The Victors Part 4

The boat hit a sandbar two hundred meters from the sh.o.r.e. (The water was shallower off exit 2 than at exit 3, which was why the Navy had insisted on going in at exit 3.) The c.o.xswain said it was time for the infantry to go, that he was getting out of there.

Lieutenant Rebarcheck responded, "You are not going to drown these men. Give her another try." The c.o.xswain backed off the bar, went 30 meters to the left, tried to go in, and hit the bar again. Rebarcheck said, "OK, let's go," but then the ramp got stuck.

"The h.e.l.l with this," Rebarcheck called out. He jumped over the side; his men followed.

"I jumped out in waist-deep water," Sergeant Pike recalled. "We had 200 feet to go to sh.o.r.e and you couldn't run, you could just kind of push forward. We finally made it to the edge of the water, then we had 200 yards of open beach to cross, through the obstacles. But fortunately most of the Germans were not able to fight, they were all shook up from the bombing and the sh.e.l.ling and the rockets and most of them just wanted to surrender." Capt. Howard Lees, commander of E Company, led his men over the seawall to the top of the dunes. "What we saw," Sergeant Pike remembered, "was nothing like what we saw on the sand table back in England. We said, 'Hey, this doesn't look like what they showed us.' "

Roosevelt joined them, walking calmly up to their position, using his cane (he had had a heart attack), wearing a wool knit hat (he hated helmets), ignoring the fire. About this time (0640) the Germans to the north in the fortifications at Les-Dunes-de-Varreville began shooting at 2nd Battalion with 88mm cannon and machine guns, but not accurately. Roosevelt and Lees conferred, studied their maps, and realized they were at the wrong place. Roosevelt returned to the beach. By now the first Sherman tanks had landed and were returning the German fire. Commodore James Arnold, the navy control officer for Utah, was just landing with the third wave. "German 88s were pounding the beachhead," he recalled. "Two U.S. tanks were drawn up at the high-water line pumping back. I tried to run to get into the lee of these tanks. I realize now why the infantry likes to have tanks along in a skirmish. They offer a world of security to a man in open terrain who may have a terribly empty sensation in his guts." Arnold found a sh.e.l.l hole and made it his temporary headquarters. "An army officer wearing the single star of a brigadier jumped into my 'headquarters' to duck the blast of an 88.

" 'Sonsabuzzards,' he muttered, as we untangled sufficiently to look at each other. 'I'm Teddy Roosevelt. You're Arnold of the Navy. I remember you at the briefing at Plymouth.' " Roosevelt was joined by the two battalion commanders of the 8th Infantry, Lt. Cols. Conrad Simmons and Carlton MacNeely. As they studied the map, Col. James Van Fleet, CO of the regiment, came wading ash.o.r.e.

51 He had landed with the fourth wave, carrying the 237th and 299th ECBs.

"Van," Roosevelt exclaimed, "we're not where we were supposed to be." He pointed to a building on the beach. It was supposed to be to the left. "Now it's to our right. I figure we are more than a mile further south." Van Fleet reflected that ironically they were at the exact spot he had wanted the navy to land his regiment, but the navy had insisted it was impossible because the water was too shallow.

"We faced an immediate and important decision," Van Fleet wrote. "Should we try to s.h.i.+ft our entire landing force more than a mile down the beach, and follow our original plan? Or should we proceed across the causeways immediately opposite where we had landed?" Already men were crossing the seawall and dunes in front of the officers, while navy demolition men and engineers were blowing up obstacles behind them.

Roosevelt became a legend for reportedly saying at this point, "We'll start the war from right here."

