D-Day, 'Private Ryan', and the Irish soldiers who fought in 'hell on Earth'
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Approximately 120,000 Irishmen fought alongside the Allies in the Second World War, and many of them were part of the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy 80 years ago today.
Fighting alongside American, British, and to a lesser extent Canadian forces, the landings started the liberation of western Europe from the Nazis.
One of those involved was an Irish-born RAF pilot who was posted to "ops duties" to co-ordinate air strikes on June 6, 1944. The Dubliner is believed to be the oldest Irishman alive today who played a part in the epic landings.
At 104, he is also believed to be the only surviving RAF veteran of the Battle of Britain, and puts his extraordinary longevity was down to a bit of "good luck".
Numerous military experts, including a retired Irish Army Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey — who has written many books on warfare and in particular the Irish involvement in D-Day — said troops landing that day were met with 'hell on Earth".
For anyone who has seen Steven Spielberg's 1998 recreation, , experts say it paints a very realistic representation of what the troops faced as they disembarked from their landing craft. One of those who witnessed the horrifying scenes first hand was a Dublin-born Ryan.
Just two years into adulthood, 20-year-old Pearse Edmund ‘Ed’ Ryan was a sergeant in the elite US Army Rangers.
Mr Harvey has meticulously researched Irish involvement in the Second World War, including those involved in the D-Day operation, which remains to this day the biggest amphibious landing in history. He obtained Ryan’s written recollection of that bloody day from his nephew.
Mr Ryan was with the second wave of US Rangers who hit the shore below the cliffs of Omaha beach, and at the Pointe du Hoc promontory, at dawn on June 6.
He recalled how they were delayed getting to the shore, which may well have saved him and many of his comrades.
“As soon as we hit the water, the guy beside me had his head blown off," Mr Ryan said.
"I mean it. It was surreal. There was no time to be shocked, sad, or even to think. If you did so, you would surely panic.
“The automatic fire from above churned the sand around us. I am sorry to say that a small group of us dived to take cover behind the heaped bodies of some comrades from the first wave, who had fallen victim to the accurate MG-42 fire [German machine gun].
"I heard the sickening thud, thud, thud as bullets from the deadly machine guns found their mark in the dead bodies again and again and again, but we were safe.
"Then there was a lull when the German machine gunners needed to change ammo belts and we were away.
"A mad sprint to the bottom of the cliff and there, safe from view and from fire, we began to assess the utter havoc we were part of,” Mr Ryan added.
He said some of his comrades "threw up" from the shock of what they had jus witnessed.
“This respite didn’t last. Galvanising the remaining assets at hand and assembling those of us still fit to fight, our officers ordered the ascent of the cliffs.
"We fired up rocket-propelling ropes and grappling hooks, but the soaking of the ropes in the seawater left them heavier than expected and some did not reach their target. There were also 100-foot ladders deployed, and soon I was heading up on one of those. I was told later that the long ladders had been supplied by the London Fire Brigade,” Mr Ryan added.
He said that, with the “crescendo of the MG-42s barking overhead”, he fully expected this to be his last day on Earth and whispered an abridged Act of Contrition as he climbed the ladder.
“Just as I reached the top, another lull, silence as the machine gunner and his assistant changed belts to reload. Peeking over the top, I saw one of my comrades, already topside, approach the gun emplacement casemate with a satchel bomb. This is a small rucksack stuffed with high explosive.
"He had ignited the pull switch fuse and the bomb was smoking. I thought being killed 30 seconds later wouldn’t make any difference so why don’t I hang on to the ladder just below the cliff top and see how my buddy gets on! Then Kaboom.”
Ryan described how his fellow ranger lobbed the bomb right into the opening of the machine gun emplacement and blew those inside “to kingdom come". He and other comrades then moved forward.
"I needn’t tell you, we let rip. Myself and a buddy went around the back of a concrete bunker and found the steel door open. We had three grenades between us. I held the door and tossed in my grenade, while he followed with his two.
"I slammed the door, hearing cries inside of ‘achtung, achtung, achtung’ which were answered by the grenades going boom, boom, boom and the position was ours.” he said.
Ryan’s unit suffered almost 50% casualties (dead or wounded) during the action. They were gallantly led by a Texas farmer, Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, who was himself twice wounded taking the area from the Germans.
"Rudder’s Rangers" quickly found and destroyed the 155mm Howitzers defending the clifftops, but they had to hold out against relentless German counterattacks — until they were finally reinforced on June 8 and the Germans withdrew.
Mr Harvey, a member of the Irish Defence Forces for 40 years, and a nephew of the late taoiseach Jack Lynch, said holding out for those two days was a blur to Sergeant Ryan — no sleep, no communications, no food, and perilously low on ammunition.
“But they had cracked the nut. They had taken the Pointe du Hoc clifftop battery: Six 155mm Howitzer artillery guns in heavily reinforced concrete shelters; an impregnable position with formidable weaponry capable of flinging a 42kg high explosive shell nearly 10 miles, with remarkable accuracy, from a commanding position dominating the landings at Utah and Omaha beaches,” Mr Harvey said.
He said it was vital these weapons were captured or otherwise put beyond use.
