“No Equal in the World”

A NATICK OFFICER’S LEADERSHIP AT NORMANDY

The D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, is remembered today as one of human history's most complex and ambitious military undertakings. However, a little-known fact about this invasion is that the first naval officer on the shore of Utah Beach was a man from Natick.

James Earl Arnold lived in Natick from 1931 to 1947. He worked as a salesman and engineer in Boston for the Leland-Gifford Company and even served a term representing Natick in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. What may have been a peaceful civilian life for Arnold was disrupted by the coming of World War II. A Navy veteran of the First World War, Arnold had stayed in the ranks and was called back to active duty in 1940. He spent a few years assigned to oversee US Navy shipbuilding operations at Bethlehem Steel in Quincy. He was then shipped over to Europe for the preparation of Operation Neptune.

Operation Neptune was the codename for the naval invasion phase of the Battle of Normandy. This operation would spearhead the Allied offensive to wrestle control of France back from Germany. Months of strategic and logistical planning were spent in preparation for this operation. Captain Arnold was designated NOIC UTAH: Naval Officer In Charge for port operations on Utah Beach. He directed “the orderly movement of ships and craft destined to land thousands of men and tons of equipment on UTAH beach.” After that, he would coordinate these operations on the beach in collaboration with the Army.

On June 6th, 1944, after multiple postponements, the Allied invasion of France began. The Utah Beach landings were successful despite Captain Arnold’s fleet being blown off course to the south. After standing by for a coastal bombardment and the first waves of landing craft, Arnold himself disembarked and made for the beach alongside a group of soldiers with direly needed medical supplies for the wounded.

In his diary, Arnold recounted rushing to cover: “I don’t think any of the group landing with me were hit during the disembarking, but shell bursts were too damned close. We had only a couple hundred feet of beach to cross before reaching the sea wall and the foxholes dug by the beach battalions. Oh, boy, were those holes comfortable when the shrapnel sang and burst!” In cover, Arnold found himself beside generals Raymond Barton and Teddy Roosevelt Jr., who were leading the American attack on the ground. It was on this beach that Roosevelt is famously said to have exclaimed, “We’ll start the war from here!”

Once the beach was secure, Captain Arnold set up a port for transferring military supplies from ships to land. He described a plan for “thirteen ships to be detonated and sunk to form the artificial harbor off Utah Beach, [of which] eleven appeared.” These ships, too damaged to serve in any operational capacity, were positioned and scuttled off the beach coast to form a seawall. This row of ships was designated Gooseberry G1 and ensured steady waters for thousands of soldiers and tons of equipment to be unloaded daily.

The victorious landing assault on Utah Beach cost the United States 197 lives, among hundreds more wounded. There is no official record of the number of German casualties. In hindsight, Arnold reminisced about the “panic and snafu times on Utah Beach.” Though he led a successful operation, as did the broader coalition of Allied forces, he could not help but reflect on the costly nature of war:

“I have lived in wet clothes for days and gone without a bath for weeks. I know the helplessness of lying in a foxhole while air bombs drop and the fear of seeing men blown to bits by bursting shells. I know the experience of eating K rations out of a paper and can remember some of the days when I didn’t eat at all – and didn’t seem hungry. I have felt the urge to kill and keep killing and the horror of badly wounded men – some hopelessly hurt making little whimpering noises like a whipped little boy. And I know the feeling of loneliness for family and home, which is one of the most hopeless of all the sicknesses.

But also I have seen in the last few weeks more pleasant things to remember. Good men standing by good officers. An army which has no equal in the world.”

Selected Sources and Additional Reading:

Arnold, James. “NOIC UTAH.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 73, no. 532 (June 1947).

Arnold, James. War Diary, (1944).

Utah Beach Landing Museum, “June 6 1944: D-Day at Utah Beach”.