According to Van Fleet that was not the way it happened. In an unpublished memoir, Van Fleet wrote: "I made the decision. 'Go straight inland,' I ordered. 'We've caught the enemy at a weak point, so let's take advantage of it.' " The important point was not who made the decision but that it was made without opposition or time-consuming argument. It was the right decision and showed the flexibility of the high command. Simmons and MacNeely immediately set about clearing the German beach opposition, preparing to seize the eastern ends of exits 1 and 2, then cross the causeways to drive west. First, however, they needed to get their men through the seawall and over the dunes. Lt. Elliot Richardson was CO of a medic detachment that landed with the fourth wave. "I waded ash.o.r.e with my guys. There were occasional sh.e.l.l bursts on the beach but it didn't amount to much as most of the German guns had been put out of action. I walked up to the top of the dune and looked around. There was this barbed wire area and a wounded officer who had stepped on an antipersonnel mine calling for help."

Richardson held a brief debate with himself. It was obviously dangerous to go into the area.

Nevertheless, "I decided that I should go. I walked in toward him, putting each foot down carefully, and picked him up and carried him back." Richardson's men got the wounded officer on a stretcher and carried him down to an aid station on the beach.

"That was my baptism," Richardson said. "It was the sort of behavior I expected of myself."

Capt. George Mabry, S-3 (operations officer) of 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry, crossed the dunes and found himself with several members of G Company caught in a minefield. Three men stepped on S-mines. Colonel Van Fleet described what happened: "Mabry had a choice: to withdraw to the beach or go after the enemy. Each alternative meant crossing the minefield. Mabry chose to charge. Firing as he ran, Mabry charged twenty-five yards to an enemy foxhole. Those Germans who resisted, he killed; the others surrendered. Next he gathered a handful of G Company men, sent for two tanks, and a.s.saulted a large pillbox guarding the causeway at exit 1."

Sergeant Pike of E Company joined Mabry's group. As Mabry led the men across the causeway, headed toward Pouppeville, he caught up with Lieutenant Tighe of the 70th Tank Battalion. Tighe had lost three tanks to land mines but was moving cautiously ahead with his remaining two Shermans. Mabry put infantry in front and pushed on, urging speed because they were so exposed on the causeway and were taking mortar fire, simultaneously urging caution because of the mines. They came to a bridge over a culvert and figured it must be prepared for demolition; further, the scouts reported that they had seen some Germans duck into the culvert.

Mabry sent troops out into the flooded fields to pinch in on both sides of the culvert. The Germans surrendered without putting up a fight. Mabry had them disconnect the charges, then sent the prisoners 52 back to the beach and pushed on. After the guards put the prisoners into a landing craft, to be taken back to the USSBayfield for interrogation, they reported to Van Fleet. It was 0940. Van Fleet radioed General Barton onBayfield, "I am ash.o.r.e with Colonel Simmons and General Roosevelt, advancing steadily." As new waves of landing craft came in, Van Fleet and Roosevelt sent them through the holes in the seawall with orders to move inland. Already the biggest problem they faced was congestion on the beach. There were too many troops and vehicles, not enough openings. Sporadic incoming artillery fire and the ubiquitous mines made the traffic jam horrendous. Still, at 1045, Van Fleet was able to radio Barton, "Everything is going OK." The beach area was comparatively secure, the reserve battalions were coming ash.o.r.e.

Mabry pushed forward on the causeway. He kept cautioning his scouts. "You know," he said to Sergeant Pike, "the paratroopers are supposed to have taken this town Pouppeville, but they may not have. Let's not shoot any of our paratroopers." Pike said OK.

The scouts got to the western edge of the flooded area. "We could see the bushes and a few trees where the causeway ended," Pike recalled, "and then I saw a helmet and then it disappeared, and I told Captain Mabry that I saw a helmet up there behind those bushes and he said, 'Could you tell if it was American or German?' and I said, 'I didn't see enough, I don't know, sir.' " The men on the far end of the causeway shot off an orange flare. "And these two guys stood up and the first thing we saw was the American flag on their shoulder and it was two paratroopers. They said, '4th Division?' and we said, 'Yes.' " Lt. Eugene Brierre of the 101st was one of the two paratroopers. He greeted Pike and asked, "Who is in charge here?" Mabry came up and replied, "I am." Brierre said, "Well, General Taylor is right back here in Pouppeville and wants to meet you."

