Chasing Rommel

By Amelia McNutt

On June 6, 1944, tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen assaulted the German held coast of France at Normandy. Some were killed, some wounded, and all of them were changed as the battles raged against Rommel and his defenders. They fell for yards of sandy beaches, for critical roads, bridges, villages, towns, and cities. Together, we will travel to those places, and we will relive all the bravery and horror, all the mistakes and honor, as we learn their stories - Chasing Rommel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685624316

Book preview

About the Author

Amelia McNutt is a hardworking researcher and writer. Traveling to the sites of America’s military history she finds the lesser-known places, people, and stories that are hidden in America’s military history. Amelia engages the reader to follow her into these overlooked, little-known, under-reported, and quite fascinating events. Think you know the story – read on and find out what really happened. She introduces the reader to compelling, unpredictable events that will intrigue the learned and novice students of military history.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the American soldiers who chased Rommel across Normandy and into history. On the land, sea, and in the air, they came from all over the United States of America. They changed the world and inflicted a fatal wound on Hitler and his tyrannical Nazis. Some stayed in Normandy and rest in peace above Omaha Beach. They are all heroes to me. As are these soldiers that I knew personally:

My father, Donald DJ McNutt (U.S. Army, Korean Era), and my uncle, Frederick Fred McNutt (U.S. Air Force, Korean Era), and the World War II guys—my uncles, John Jack McNutt (Royal Air Force, Canadian and the American Army Air Force), William Bill McNutt (U.S. Army), Edward Eddy Wall (U.S. Army Air Corp), James Jim Wall (U.S. Army), and William Willie Wall (U.S. Marine Corps). And two very dear friends, Anthony Tony Fassi Sr. (U.S. Army), Normand Hamel Sr. (U.S. Navy—Pacific).

My mission statement was inspired by those I knew, and those I will never know. It is dedicated to all the American veterans and as I work to keep their memories alive, I say to you.

Learn the Stories. Don’t let their Glory Fade.

Copyright Information ©

Amelia McNutt 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

McNutt, Amelia

Chasing Rommel

ISBN 9781685624286 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781685624309 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781685624316 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781685624293 (Audiobook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923620

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgment

I want to express my sincerest thanks to: Rosanne Crowley as well as my family and friends who have listened to me endlessly speak of the stories contained in this book. I want to remember my mother, father, brother Don as well as an old and wise teacher named Mr. Boyd. They taught me that humility and hard work will empower one to succeed, this done by countless examples.

I wish to thank Major (Honorary) Ellwood von Seibold who opened my eyes to Normandy and the bigger story that is needed to be told, and retold. Thank you, Major.

Thank you to Karen Ruggiero and the memories she shared with me of her father, US Army Ranger Antonio Ruggiero, our hometown hero in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I would also like to thank Doug McCabe, Curator of manuscripts, Mahn Center for archives and special collection, Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, OH.

Note to the Reader

Thank you for taking the time to read this book. Please do not confuse any of my accounting of these events as supporting in any way Hitler and his Nazis.

This is the story of the American soldiers in Normandy. But it is a story with a very British beginning that starts with the struggle at Dunkirk, because without Dunkirk, there would never have been an invasion of Normandy. These are the stories of the Americans sent to France to liberate a people conquered and subjugated by the tyrannical Nazis.

It was in Normandy, driven by the breathtaking American and British sacrifices on the battlefields, and all the unselfish support of the American and British people at the home front, that began the decisive final act of Hitler and his Nazis.

Amelia C. McNutt

25 March 2021

Prologue—Meet Rommel

No other German General came close to preoccupying the military leaders of Great Britain and the United States in World War II as did Erwin Rommel. To this very day, his exploits in the North African deserts attract and fascinate many who study or read military history.

From February of 1941 until March of 1943, German General and later, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, dominated the wartime strategy of Great Britain and the United States in the European and Mediterranean theaters of operations. Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader, was once heard to exclaim:

Rommel, Rommel, Rommel, Rommel, what else matters but beating him?

