“IT WAS THE NAVY.”

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 195, 31 May 1945, Page 8

“IT WAS THE NAVY.”

D DAY OF 1944. A COMMANDER’S REVIEW. In the course of a - review of the Navy’s part in the war in 1944, Commander Kenneth Edwards, the London “Daily Telegraph’s” naval correspondent, writes particularly of the landing operations in Normandy. “It was the tireless determination of the naval officers and men during the Normandy invasion and the difficult times that followed that made it so great a maritime success against the worst that enemy or weather could .do,” he says. “There were occasions after June 6 when little minesweepers swept all day and patrolled against ‘secret weapons’ and the like every day and every night for 40 days without rest. Their reward was the knowledge that the soldiers were getting what they needed. “The second point which is worth, noting is the very large number of officers and men engaged in the invasion of Normandy who had, until a few months before, been civilians with no former knowledge of the sea or naval training. There were a great many of them to whom the invasion was their baptism of fire, yet in that holocaust off the beaches they declined to get excited and continued to carry out their assigned duties strictly in accordance with their orders, but always ready to use their initiative in emergency. “The third matter is more technical in nature, but none the less important, because its realisation has already effected some change in naval procedure. ’lt had for years been an accepted tenet of naval gunnery that naval guns were virtually useless against enemy positions ashore. Experience in Sicily, Italy, and in the Pacific had to a large extent disproved this theory, but it was left to the invasion of Normandy to sink it fathoms deep. “Hard facts, as represented by crumbled enemy fortifications, as well as the testimony of German prisoners, have paid tribute to the devastating efficiency of our naval bombai'dments, both in the initial stages of the assault and in the subsequent phase of supporting our troops once they had been firmly eestablished ashore 7 The ability to carry out the invasion at all and the strength which could be brought to bear in order to ensure its success in the face of anything that the enemy could do, were the fruits of the largely unsung naval victoiues of past years. “Every time the escort groups of the Western Approaches Command saw a convoy safely through, or sank and damaged a number of U-boats from some marauding pack, those ships were building up the invasion forces. Invasion day was, in fact, the product of the tireless and unspectacular work of tens of thousands of officers and men who have served without stint through the dark years and have not counted the cost either in the sacrifice of their lives or of the prolonged and intense hardships which they have suffered. “It has been said that the Western Approaches Command is one for young men, and it is a command in which very large numbers of young men have given their lives and many more have aged prematurely. There Avas truth in Admiral Mahan’s dictum that the Grand Army of Napoleon was defeated by the storm-battered ships upon which its soldiers never looked. There is equal truth in the fact that Hitler’s Wehrmacht will owe its ultimate defeat to the dingy rust-streaked hulls which Germans have- only glimpsed occasionally from aircraft or through ill-starred periscopes.”