9 minute read
Normandy landings: Part 3
Charles Francis Birch
We trace the footsteps taken in June 1944 by four ancestors of those working in today’s bloodstock industry.
Although the quartet of men had very different wars, all four stories are of bravery, honour, love, misfortune and sadness.
Arthur Henry Cyril Smith: Father of Laura Green, photographer, Tattersalls
Douglas Mann: Grandfather of Ed Harper, Whitsbury Manor Stud
Charles Francis Birch: Grandfather of Danny Molony, senior spotter, Tattersalls, and Hon Peter Stanley, New England Stud
Luke Theodore Lillingston: Grandfather of Luke Lillingston, Mount Coote Stud, and Georgina Bell, Tattersalls
What was an Englishman doing on deadly Omaha Beach?
Charles Francis Birch, grandfather to Tattersalls’ senior spotter Danny Molony, the Earl of Derby and the Hon Peter Stanley of New England Stud, did not have the D-Day landing that you would wish on anyone, and nor should he have been anywhere near such action on June 6.
The only personal war story that Birch reported to his family was that “he was stuck on a sandbar overnight on Omaha Beach taking flak from bombers overhead.”
But Birch was a member of the RAF and should not have involved in the war on the ground, and certainly should not have been on the beaches.
Furthermore, the British battalions landed on Sword and Gold Beaches, and, if indeed he had been engaged on the shoreline, Birch should have been working his way to safety over that zone, making use of the paths created by soldiers such as Captain Mann and his team of troops, and not on Omaha which was designated for the US landings. So why was he there?
Before the war Birch had been training racehorses at Ogbourne Maisey in Berkshire, and was married to Catherine “Nan” Birch. He had joined up in 1941 as a Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as an acting Flying Officer, and in June 1941 his service record has him recorded as working on intelligence duties. He was based with No 93 Squadron and No 24 Squadron, spending much of the war stationed at Middle Wallop, likely to have been working on the radar protection systems.
Unfortunately for Birch in 1944 that all changed and he found himself transferred to the newly formed No. 21 Base Defence Wing. The unit was charged with ensuring that a radar known as AMES Type 25 and able to provide Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) would be taken into France on D-Day.
The equipment had proved to have been vital through the Battle of Britain, most likely when Birch had gained experience of its function, and it was deemed necessary for the kit to be in Normandy for similar protective night duties. The US army did not have its own set so the British “kindly” loaned the Americans the equipment for that summer.
Its transportation, set-up and operation also meant that a number of skilled operatives had to be sent into France to ensure safe delivery and working knowledge of the kit.
A group of around 160 RAF men were selected to land with the US armies on Omaha; Birch was one of the chosen few.
As has been retold in recent weeks Omaha Beach saw the worst and bloodiest of the action of D-Day, the shoreline heavily defended by the German military.
It has to be imagined that the 38-year-old former racehorse trainer, who had been doing a highly important desk job through the preceding years of the war and, while seemingly more than happy to do his bit for the war effort, had not envisioned seeing action such as this.
The unit was scheduled to land mid-morning on June 6 after the first wave of the invasion, it was believed that the beach would be safe, secure and suitable for the largely non-combatant group to move from the shoreline to a safe house with its sizable, awkward, yet precious and vital, equipment.
It was 11.30am when 21 BDS first attempted to land. Their flotilla moved towards the beach, the vehicles, all with engines running and ready to disembark when the ramps were lowered. However, as they closed on Omaha, the beach was observed to still be under heavy machine gun and artillery fire with many dead and dying on the beach, soliders in trouble in the water and equipment abandoned and strewn on the shore.
In the words of the official report, “it was obviously impracticable to land the convoy then” and two American patrol boats, controlling the movement of landing craft, ordered the team to withdraw.
The battle waged on for a day, the German defences in full force on the cliff top picking off the US military; No 21 BDS watched and waited with growing anxiety.
By 17.00 with the tide beginning to rise a decision had to be made as to whether the unit’s landing would proceed or be postponed, as many units had decided, until D+1.
However, the vital importance attached to the quick establishment of the night air defence capability meant BDS was needed ashore on D1.
The flotilla was dispatched with three other craft carrying small tanks and armoured cars; despite the dangers ahead, the RAF men welcomed the promise of dry land and an end to their sea-sickness.
Things quickly went wrong. The planned landing in the safer Easy Red sector, whether by miscommunication or tidal forces, did not happen; the boats instead were directed toward the still heavily-defended Dog Red.
Although some of the unit succeeded in getting ashore, for some they became wedged on those sandbars and open to German fire, evidently it had not appreciated that the sand bars, a feature of Omaha Beach, would prevent the LCTs from unloading close enough to the tide line.
The unit’s report continues: “Most of the craft were landed in about 4’3” of water so that immediately they struck a hole they were drowned.”
Padre Harding recorded coming off an LCT some distance from the beach in fairly deep water, touching down and moving off. At first, the engine kept going, but then his vehicle disappeared into a shell hole.
“I got out and found I could stand on the bottom with the water just up to my chin, while my driver, who was rather shorter than myself, took my hand. He swam and I waded ashore.”
The BDS record book states: “The whole unit came under heavy shell fire while they were on the beach. The troops were got to the top of the beach as soon as possible, they dug foxholes in the shingle and there they remained until the situation could be reviewed and a place found for the unit to be moved to, it being obvious that the front line was just about a mile off the beach.”
Birch’s own experience, in those brief recollections to his family, are evidenced by the service report and, after his night on a sandbar surviving the terrifying ordeal, he got to the beach and join his unit.
He was one of the lucky ones. Out of the 27 vehicles unloaded by four LCTs, only eight actually made it ashore. The fifth LCT hit a sandbank further out to sea and unloaded its vehicles into about four feet of water, its occupants only saving themselves by scrambling onto the roofs of the trucks.
The unit suffered 48 casualties out of its group of 160 or so, with 11 killed in action.
Group Captain Tim Willbond writes in his paper A Briefing Paper By The Association of RAF Fighter Control Officers, The D-Day Fighter Control Story, “It is not often that accounts of Royal Air Force operations involving ground-based airmen rather than aircrew are ever written. However, such is the drama, courage and resilience to be found in this landing that it is believed that more publicity is warranted in respect of this particular operation.
“Not only did the survivors, who were scattered along the beach, manage to reform and salvage eight of their vehicles which, though partially damaged, could be driven off the beach, but they also took delivery of replacement vehicles and personnel.
“These enabled the re-equipped GCI to set up, and be operational by the evening of 9th/10th June 1944 – and even manage to claim an enemy aircraft destroyed that night.”
Despite picking up an injury, Birch remained with the unit as it commenced its radar work in early June and then as the team moved across Normandy towards Paris, eventually reaching and basing at Longchamp racecourse.
The group disbanded on November 10, 1944 and Birch, surely with relief, returned to his desk role, in the UK.
He continued with his intelligence duties to the end of the war working with various squadrons, eventually his RAF commission was relinquished in 1954.
After the war came to its conclusion, Birch did not return to training, he and Nan parted, and Birch left England for Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and he died in Bulawayo in 1974.
Molony, who never met his grandfather, says, “My grandmother said that he never spoke much about his experiences, the only time he mentioned his action in the war was being marooned on that sandbar.
“I think he left the UK quite soon after the war came to an end.”
Nan, who remarried and was known then as Nan Kennedy, continued with the horses and trained herself, her string eventually running under her name from 1976.
She was based Lambourn and one of her biggest successes came when she was 72 years of age with victory for Ra Nova in the 1984 Schweppes Gold Trophy at Newbury.
