Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 11, 1995 TAG: 9511130041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA MYERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ARLINGTON LENGTH: Long
John Howard Doyle died a quiet hero, forbidden to talk of how he saved 132 soldiers and sailors from the frigid English Channel in one of the least-known Allied disasters of World War II.
The Navy captain - who refused orders to flee a German attack during a secret D-Day rehearsal - was publicly remembered at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday.
A plaque also was dedicated to the 749 soldiers and sailors Doyle and his men couldn't rescue, those who ``suffered and perished on April 28, 1944'' in the early morning hours near Slapton Sands, England.
``Although Exercise Tiger ended in tragedy, the lessons learned contributed to the success of the D-Day landings and the ultimate triumph of democracy over tyranny in World War II,'' President Clinton said in a statement read to a gathering of 300 survivors, family and friends.
Exercise Tiger was just one of the elaborate mock invasions that Allied commanders rehearsed off the southern coast of England in the spring of 1944, in preparation for the eventual D-Day landings in Normandy that June.
Tiger was in its second day when nine German E-boats - small, fast ships that hunted with torpedoes - on routine patrol in the English channel picked up heavy radio traffic from one of the English ports. They suspected merchant ships carrying war supplies, but found instead an even more inviting target - a convoy of American troop ships, protected by just a single British warship.
The Germans sunk two of the troop ships; six others made their
way back to port. At least two men from Western Virginia were involved in the exercise, and survived - Vance Martin, now a retired Radford Army Ammunition Plant worker in Montgomery County, and Jack Cumbie, a retired restaurateur from Roanoke. "I think about that just as much as I do the invasion," Cumbie said in an interview last year. "It's something you carry with you."
To this day, the death toll from Exercise Tiger remains a matter of dispute - the U.S. military says 749 died, some veterans and amateur historians put the figure closer to 1,000.
No matter the number, one thing is agreed upon: One reason so many men died is that they hadn't been trained how to use their newly issued life preservers. Instead of fastening the devices under their armpits as they were supposed to, the men hooked them around their waists - which seemed a more natural position.
Too late, the men found that when the life preservers were inflated, the powerful tubes flipped them upside down. Many men drowned that way, trapped beneath the waves in their own life preserver.
The disaster off Slapton Sands had an immediate impact on Allied preparations for D-Day, says Paul Stillwell, the chief historian at the U.S. Naval Academy's Naval Institute and the author of a recent book on the Normandy invasion.
First of all, it exposed a long series of mix-ups.
The radio frequencies were straightened out. The new life preservers were scrapped in favor of the old variety.
The attack on Exercise Tiger also revealed what may have been a fatal flaw in D-Day planning: Exposure to German E-boats.
To correct that, Stillwell says, the Americans hustled in more than 100 Coast Guard vessels and Navy PT boats to help guard the invasion fleet.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened to court-martial anyone who revealed the training debacle. More members of the Army's 4th Infantry Division died that day - 551 - than in the Normandy invasion itself on June 6, 1944; it resulted in the second-highest number of U.S. fatalities in a single day of the war, topped only by Pearl Harbor. Some facts leaked after D-Day, but the whole story wasn't told until recent years - a point that has long irritated Tiger veterans, who feel they haven't gotten proper recognition for what they went through.
"Not that we need any glory," Martin said in an interview last year, "but it ought to be told."
Dr. Eugene Eckstam, a survivor from Monroe, Wis., said Doyle ignored orders to retreat from the torpedo boats that sank Eckstam's ship and disabled two others. Doyle asked the crew of his amphibious ship to rescue their brothers-in-arms.
``Those of us in the water did not expect to live,'' a tearful Eckstam said, his voice breaking. ``Our prayers were answered by the brave and courageous decision by Captain John Doyle. He's the reason I'm here today.''
Doyle died two years ago after a quiet life in Missouri. He married twice, raised a son and ran a small vending machine business, said his sister Peggy Doyle. He never spoke of Exercise Tiger.
``I never really knew just how much of a hero he was,'' said Peggy Doyle, who traveled from Lincoln City, Ore., for the ceremony. ``I missed so much of my brother's life. He refused to talk about it. He couldn't.''
A fir tree was planted during the ceremony, and a wreath laid at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The bodies of many who died weren't recovered from the channel, and some 400 were buried in England.
Retired Navy Lt. Clarence Gonnerman of Columbia, Mo., remembered calling the orders from his ship to flee the attack.
``There was no reason to shoot. We just had to run,'' he said. ``But Doyle stayed. There's a hero ... The ironic thing is no one knows it. We all never got any medals or stars. It was kept quiet too long.''
In 1987, an Exercise Tiger memorial was dedicated at Slapton Sands.
Staff writer Dwayne Yancey contributed to this story.
by CNB