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Stephen Ambrose and the British coxswains
Stephen Ambrose, in his book, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of
World War II, penned several unsubstantiated comments demeaning the
performance of British sailors of Combined Operations, Royal Navy.
Especially galling and completely erroneous are his statements on pages 337
and 343. On Page 337 Ambrose wrote:
On
the command boat for B Company, the CO, Capt. Ettore Zappacosta, heard
the British coxswain cry out, "We can't go in there. We can't see the
landmarks. We must pull off." Zappacosta pulled his colt .45 and
ordered, "By god, you'll take this boat straight in."
The
coxswain did. When the ramp dropped, Zappacosta was first off. He was
immediately hit. Medic Thomas Kenser saw him bleeding from the hip and
shoulder. Kenser, still on the ramp, shouted, "Try to make it in! I'm
coming." But the captain was already dead. Before Kenser could jump off
the boat he was shot dead. Every man on the boat save one (Pvt. Robert
Sales) was either killed or wounded before reaching the beach.
In 1999, Bob Sales, the only survivor on D-Day from this landing craft (and
radio operator for Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta) stated that the captain did
not pull his gun on the British coxswain. Sales said (in a tape recording
sent to Kevan Elsby):
I
want to tell the story of what happened going in at Normandy concerning
Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta. I was his radio operator. I know what I am
telling you to be absolute facts. I am the only survivor off that
landing craft and I have never, never told anybody that Captain
Zappacosta pulled his gun on that coxswain and told him to take that
boat in. It did not happen.
When we left the Empire Javelin and boarded the landing craft, Captain Zappacosta was the first man at the front. I was behind him, being his
radio operator. He was very quiet going in. He was not a talkative man
anyways, but he was very, very quiet on the trip in. About a thousand
yards or so off the beach, the only words he spoke were, “Sales, step up
there and see what's going on on the beach, if you can see anything.”
I
looked over. I could not tell anything. I said, “A Company. I can't see
'em. It looks like bodies laying on the beach, but I cannot tell.” And I
sat back down.
It
wasn't but a brief while after that and the only words from the coxswain
were: “I cannot go in any further. I'm going to drop the ramp.”
There was no argument about it. There were obstacles in the water. The
water was up to my neck when I finally got my feet on the ground. He
could not do any better.
We
were headed into Vierville, where it was the most heavily fortified area
on Omaha. Then the ramp went down and these were the only words I heard
the coxswain speak, and I do not know to this day whether he got out
alive or not, but when that ramp went down mortar shells were hitting on
both sides of us. Machine guns were all over top of us, just like you
were in a bees' nest.
The
Captain was the first man to get off the boat and he was hit on the ramp
and fell into the water. Sergeant Wright was next off, followed by the
first aid man. I was fourth off the boat. The sea was rough, the ramp
banged up and down, and I caught my heel and went over the side into the
water.
When I got up, Captain Zappacosta was up and calling to me, "I'm hit!"
He went down and I did not see him come up. His body was washed up on
the beach later.
The first
time I saw the Zappacosta incident about pulling his gun was back in the
early sixties in a magazine called Stag. I think some writer just
dreamed it up. According to your papers, S. L. A. Marshall said it, but
I just don't see how Marshall could have said it. I did not tell him. I
was the only survivor off that landing craft.
There is no way it happened. I did not tell it. There was nobody else living
who could have told it and it could not have happened, and if there is one
thing I want, it is for that British sailor, if he is alive or dead or
whatever, I want him cleared of this. It did not happen.
In a more recent statement of February 4, 2002, Bob Sales stated:
I
told Stephen Ambrose it was absolutely wrong. He just laughed it off and
said, “I can't do everything.” I met him up there in Washington just a
couple of years ago at a press conference. He just laughed it off.
Captain Zappacosta never moved out of his position all the way in. He
was not the kind of man to pull a gun to the head of a sailor. If we had
gone in any further, we would have hit the mines on the obstacle. I want
this thing cleared up.
Stephen Ambrose not only ignored Bob Sales, Ambrose also ignored the account
of Joseph Ewing in 29 Let’s Go! A History of the 29th Infantry
Division in World War II (1948). On page 43, Ewing refers to the boat
report of Zappacosta’s craft and quotes from it as follows:
About seventy-five yards from the beach the ramp was dropped, and the
enemy automatic fire then beat a tattoo all over the boat front. Captain
Ettore Zappacosta, the Company Commander, jumped from the boat and got
ten yards through the water. Pfc Robert Sales saw him hit in the leg and
shoulder. He yelled, "I'm hit." T/5 Kenser, a first-aid man, yelled:
"Try to make it in!" Zappacosta went down and they did not see him come
up again.