Rommel made what was initially regarded as an Italian sideshow in North Africa into, perhaps, the most fascinating armored warfare campaign in history. Churchill, the British Prime Minister spoke before the House of Commons in January 1942 declaring, "We have a very daring and skillful opponent, and may I say across the havoc of war, a great general."

That was when Erwin Rommel began his transformation from feared enemy soldier to respected Desert Fox, ultimately falling into the pages of military history not as a man, but as a mythical military legend.

Introduction—Normandy

It was the hope of General George C. Marshall, (1880–1959) US Army Chief of Staff (1939–1945) that the US Army would invade the occupied continent of Europe as soon as 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer). General Marshall understood, from his experiences in World War I, working on General of the Army, John J. Black Jack Pershing’s staff, that the German Army had to be destroyed. A glaring oversight as World War I ended with an armistice in 1918.

Despite Marshall’s power as one of President Roosevelt’s prime military advisors, and his personal experiences in the First World War, General Marshall did not get his way. His principal sources of resistance were the British generals who believed they knew better than Marshall.

They insisted that the timing as well as the location had to be perfect for such an enormous and breathtakingly dangerous military feat. They were correct, and those same British military minds found the perfect man to begin the process of the invasion of the continent of Europe.

He was the most important D-Day soldier you have never heard of, as he was the man who made the plans, picked the places, and started the entire massive effort while others were still just dreaming and talking. In March 1943, British General Frederick Morgan (1894–1967) was appointed Chief Of Staff Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), despite the fact that there was no Supreme Allied Commander at that time.

Morgan assembled a team and went to work creating the framework for the Allied invasion of the continent of Europe. It was British General Morgan who choose Normandy and began to prepare for an invasion in 1944. General Morgan can rightfully be called the architect of D-Day.

After months of planning and training, he was replaced by the Supreme Allied Commander and his staff known as Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, (SHAEF) in January 1944. Now, General Morgan’s plans would be expanded as Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander, and British General Bernard Montgomery came aboard as the Supreme Ground Forces Commander. With those appointments, General Morgan was all but forgotten. But to know the Normandy story one must begin with the men that initiated the story, US General George C. Marshall and British General Frederick Morgan.

As we have learned, before Normandy no single soldier held the attention of the British and American war machines as the man the British soldiers called, The Desert Fox. Rommel’s successes in North Africa led to TIME magazine putting him on their cover, 13 July 1942, as the conqueror of the British port of Tobruk.

Eventually, North Africa was lost to the Germans and the Italians, and with that, Rommel was ordered home to Germany. After a very brief posting in Italy, Rommel was given a special assignment by Hitler himself. In November of 1943, Hitler ordered Rommel to inspect the German defenses along the coastal areas from Norway to the Spanish border.

By the end of December 1943, Rommel’s inspection was complete. Rommel had become an authority on Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, and shortly thereafter, Hitler ordered Rommel to defend the Atlantic Wall.

From December 1943 until D-Day on 6 June 1944, Field Marshal Rommel did his best to shore up the incomplete German defenses along the coast of France. Rommel focused on stopping the Allies at the water’s edge, where he believed he held the only advantage of defending Hitler’s Fortress, Europe.

On 6 June 1944 the Allied forces found Erwin Rommel again, this time as the commander of German Army Group B in the northwestern area of France, an area that encompasses Normandy. During the summer of 1944, the American Army, Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces were all in France—Chasing Rommel.

From 6 June 1944 until he was wounded on 17 July 1944, Rommel held the Allied armies near the coast. His defense, combined with the difficult terrain the French call the bocage and we know as the hedgerows, kept Eisenhower’s massive force from breaking out of the Normandy area. This continually frustrated the British commander General Bernard Montgomery and the American Commander General Omar Bradley.