It was 1110. The linkup between the 101st and 4th Divisions had been achieved.

Exit 1 was in American hands.

Mabry talked to Taylor, who said he was moving out to accomplish further objectives, then proceeded through Pouppeville in the direction of Ste.-Marie-du-Mont. There were forty or so dead German soldiers in Pouppeville, testimony to the fight the 101st had been engaged in. Near Ste.-Marie-du-Mont, Lt. Louis Nixon of Easy Company, 506th, 101st asked Mabry for a bit of help from the two tanks; Mabry detached them and they went to work. Then it was on to Ste.-Marie-du-Mont, where the Mabry force helped the paratroopers secure the town.

The 4th Division and attached units were pouring ash.o.r.e. Their main problem was with the sea, not the Germans. The waves were pitching the landing craft around, coming over the gunwales to hit the troops smack in the face, making many of the men so miserable they could not wait to get off. "The boats were going around like little bugs jockeying for position," Pvt. Ralph Della-Volpe recalled. "I had had an extra, extra big breakfast thinking it would help, but I lost it." So did many others. Seaman Marvin Perrett, an eighteen-year-old coast guardsman from New Orleans, was c.o.xswain on a New Orleans-built Higgins boat. The thirty members of the 12th Regiment of the 4th Division he was carrying ash.o.r.e had turned their heads toward him to avoid the spray. He could see concern and fear on their faces. Just in front of him stood a chaplain. Perrett was concentrating on keeping his place in the advancing line. The chaplain upchucked his breakfast, the wind caught it, and Perrett's face was covered with undigested eggs, coffee, and bits of bacon.

One of Perrett's crew dipped a bucket in the Channel and threw the water over his face. "How's that, skipper?" he asked.

"That was great," Perrett replied. "Do it again." The crew member did, and the infantrymen broke into 53 laughter. "It just took the tension right away," Perrett said.

Sgt. John Beck of the 87th Mortar Battalion had taken seasickness pills. They did not work; he threw up anyway. But they had an unintended effect-he fell asleep while going in.

"The explosion of sh.e.l.ls awakened me as we approached the coast," he remembered "My best friend, Sgt. Bob Myers from New Castle, Pa., took a number of those pills and it drove him out of his mind. He didn't become coherent until the next day. He made the invasion of Normandy and doesn't remember one thing about it!" Behind the sand dunes at Utah were flooded fields, difficult to cross. Behind the fields the ground rose and small hills dominated the landscape, most of them with a village on it. The American paratroopers had landed all over the area and in many cases had taken the villages, as Easy Company, 506th, 101st had done at Ste.-Marie-du-Mont. Other groups of troopers, ranging from three or four men to a platoon-size force, had moved to the beaches, to open the causeways leading through the fields for the incoming 4th Division. Capt. L. "Legs" Johnson led a patrol of paratroopers down the causeway to the beach. He saw German soldiers in one of the batteries waving a white flag. "They were underground, part of the coastal defense group, and they were relatively older men, really not very good soldiers. We accepted their terms of surrender, allowing them to come up only in small groups. We enclosed them with barbed wire fencing, their own barbed wire, and they were pretty well shocked when they learned that there were a lot more of them than there were of us-there were at least fifty of those guys."

Johnson took his helmet off, set it down, lay on the ground with his helmet as a headrest, "really taking it sort of easy, waiting for the 4th Infantry Division to come up." At about 1100 the infantry were there, "and it was really sort of amusing, because we were on the beach with our faces all blackened, and these guys would come up in their boats and crash down in front of us and man, when they came off those boats, they were ready for action. We quickly hollered to them and pointed to our American flags."

