Analysis: The Invasion Starts

Date: June 7, 1944

Author: George Hicks

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

Journalist George Hicks was aboard the USS Ancon in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. The Ancon was the flagship for the invasion of the section of Normandy, France, known as Omaha Beach. It was the beginning of D-Day, when combined Allied troops launched an amphibious invasion of German-held France. This recording was made at midnight and just after. The landings would begin at dawn. At one point in the recording, a German plane seemed to come upon the convoy unexpectedly, followed by several others that attacked Allied ships. One of these was shot down. It was not clear to the men aboard the Ancon how many German defenders were headed their way, and the danger, anxiety, and excitement of those predawn hours are captured in his recording. Hicks was not alone in his access to the events of D-Day. Americans depended on their radios to bring them news of the war, and journalists had become a de facto part of the armed forces. Some 558 journalists, photographers, and their staff were granted access to the D-Day landing, but Hicks's report—which reached American listeners just before midnight on June 6 and concluded on June 7—stands out in its first-person reporting of one of the pivotal moments in American and world history.

Defining Moment

Germany invaded France in May 1940, and Paris fell on June 14. The United States entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and soon began making plans to open up a second front in Europe in order to take the pressure off Russia, which the Germans had invaded in June 1941. Allied invasions across the English Channel were planned and then postponed in 1942 and 1943, with the United States eager to engage in Europe, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in England warning that if an invasion were to go wrong, it would seriously weaken the ability of the Allies to prevent an invasion of Great Britain, whose defenses were already stretched thin.

In January 1944, the most ambitious plan considered thus far was proposed. An amphibious, early-morning assault would be launched along a heavily fortified fifty-mile stretch of coastline. The attack would be covered by naval and aerial bombardment, and paratroopers would land behind enemy lines to cut communications. General Dwight D. Eisenhower would lead this large-scale multinational invasion of the coast of Normandy, code-named Operation Overlord. In preparation for the invasion, elaborate deceptions were staged to throw German intelligence off the mark. Troops were moved around to give the impression that Norway or Denmark might be the target. Journalists were shipped up to Scotland en masse, then returned. Tanks and equipment made of canvas and wood were set up to look like battle-ready invasion units. The Allies leaked information that the target of the invasion would be Calais, the closest point to England on the French coast.

Operation Overlord was scheduled for June 5, 1944, but bad weather and rough seas delayed it by a day. On June 5, over five thousand ships, including the USS Ancon, left England and set out across the channel, covered by eleven thousand aircraft. The deception worked in the early morning hours: despite sporadic fighting, Germany was not fully aware of an attack until after 2 a.m., and the scale of the invasion was only clear at dawn when the horizon was obscured by thousands of ships. Between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m., bombing and bombardment began along the coastline, some targeted to the landing sites, others to keep the Germans guessing at the location of the assault. At 6:30 a.m., troops began landing on the beaches of Normandy.

The United States was responsible for two assault points, code-named Utah and Omaha. The USS Ancon, with George Hicks on board, was the command ship for Omaha, a stretch of beach between the town of Port-en-Bessin and the Vire River. Twelve German fortifications directed fire onto the beach. From the beginning, the attack on Omaha went wrong. Fog had obscured the beach, and the aerial assault had been overcautious in their bombardment, worried that they would hit Allied troops. The German defenses were thus virtually untouched. The transport vehicles had also been pushed east by strong tides, and so troops landed far from their objectives. Over 34,000 troops landed at Omaha Beach, under constant fire. Recent studies have established the casualty count at Omaha as 3,686, far higher than the number reported after the invasion. By the end of the day on June 6, US troops had established a beachhead despite the opposition, and less than a week later, over 326,000 Allied troops had landed along the beaches of Normandy.

Author Biography

George Hicks was born in 1905 in Tacoma, Washington. He began his radio career when he landed a job as an assistant to sports broadcaster Graham McNamee in 1928. Hicks spent ten years at NBC, reporting “light” feature stories. He covered the first undersea broadcast from a submarine, and interviewed early radio pioneers. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into the war, Hicks led a broadcast for the Blue Network, an offshoot of NBC, which featured stories of men at war. In March 1943, the Blue Network opened up a London office, which Hicks headed, and he reported from the front lines in Italy and Corsica. He is best known for his report from the USS Ancon at the start of the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He died March 17, 1965, in Queens, New York.

Document Analysis

George Hicks gives a breathless, minute-by-minute report of the early morning hours preceding the attack on Omaha Beach. His report begins with a description of what he can see: he is aboard a ship in a convoy, with British and American airplanes covering their progress. It is pitch dark, though he can see some fires along the coast. The scene is eerie—the ships are blacked out, and are just shadowy figures in the water. The tension in the scene Hicks describes is palpable, and in the broadcast of the report, the background sounds are riveting. Just after Hicks states that he has not seen any German planes, the roar of aircraft engines is heard on the tape, and Hicks realizes that a German had just flown low over them—the first “Nazi we've seen so far.”

As the German aerial attack intensifies and the ships in the convoy fire back, Hicks describes the scene vividly, from the sound of the different kinds of guns to the way that the darkness takes over as soon as firing pauses. German planes seem suddenly to be everywhere, flying so low that the tracer bullets seem to be parallel to the shore, and the “whole sea side is covered with tracer fire.” The “low, thick smoke” from artillery is everywhere, so planes are heard, but not seen, adding to the tension for the men on the ship. The description of the smoke and the darkness evokes the reaction of other senses as well: the acrid smell of smoke, the salty spray of the sea, and the cacophony of noises of guns and planes and shouting. Hicks records the first shot from the USS Ancon, and the shouts of the men as they manned their guns, and describes how difficult it was to tell in the smoke, bombs, and bullets when something had actually been hit, and whether it was a friend or foe. The situation is so overwhelming that Hicks cannot breathe: “You'll excuse me, I'll just take a deep breath for a moment and stop speaking.”

Just as the air assault seemed to be dying down, Hicks records another German plane just overhead, and the scramble to shoot it down. He then records the conversations by the men on board when they succeed, and Hicks even names the two men who made the “first kill” with the ship's gun. The German plane falls into the sea, “an oozing mass of smoke and flame.” The wreckage “twinkled” as it goes under—another series of evocative descriptions. Before signing off, Hicks gives some additional information about the planes he had seen, and the guns on board the USS Ancon.

Glossary

flak: antiaircraft fire, especially as experienced by the crews of combat airplanes at which the fire is directed

Spitfires: a British fighter plane with a single in-line engine used by the R.A.F. (Royal Air Force) throughout WWII

tracers: ammunition containing a chemical substance that causes a projectile to trail smoke or fire so as to make its path visible and indicate a target to other firers, especially at night; also called tracer ammunition

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon, 1995. Print.

Beevor, Antony. The Second World War. New York: Little, 2012. Print.

“Covering D-Day: An Allied Journalist's Perspective.” British Heritage. British Heritage, 12 June 2006. Web. 30 Dec. 2014.

Marshall, S. L. A. “First Wave at Omaha Beach.” Atlantic. Atlantic Monthly Group, 1 Nov. 1960. Web. 30 Dec. 2014.