Rommel seemed to have an answer for each of their attempts at the breakout. When the breakout did occur, it was at the end of July 1944 and was spearheaded by the brilliant American armored warfare commander, General George S. Patton, Jr.

From Tuesday 6 June until Monday 17 July 1944, just forty-one days, Rommel denied the Allies the breakout they needed to ultimately win the war. Rommel was very seriously wounded by two British Royal Air force fighter planes on 17 July 1944. His staff car was strafed, and he was thrown from the open top vehicle nearly dying in the process. He was sent home to Herrlingen, Germany. Rommel would die there on 14 October 1944, after being implicated in the attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944.

For forty-one days, the success of the Normandy invasion was questionable. For all those days, the world watched as the Allies threw everything they had at one man and his strategy, tactical responses, and defensive operations. These are just a small sampling of the men, the places, and the stories of the remarkable American warriors who began Chasing Rommel on D-Day.

Our journey through time begins with the astonishing British evacuation at Dunkirk—Their Beach. There nearly four years before D-Day we find Montgomery and Rommel. Rommel is at the spearhead of an invasion, while the Montgomery is methodically trying to escape with an army back to Britain. Together, we will learn of Rommel’s Defense of Normandy, as he shapes his strategic, tactical, and operational plans to defend Hitler’s crumbling empire.

We will understand the lessons Rommel experienced in North Africa and beyond, and how, in his desperate defense of Normandy, he applied those lessons. We will meet D-Day’s Old Man, the oldest son of one of America’s favorite Presidents.

We will get to know a small-town hero who was one of the exceptional US Army Rangers who assaulted Point-du Hoc and lived a long and colorful life in America’s hometown. Together, we will walk D-Day’s Forgotten Place, and explore its circumstance in a history nearly erased by intention and time. A place rediscovered and today, it is emerging from the D-Days shadows, its role once neatly buried, it now unearths questions that need to be asked and answered.

We will travel to a place that is on the peripheral of the Normandy story, Oradour-sur-Glane. It is the story of a group of German monsters, masquerading as men, who on their way to Normandy, committed an unspeakable act. It is a painful place, and a sorrowful story that supports why America sent her brave sons to France in 1944.

We will end this journey together at Bloody Omaha Beach and learn why so many men were killed on the cold wet sands of France. The questions and the answers are painful. Together, we will learn why D-Day at Omaha Beach was the day and place more Americans died – than any other day and place in World War II.

Chasing Rommel is our first trip together. There are more places and stories we will share in the future as we continue Chasing Rommel—Again.

Looking toward the beach at Dunkirk from the Mole.

Chapter 1

Dunkirk: Their Beach

Introduction

You can practically see it from here. Home.

Commander Bolton, portrayed by actor Sir Kenneth Branagh

Dunkirk, Motion Picture 2017

Director: Christopher Nolan

Arriving late into the evening, I met Dunkerque on the darkest of nights. The moon and the stars were hidden by a damp lingering blanket of clouds. My drive from Paris was much slower than it should have been, the rain, wind, and the cold were my companions on what seemed like an endless journey.

Lamentations as the visions of Dunkerque I wanted to see were exchanged for time surrendered to airport delays, lost luggage, and unrelenting traffic. The images of Dunkerque I wanted to see, faded into the blackness of night. I walked in blinding darkness towards the sea as the city rested peacefully behind me. The sounds and smells of the ocean were my sensory compass guiding me to the water’s edge.

Scanning the darkness, I looked left and saw red and green navigational lights. I was looking at the historic Mole. That is when it hit me, I realized they stood here in the daylight and the darkness. They were driven here by an enemy determined to annihilate them.

Here they stayed, prayed, and hoped for a miracle. In that complete darkness at land’s end, on a moonless, starless, cloudy, wind driven night my disappointment abated, my imagination was ignited. The black and white images, and books full of words came to life—I am on Their Beach.