Inland by about a kilometer from St.-Martin-de-Varreville there was a group of buildings holding a German coastal-artillery barracks, known to the Americans from its map signification as WXYZ. Lt. Col.

Patrick Ca.s.sidy, commanding the 1st Battalion of the 502nd, short of men and with a variety of missions to perform, sent Sgt. Harrison Summers of West Virginia with fifteen men to capture the barracks. That was not much of a force to take on a full-strength German company, but it was all Ca.s.sidy could spare.

Summers set out immediately, not even taking the time to learn the names of the men he was leading, who were showing considerable reluctance to follow this unknown sergeant. Summers grabbed one man, Sgt. Leland Baker, and told him, "Go up to the top of this rise and watch in that direction and don't let anything come over that hill and get on my flank. Stay there until you're told to come back." Baker did as ordered.

Summers then went to work, charging the first farmhouse, hoping his hodgepodge squad would follow.

It did not, but he kicked in the door and sprayed the interior with his tommy gun. Four Germans fell dead, others ran out a back door to the next house. Summers, still alone, charged that house; again the Germans fled. His example inspired Pvt. William Burt to come out of the roadside ditch where the group was hiding, set up his light machine gun, and begin laying down a suppressing fire against the third barracks building. Once more Summers dashed forward. The Germans were ready this time; they shot at him from loopholes but, what with Burt's machine-gun fire and Summers's zigzag running, failed to hit him. Summers kicked in the door and sprayed the interior, killing six Germans and driving the remainder out of the building. Summers dropped to the ground, exhausted and in emotional shock. He rested for half an hour. His squad came up and replenished his ammunition supply. As he rose to go on, an unknown captain from the 101st, misdropped by miles, appeared at his side. "I'll go with you," said the captain. At that instant he was shot through the heart and Summers was again alone. He charged another 54 building, killing six more Germans. The rest threw up their hands. Summers's squad was close behind; he turned the prisoners over to his men. One of them, Pvt. John Camien from New York City, called out to Summers: "Why are you doing it?"

"I can't tell you," Summers replied.

"What about the others?"

"They don't seem to want to fight," said Summers, "and I can't make them. So I've got to finish it."

"OK," said Camien. "I'm with you."

Together, Summers and Camien moved from building to building, taking turns charging and giving covering fire. Burt meanwhile moved up with his machine gun. Between the three of them, they killed more Germans. There were two buildings to go. Summers charged the first and kicked the door open, to see the most improbable sight. Fifteen German artillerymen were seated at mess tables eating breakfast.

Summers never paused; he shot them down at the tables.

The last building was the largest. Beside it were a shed and a haystack. Burt used tracer bullets to set them ablaze. The shed was used by the Germans for ammunition storage; it quickly exploded, driving thirty Germans out into the open, where Summers, Camien, and Burt shot some of them down as the others fled. Another member of Summers's makes.h.i.+ft squad came up. He had a bazooka, which he used to set the roof of the last building on fire. The Germans on the ground floor were firing a steady fusillade from loopholes in the walls, but as the flames began to build they dashed out. Many died in the open.

Thirty-one others emerged with raised hands to offer their surrender. Summers collapsed, exhausted by his nearly five hours of combat. He lit a cigarette. One of the men asked him, "How do you feel?" "Not very good," Summers answered. "It was all kind of crazy. I'm sure I'll never do anything like that again."

Summers got a battlefield commission and a Distinguished Service Cross. He was put in for the Medal of Honor, but the paperwork got lost. In the late 1980s, after Summers's death from cancer, Sergeant Baker and others made an effort to get the medal awarded posthumously, without success. Summers is a legend with American paratroopers nonetheless, the Sergeant York of World War II. His story has too much John Wayne/Hollywood in it to be believed, except that more than ten men saw and reported his exploits.

D-Day was a smas.h.i.+ng success for the 4th Division and its attached units. Nearly all objectives were attained even though the plan had to be abandoned before the first a.s.sault waves. .h.i.t the beach.

