EVERY SPRING, AS THE COMMEMORATON OF D-DAY APPROACHED, my father, retired Navy Lt. Bernard Eisner, recalled the young men who went down with their ships during World War Two and might not have been counted and recognized among the heroes of war. As for himself, my dad had been far off on D-day, executive officer of LST-463—a tank and troop carrier—in the South Pacific. Still, though, he felt deep kinship with every sailor who had not come home.
In particular, my dad was preoccupied with the story of Exercise Tiger at Slapton Sands, a devastating Nazi attack on Allied ships off the southern English coast, 39 days before the June 6, 1944 invasion. German intelligence had detected an Allied buildup of troops, personnel and ships in the vicinity of Lyme Bay, about 75 miles across the Channel from Nazi-occupied France. Luftwaffe spotters alerted the small Nazi S-1 torpedo boat fleet at Cherbourg, France, some of which slipped by British surveillance and scored a bloody victory. The fast-moving boats sank two of eight LST’s and damaged a third, killing at least 749 fighting men. Some historians said 1,000 sailors and soldiers had perished, one of the worst training disasters in U.S. military history.