It is Dunkerque to the French, a harbor on the northern coast of France beside Belgium and across from the English Channel from the British port of Dover. It is remembered by history as Dunkirk, where on June 4, 1940, the last of over 338,000 British and French soldiers were evacuated from the beaches, and the harbor, escaping the grasp of Hitler’s rampaging Blitzkrieg.

I am Chasing Rommel to the north coast of France, far from Normandy in distance but not in importance and relevance. I am in Dunkerque, trying to understand an event of nearly unparalleled importance when an entire World was marching toward the calamities of war for the second time in twenty years.

Part I: Fading History

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

Prime Minister, United Kingdom (May 1940–July 1945) and (October 1951–April 1955)

Speech at the House of Commons—4 June 1940

The histories of Great Britain and France are full of remarkable military victories. France was the land of Napoleon and Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc). They were the brave, brilliant and tragic military leaders who vanquished the enemies of France.

The military history of Great Britain is equally full of heroes. Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, the Irish born Duke of Wellington, was the man who led the Allied armies that eventually defeated the French military genius Napoleon at Waterloo.

Wellington was proclaimed, The conqueror of the world’s conqueror. The British had another hero, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, the victor of the Battle of Trafalgar. The naval battle that saw him lead the out gunned British fleet to victory over the combined navies of France and Spain. Nelson’s victory would solidify Britain’s Royal Navy as the World’s greatest sea power for over 100 years.

But neither France nor Great Britain and their celebrated warriors were famous for retreats, and yet, by 1940, each nation had had a famous retreat.

Some retreats are a signaling of the end, like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812. Facing a desolate winter and a Russian policy of scorched earth that left nothing of value for the invading French forces, Napoleon’s arrival in Moscow was a bitter pyrrhic victory as best.

He and his grand army retreated, chased by the Czar’s weary forces and the relentless bitter cold of the Russian winter, memorialized perfectly in Peter Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

Other retreats like the British Army that evacuated Gallipoli in 1916, ensured that they would continue to fight on, during World War I. One of the architects of the Gallipoli invasion, but not the Gallipoli withdrawal of the British Forces, was First Lord of The Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

On 10 May 1940 Winston Churchill, who had recently been reappointed the First Lord of the Admiralty, became the leader of a coalition government in Great Britain. Churchill had been out of political power and influence for over a decade, however, with his country facing war with Germany for the second time in twenty years, he was selected and replaced the aging, sickly Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill, the man some believed to be a glory seeking, callous warlord was in, and Chamberlain who had negotiated a faux peace with Hitler six months earlier proclaiming, Peace in our time was out. Chamberlain, now a beaten and weary man would never see his country at peace again. In six months, he would succumb to bowel cancer.

On the day Churchill became the Prime Minster of the United Kingdom, Germany invaded France.

The Germans were unstoppable and in a matter of weeks, Churchill watched as the Belgium Army surrendered, and large parts of the British and French Armies were surrounded. Now, it would be Churchill who would preside over one of the most important and successful retreats in History.

A withdrawal of unprecedented size and scope, through but a brief open window of time. When the British and French Armies were chased by Hitler’s forces to land’s end, the British had just days to do the impossible. The Second World War on the Western Front was just weeks old, and Hitler’s forces were poised to hand Great Britain and France an overwhelming, unprecedented defeat. A defeat that could change the world.

Part II: The Trap

As a correspondent I have seen all the great armies…but those armies…were made up of men. This was a machine, endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the brute power of a steamroller. It is, perhaps, the most efficient organization of modern times; and its purpose only is death. Those who cast it loose upon Europe are military-mad.

With The Allies

Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916)

C. Scribner’s Sons, 1914.

Pages 24–26

Richard Harding Davis’s description of the German Army is his eyewitness account of the German invasion of neutral Belgium in 1914, opening World War I. The invasion was highly organized, swift, and remarkably brutal.