“Having courageously fought their way to the clifftop, the rangers found — to their astonishment — that some gun emplacements were empty," Mr Harvey added.
"Unknown to them, the Germans had withdrawn the artillery pieces during previous Allied aerial bombardments to avoid damage, hiding them nearby for rapid deployment, if required.
"It had been one of the toughest missions handed down to any unit attacking Hitler’s Atlantic Wall that D-Day dawn,” Mr Harvey added.
The military historian, who served overseas tours in Lebanon and Kosovo, said the Allies assaulted Normandy along a 50-mile front — targeting the five beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
“To defend against invasion, the Germans had built up a vast array of concrete coastal fortifications, artillery batteries, gun emplacements, minefields, barbed wire entanglements, and improvised shoreline obstacles," he said.
"In all, there were more than 500,000 [German] men manning the shoreline obstacles from Holland’s dykes to Brittany’s peninsula, and even further north and south, from Norway to Spain,” he said.
The 15th Army, the Germans’ main defensive force on the northern French coastline, was placed at the Pas-de-Calais, along the narrowest point of the English Channel between France and England.
The 7th Army, a less formidable one, was in Normandy.
There was, however, a generally accepted belief that Calais, the shortest route and most direct to Berlin, with the most straightforward line of communications, was the most logical and therefore the most likely to be hit.
“It was also thought probable that the invasion would involve a support and a main attack, but which would be where, and when,” Mr Harvey added.
The Allies commanded that the paratroopers would act as the invasion's spearhead some six hours ahead of the some 150,000 troops who would land. Ahead of them, the pathfinders were tasked to mark the drop zones for the paratroopers and the glider-borne troops to follow.
In order to seal the Allies' bridgehead against German counterattack, the seizure of bridges, the "blowing up" of others, the holding of tactically important hilltops, towns and crossroads, and the capturing and destruction of powerful more-inland coastal defence artillery batteries were all necessary undertakings.
Two American airborne paratrooper divisions were to protect the western flank of the invading troops from counterattacking German forces, as were the British Sixth Airborne Division and Canadians on the eastern flank 50 miles away.
One of the first — some claim the very first — US paratroopers on the ground on D-Day at 00.15 on June 6 was the 82nd's Bob Murphy, an Irish member of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment's pathfinder platoon, landing intact and where they were meant to: A mile west of Sainte-Mère-Église.
“Like the US paratroopers, the British paratroopers employed pathfinders ahead of the main drop to guide the bulk of the airborne assault onto the selected drop zones. Among the 22nd Independent Parachute Company, the [British] pathfinders of the Sixth Airborne Division, was Irishman Lance Corporal Edward Delaney O'Sullivan. He landed near Touffreville not long after midnight and infiltrated the town.”
“At 4am, his body was found by two French boys — 10 yards from the body of a dead German.
"The grateful villagers named a square in the town after O’Sullivan,” Mr Harvey said.
The RAF, while offering an effective resistance to the Luftwaffe, found the intensity of the ongoing fighting was taking a heavy toll in the number of fighter aircraft lost and, more especially, the shrinking reservoir of pilots.
More pilots were being killed than the flight training schools could replace, and those not killed were becoming — if they weren't already — totally exhausted. Fighting fatigue was taking hold and, by September 1940, there were 11 pilots from 85 squadron lost in action and they had to be withdrawn. This was Dubliner John Hemingway's squadron.
Mr Hemmingway has recounted that his commanding officer, Group Captain Peter Townsend (famed for his later romance with Britain's Princess Margaret), was good at recognising the signs of "battle fatigue" — symptoms he saw in the young Irishman.
“He rested Hemingway with light duties for two years. Hemingway took on a new role as a flight controller, directing fighter air traffic during the Normandy invasion. Keen to get back to flying, he was posted to Italy in September 1944 as leader of 44 Squadron,” Mr Harvey added.
Five Victoria Crosses were awarded to Irishmen from the South during the Second World War, and Waterford man Redmond Cunningham won a Military Cross on D-Day for his exceptional gallantry on Sword Beach. All had been fighting with the British forces.
Mr Harvey points out that the French government had latterly honoured those then still surviving Irishmen over the last number of years, awarding them with the Legion de Honor.
One such recipient was Kerry native Jack Mahoney, who had fought in Normandy, arriving a few days after D-Day as a replacement tank driver for those injured and killed there). He was awarded the Legion de Honour in 2015.
Mr Mahoney’s story said it all, according to the then first counsellor at the French Embassy Phillippe Ray, when he said: “Your story, Jack, is a testimony to the courage of all men and woman who refuse to give up.
The full extent of the involvement of Irishmen and woman on D-Day has never been properly calculated, but military historians say it is likely to be in the tens of thousands.
However, what is known from military archives is 120,000 Irishmen fought in the war — around 70,000 were from the South and 50,000 from the North.
The "Free State" South was neutral, and Mr Harvey said that the Government here was not at all happy with some members of our Defence Forces who left the army to go and fight with the British against the "evil Axis" powers. Indeed, several of them were labelled by the Irish State as deserters.
It was only 12 years ago that they were granted an official pardon by then minister for defence, Alan Shatter.
- Dan Harvey has written a number of critically acclaimed books on military history including