Devon D Day Assault Training Center
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ASSAULT TRAINING CENTER
Where American soldiers trained and practiced for their amphibious assault upon the beaches of Normandy on D Day 6th June 1944.
Welcome
Over the weekend of Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th June, Glenn Booker visited Devon D Day 2016 along with his colleague, John Powell, from Swansea.
The event marked the anniversary of D-Day and took place on Saunton Beach, North Devon -
with educational displays, (seen below) wartime vehicles and living history groups, pyrotechnic re-enactments and The Devon Historic Flight, which provided a static display of six planes,
Found after 60 years
The original leaflet, from which this copy has been taken, was found in one of the chalets at the NALGO holiday park in Croyde Bay, North Devon, when some refurbishments were taking place in 2003.The site had been used by the American Forces when they were in North Devon training for the D Day landings and the leaflet had obviously been tucked away by an American Soldier and not found for more than fifty years.We shall never know whether the soldier who read it, to find out about the idiosyncrasies of the British people of that time, survived the war or not. However, the leaflet provides a fascinating glimpse of the life and times of the British during the Second World War - and how different things are today.After 12 pages of helpful advice, the booklet concludes -You will soon find yourself among a kindly, quiet, hard-working people who have been living under a strain such as few people in the world have ever known. In your dealings with them, let this be your Slogan:
It is aways impolite to criticize your hosts;
It is militarily stupid to criticize your allies.
Amphibious Assault Training
The Assault Training Center was a unique establishment of World War II, created through necessity by the U.S. Army to train their troops who would spearhead the D Day landings in Normandy. The area set aside was all the land west of a line from Ilfracombe to the Taw and Torridge estuary, including beaches at Saunton, Croyde and Woolacombe, Baggy Point and Braunton Burrows.
Between September 1943 and March 1944, over fourteen tousand American soldiers learned and practiced the deadly arts and tactics of amphibious assault, in a three week training courses
Topography of the American Beaches to be assaulted on D day, did not allow the use of tanks and armored vehicles, so neutralizing enemy bunkers and strongholds had to be done by the infantry.
This involved teaching them new skills and tactics and the very reason the Assault Training Center was created.
The US Assault Training Center was a truly unique establishment. It was the only one of its kind in wartime Great Britain where American soldiers learned, trained and practised newly developed amphibious assault tactics to lead the assault across the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, 6th June 1944.
In 1943 its formation came about through sheer necessity, following an unforgivable oversight at the very highest level of American war planning which had assumed troops destined to lead the invasion of Europe would arrive in Britain already trained for their task. Realisation this was not the case created a tense situation that had to be urgently rectified as the proposed date for the invasion of Europe was only a few months ahead.
The American high command had to select an individual with the right qualifications, experience and personality who could head up this task. Combing personnel files the name of Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Thompson stood out. He was a career engineer soldier, graduating from West Point in 1929, and had spent 1935 to 1937 in Nazi Germany as a military attaché to the United States embassy in Berlin where he had spent a period of attachment with the German 16th Engineer Battalion learning their theory and practice of defensive fortifications. He was described by General John C.H. Lee, commanding Service of Supplies, ETO as “our best informed officer on German technique, organization and tactics”.
His mission was two-fold. Firstly, to produce a doctrine for assaulting a heavily defended enemy coastline and establish a beachhead, and having done that from scratch, he then had to train combat troops in those principles. Thompson soon recognised as Commandant of the only American establishment tasked with training soldiers for the invasion of Europe that the very success or failure of the American D-Day landings lay fully upon his shoulders.
His initial research showed that no principle existed within the US Army for assaulting a heavily fortified and defensively prepared coastline, and the only published advice in a US Army Field Manual was ... “Fortified areas are avoided in the initial assault and taken from the rear". Colonel Chase the Assault Training Center’s Chief of training later remarked “nice work if you can get it”. Therefore assaulting the enemy held coastline of Normandy required not only the creation of a new and unique doctrine but also the training of thousands of troops in those principles, and time was short. British and Canadian troops were already well advanced in their training programmes and Allied war planners were steadily evolving logistical solutions for the greatest amphibious assault in military history, except American troops weren’t ready
https://www.theamerican.co.uk/pr/ft-US-Assault-Training-Center-Devon
Practice Landing Crafts Braunton Burrows
https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/25898/Practice-Landing-Crafts-Braunton-Burrows.htm
Commemorations at the concrete LCT Memorial
On a remote part of the dunes where the Americans had built six concrete landing craft, there is a memorial to those men who trained here for D Day.
The concrete landing craft were built, as they did not have real ones to practice loading with.
It is easy to understand, as they had used six of them.
The memorial was part of a scheme to preserve the structures, as the military who trained nearby had wanted to blow them up, as part of their exercises. .
It was decided that the memorial would help to preserve them and commemorate those who served here as well.
Woolacombe American Memorial
U.S. Army Assault Training Centre headquarters was based at Woolacombe. Glenn Booker also visited the stone memorial to the soldiers, dedicated in 1992, sited on the grassy headland at the northern end of the beach.
Thousands of small boat crews and infantry practiced amphibious landing assaults on the beach in preparation for the Invasion of Normandy, part of Operation Overlord. The long flat shape of the beach and the conditions of the hinterland were considered to closely resemble the Omaha Beach landing area.
Pembrokeshire's GIs
28th Infantry Division prepare for D-DAY
The 'Keystone' Division, with HQ at the Imperial Hotel, Tenby, was quartered throughout south Wales, key elements being the 109th Regiment at Margam Castle, 110th at Llanion Barracks, and 112th at Highmead House, near Lampeter. The three battalions, numbered some 14,000 men, including attached units.
And each man was earmarked, prior to extensive land-based and amphibious training, for the highly secret D-Day Landings sometime the following summer.
The 110th Regiment HQ, plus the First and Second Battalions south of the Haven at Pembroke Dock, with the Third Battalion at Dale Road Camp, Haverfordwest, spent some six months in and around the county - training on the Preseli’s, or at rifle practice down at Stackpole or Penally, occasionally travelling to the Gower for battalion exercises . . .
. . . or as the full regiment just before Christmas '43 to the US Army Assault Training Center at Woolacombe/Braunton in north Devon.
Unknown to the men of the 'Bloody Bucket' Division, much of the amphibious training was to be in vain, although the importance of it all became very evident around D-Day.
The 28th Division was keyed up by a visit and inspection from their boss Eisenhower, certain in the knowledge that they were to be among the first to assault France.
(West Wales Guardian, April 12th, 1944.)