So effective was Germany’s invasion of Belgium in 1914, it was repeated by Adolph Hitler’s forces in May 1940 as World War II broke out in Western Europe. Except that Hitler’s forces used tanks and trucks that moved at record speed.

To the French and British forces, defending Western Europe from Hitler’s modern blitzkrieg armies—history was repeating itself only moving much, much faster, robbing the Allied Forces of the time they required for recovery.

In 1914, as World War I began, the Germans invaded France on its Western Front. They arrived quickly using an old war plan drawn up a decade before the war. Although it was greatly modified, the Schlieffen Plan directed the German armies to sweep quickly into France from neighboring and neutral Belgium.

They would begin their advance traveling north and west and then turn to the south in an attempt to capture Paris, the French capital. With many cavalry divisions in the lead, it was believed that the French would be crushed in as little as six weeks. It did not work, and the German Army became locked into a deadly war of attrition against the Allied British and French Forces, creating the horrific trench warfare that defined the Western Front for the duration of the First World War.

In 1940, the Germans attacked France. Like the 1914 plan, it seemed they were coming through Belgium and it was believed they would attack north to south repeating the movements of 1914. But 1940 was in so many ways different from 1914. Schlieffen’s Plan had been a failure, and it was the Germans who learned the most from its mistakes.

The Germans loosely followed a plan whose architect was a relatively unknown, but brilliant strategist, General Erich von Manstein. Manstein would go on to great fame for his plan to invade France in 1940. He would achieve the rank of Field Marshal while battling the Soviets on the eastern Front.

In March of 1944, he was retired by Hitler for being a defeatist, and uncooperative to Hitler’s growing madness. After the war, Manstein was found guilty of war crimes and was imprisoned in Germany. But Eric von Manstein was so respected by Allied political and military leaders, such as Winston Churchill that his sentence was commuted in 1953 in exchange for helping the Allies rebuild the German Army and create the plan that would repulse an expected Soviet invasion through Germany into France.

In 1940, Manstein’s plan, Sichelschnitt (cut of the sickle) was very different from the failed World War I Schlieffen Plan. It began with a movement the British and French believed the Germans would make. But in 1940, the opening move through Belgium was a diversionary action only. The French Generals, who were in command, saw history repeating itself and ordered the British forces and some French forces to meet the German movement into Belgium.

And very early on 10 May 1940, German Army Group B with twenty-six infantry divisions attacked Holland and Belgium in the opening hours of World War II in Western Europe. And as the eyes of the world turned toward history repeating itself in Belgium, the French and British armies furiously moved towards the German advance. This set the stage and blinded the French military leaders to the primary attack of the fast-moving Panzer divisions further south.

As the predicable was happening, so too was the impossible, as German armored units began their burst through the Ardennes Forrest just north of where France’s famous and useless Maginot Line ended. The Ardennes Forrest is so dense and hilly, the French ended their famed Maginot Line, a line of concrete forts and gun emplacements where the dense forest and rolling hills nearly obscure the French border with Luxembourg.

I have visited the Ardennes in Luxembourg. There I was instantly struck at how crammed and overgrown the vegetation is. The trees grow tall and completely full of branches so covered in dense foliage, they sometimes hang to the ground.

Driving the Ardennes in May offered scenery so breathtaking, that you slowed down to see such a beautiful natural setting. I easily thought—You could get lost or hide here forever. Even today, nearly 80 years removed from the events, it is easy to speculate how the French believed a modern army could not pass through this area quickly. The Ardennes offered a perfect place to hide Germany’s Army Group A.

Hitler and his Generals created German Army Group A, which was comprised of forty-five divisions, including three Panzer Corps totaling seven Panzer Divisions. The Panzer Divisions were full of armored vehicles including tanks. These modern mobile armored armies were the future of warfare and they crossed the uncrossable Ardennes Forrest with record speed.

The French believed the Ardennes to be nearly impassable with modern trucks