegfried Line with all our supply problems over—from then on it would be just a question of Patton and Rommel slugging it out. With America’s vast resources of production at last flowing freely into France through four real ports, not just through makeshifts, there could be only one answer as to the outcome of Operation Overlord.

  And it was on that note that the Overlord Plan ended. Operation Mulberry was the first rung of the ladder into France, Quiberon Bay was the second, the four French ports were the third—and then we were over the top and ready to fight in earnest. I became promptly submerged in the problems involved in hurriedly making a port out of some of the undeveloped real estate fringing the Quiberon Bay waterfront.

  Completely absorbed in the intriguing Quiberon Bay project now handed me, for some days I forgot all else. But hardly was I well settled in laying out the schedule for that installation on the northern end of the Bay of Biscay, than once again I found myself buttonholed in the corridor by that apparition of the week before. Looking even more cadaverous than the first time, there was Captain Dayton Clark, firmly gripping me by one of the gold buttons on my navy jacket, determined that this time I should not escape till I had heard him through.

  I did. D-day was a week nearer. My narrator had obviously moved much more than a week nearer to imminent doom in prognosticating complete disaster. I listened, more impatient even than the week before that I should be bothered with his irrational worries. But now, at least, I understood what it was he was pouring into my ear, though it was none of my concern. I told him so, tried to break away.

  Clark clung on tenaciously. I was a salvage man, the only American in London who could understand. This was a salvage problem, though no one other than he recognized it as such. I must go with him to the Channel, look over how the Royal Engineers were preparing to tackle Mulberry, come back and let all hands at 20 Grosvenor Square know it wasn’t going to work. I was a salvage man—decorated already for what I’d done for Eisenhower in the Mediterranean. Both Stark and Eisenhower were bound to listen to me—Operation Mulberry, the whole invasion, depended on it!

  It was only ninety miles to the Channel. Clark had a car waiting—in a couple of hours we’d be on the beach. Wouldn’t I come?

  I wouldn’t. It all sounded ridiculous to me. Matters couldn’t possibly be as badly bungled as they seemed to his untutored eye. Why should I make a fool of myself, dashing off over the countryside like Don Quixote to tilt at the fantastic forebodings of his overwrought imagination, when they were none of my business anyway? I said so. He was a naval officer. He knew the chain of command. If he thought there was anything wrong with the Operation Mulberry set-up, let him quit bothering me and take it up with Admiral Stark. Stark was responsible. I wasn’t.

  Clark’s somber eyes bored hopefully into mine. If Admiral Stark ordered me to the Channel to look things over, then would I take his doubts seriously?

  Anything now, I thought, to get rid of this character. Here was an out for me.

  “Of course,” I said, certain there was no earthly chance of his convincing Flanigan, let alone Stark, that I should now be yanked off the Quiberon Bay task freshly handed me, just to stand a while on the Channel shore and hold the hand of this hyper-agitated captain in Operation Mulberry. It was far more likely that one more frenzied appeal to Stark would get him relieved of his command, as the best solution to a situation which was obviously getting out of hand. And a good thing that will be, I thought, for all hands in Operation Mulberry.

  Clark let go the button on my jacket by which he was holding me anchored.

  “Thanks!” was his brief comment. He strode off down the corridor toward the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff. I went back to my desk, cautiously testing that gold button to see if it was likely to stay with me till I could get it to the nearest London tailor.

  CHAPTER 5

  That was how I came to be at Selsey Bill staring seaward at that startling apparition of a sunken city protruding from the ocean.

  Flanigan, only that morning, at 20 Grosvenor Square, had briefed me on my mission. There wasn’t really anything in it—frankly, it was being put on mostly for morale reasons. Weeks before, Stark had been assured that all was well by competent British authority—the very highest. While Flanigan himself was the last person at headquarters to be awed by dicta simply because it was from On High, still as between all the British on one side, who had some engineering competence, and Clark on the other, who had none, he was forced to concede the improbability of so many Englishmen being completely wrong. Probably he was sending me on a wild goose chase. Still he agreed with Stark that so long as there was any shadow of doubt on so important a matter as Mulberry, and they now had someone with experience in that field to check it, there was not too much harm in delaying Quiberon Bay long enough to have the check made.

  But mainly, right there in the middle of the picture, badly needing to be salvaged himself, was Clark, assigned to the command Operation Mulberry by Flanigan personally; Clark, so wrought up already by his forebodings of disaster as very likely to crack up before c
arrying it through. It just happened, unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone unassigned in London at this late date in the invasion preparations who, if Clark cracked, might safely take over from him.

  So Stark, principally to save that situation, had acceded to Clark’s last fervent request—that I be sent to look matters over. Clark would take my word for it if I said the Royal Engineers were doing all right. That would quiet Clark and restore him to usefulness—he was a good officer, worth a lot of trouble to save.

  As for me, I must be most careful, Flanigan emphatically warned me, to tread on no British toes at Selsey Bill. There was dynamite in the already touchy situation there, a lot more than I might realize. If I set off an explosion, the resulting shock waves would go instantly right up to the British Cabinet on one side, to Eisenhower himself on the other, with unpredictable consequences to myself, to Flanigan, and to Stark. We could risk no international backbiting now. The British were on Mulberry heavily committed to their position in support of the Royal Engineers. National as well as service prides had by now been rubbed raw in too many areas. Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander, was walking on eggs enough in his efforts to get harmony in all the seething jealousies—personal, inter-service, international—agitating his heterogeneous command.

  I was to use my eyes at Selsey Bill as I saw fit, but on what I thought as a result, I must not let my tongue slip—to Clark, to anybody. My report, whatever it might be, was only to be made back in London to Admiral Stark directly—and I wasn’t to take too long about it, either, as that Quiberon Bay job was too important to be much delayed. So with that as a last admonition from Flanigan, I had shoved off from Grosvenor Square in a staff car, headed south for Selsey Bill and the Mulberries.

  And now I was looking at them.

  Gradually my shock at the unimaginable magnitude of the Mulberry units before me subsided. More soberly, I began to fit the pieces I saw before me into the picture they were to make when floated over to the Far Shore—a picture of two vast artificial harbors miraculously to be unfolded under fire before befuddled Nazi eyes on the bare sands of Normandy.