Ambrose relied upon the account of S.L.A. Marshall who wrote in “First Wave
at Omaha Beach” (The Atlantic Monthly, November 1960):
A
great cloud of smoke and dust raised by the mortar and machine-gun fire
has almost closed a curtain around Able Company's ordeal. Outside the
pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few heads
bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough
for the British coxswains. They raise the cry: “We can't go in there. We
can't see the landmarks. We must pull off.”
In
the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt .45 and
says: "By god, you'll take this boat straight in."
Stephen Ambrose's text bears a distinct resemblance to S. L. A. Marshall's
writing (a similar article appeared in the April 1961 issue of Stag),
but discards earlier accounts and disregards the concerns expressed by Bob
Sales, the only survivor from this landing craft.
The story of Captain Zappacosta and the coxswain is not the only one of its
kind in Ambrose’s D-Day. On Page 343, Ambrose writes:
At
100 meters from the shore, the British coxswain said he had to lower the
ramp and everyone should get out quickly. Sgt. Willard Northfleet told
him to keep going: “These men have heavy equipment and you will take
them all the way in.” The coxswain begged, “But we'll all be killed!”
Northfleet unholstered his .45 Colt pistol, put it to the sailors head
and ordered, “All the way in!” The coxswain proceeded.
The Account of D Company 116th Infantry Regiment from the 29th Infantry
Division "Group Critique Notes" (interviews with 116th members less than two
months after D-Day), states:
The first section put off from their ship, but the landing craft shipped
water much more rapidly than the pumps could care for. The British
coxswain applied to his ship for relief but was told to continue the
mission.... Four hundred yards from the shore the British coxswain
insisted that he could take the craft no further. He started to lower
the ramp but the platoon sergeant Willard R. Northfleet blocked the
mechanism and insisted that the boat was going in farther ....
Whilst there were obvious difficulties on this landing craft, there is no
mention of a Colt .45 being pulled to the head of the British coxswain. It
is a fact that D Company 116th Infantry Regiment was a heavy
weapons company and, in the rough seas on the morning of D-Day, the landing
craft were too heavily laden. Many soldiers carried more equipment and
ammunition than on training exercises conducted in calmer seas. Each landing
craft was equipped with two pumps, but there was a limit to their capacity
to keep the landing craft high in the water.
It is also a fact that the average angle of slope of Omaha Beach was less
than one degree to the horizontal, with the surf running at two to four feet
and very strong tides. Two huge sandbars ran parallel to the beach, with
deep tidal runnels also running parallel to the beach.
Veterans have described this particular landing craft of D Company 116th
Infantry Regiment as rocking up and down with the ramp flapping violently in
the air, with deeper water in front of the boat. The coxswains on all
landing craft were trained and under orders to gun the engines and drop the
ramp as soon as the landing craft grounded on the tidal flats of Omaha
Beach.
In 29 Let’s Go! A History of the 29th Infantry Division in
World War II (1948), Joseph Ewing writes on page 44:
Losses in D-Company, due in at 7:10 A.M., prevented their heavy weapons
from contributing much to the fighting on the beach. One of the boats
was abandoned far out to sea after shipping too much water. Another was
sunk by a mine or an artillery shell a quarter mile from land. A third
boat dropped its ramps 150 yards from the beach, and when the men saw
others in front of them staying in the water, they followed their
example.
Since the publication of D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World
War II, American and British veterans from Omaha Beach have expressed
their deep concerns about ineffectual research and the gross inaccuracy of
accounts to Stephen Ambrose, but to no avail. Their objections have been
laughed off and ignored.
Would General Eisenhower have expected US Army officers to pull a gun to the
heads of British sailors on D-Day?
Should American officers be portrayed as thugs, and should British sailors
be portrayed as cowards?
Are these the type of men who put their lives at risk on D-Day?
The reputation of Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta of B Company 116th Infantry
Regiment has been besmirched.
British sailors from 551 Assault Flotilla, Combined Operations, Royal Navy
have been dishonoured.
This bad reporting and blatantly poor research has caused great bitterness
and resentment amongst American and British veterans.
Popular history it may be, but accurate certainly not!
As a
world-wide recognized authority on World War II, historian Stephen Ambrose
is morally obligated either to document from official sources the validity
of his statements, or to correct them and publicly apologize to the veterans
he has so shamefully defamed, before they go to their graves with bitter
resentment towards what has been so falsely written about them and their
comrades. Why should veterans allow any historian to desecrate the graves of
their comrades in arms? |