Casualties were astonis.h.i.+ngly light, thanks in large part to the paratroopers coming in on the German defenders from the rear. In fifteen hours the Americans put ash.o.r.e at Utah more than 20,000 troops and 1,700 motorized vehicles. By nightfall, the division was ready to move out at first light on June 7 for its next mission, taking Montebourg and then moving on Cherbourg.

7 - Omaha Beach

IF THE GERMANS were going to stop the invasion anywhere, it would be at Omaha Beach. It was an obvious landing site, the only sand beach between the mouth of the Douve to the west and Arromanches to the east, a distance of almost forty kilometers. On both ends of Omaha the cliffs were more or less perpendicular. The sand at Omaha Beach is golden in color, firm and fine, perfect for sunbathing and picnicking and digging, but in extent the beach is constricted. It is slightly crescent-shaped, about ten kilometers long overall. At low tide, there is a stretch of firm sand of three hundred to four hundred meters in distance. At high tide, the distance from the waterline to the one- to three-meter bank of s.h.i.+ngle (small round stones) is but a few meters. In 1944 the s.h.i.+ngle, now mostly gone, was impa.s.sable to vehicles. On the western third of the beach, beyond the s.h.i.+ngle, there was a part-wood, part-masonry seawall from one to four meters in height (now gone). Inland of the seawall there was a paved, promenade beach road, then a V-shaped ant.i.tank ditch as much as two meters deep, then a flat swampy area, then a steep bluff that ascended thirty meters or more. A man could climb the bluff, but a vehicle could not. The gra.s.s-covered slopes appeared to be featureless when viewed from any distance, but in fact they contained many small folds or irregularities that proved to be a critical physical feature of the battlefield. There were five small "draws," or ravines, that sloped gently up to the tableland above the beach. A paved road led off the beach at exit D-1 to Vierville; at Les Moulins (exit D-3) a dirt road led up to St.-Laurent; the third draw, exit E-1, had only a path leading up to the tableland; the fourth draw, E-3, had a dirt road leading to Colleville; the last draw had a dirt path at exit F-1.

No tactician could have devised a better defensive situation. A narrow, enclosed battlefield, with no possibility of outflanking it; many natural obstacles for the attacker to overcome; an ideal place to build fixed fortifications and a trench system on the slope of the bluff and on the high ground looking down on a wide, open killing field for any infantry trying to cross no-man's-land. The Allied planners hated the idea of a.s.saulting Omaha Beach, but it had to be done. This was as obvious to Rommel as to Eisenhower.

Both commanders recognized that if the Allies invaded in Normandy, they would have to include Omaha Beach in the landing sites; otherwise the gap between Utah and the British beaches would be too great.

The waters offsh.o.r.e were heavily mined, so too the beaches, the promenade (which also had concertina wire along its length), and the bluff. Rommel had placed more beach obstacles here than at Utah. He had twelve strong points holding 88s, 75s, and mortars. He had dozens of Tobruks and machine-gun pillboxes, supported by an extensive trench system.

Everything the Germans had learned in World War I about how to stop a frontal a.s.sault by infantry Rommel put to work at Omaha. He laid out the firing positions at angles to the beach to cover the tidal flat and beach shelf with crossing fire, plunging fire, and grazing fire, from all types of weapons. He prepared artillery positions along the cliffs at either end of the beach, capable of delivering enfilade fire from 88s all across Omaha. The trench system included underground quarters and magazines connected by tunnels. The strong points were concentrated near the entrances to the draws, which were further protected by large cement roadblocks. The larger artillery pieces were protected to the seaward by concrete wing walls. There was not one inch of the beach that had not been presighted for both grazing and plunging fire. Capt. Robert Walker of HQ Company, 116th Regiment, 29th Division later described the defenses in front of Vierville: "The cliff-like ridge was covered with well-concealed foxholes and many semipermanent bunkers. The bunkers were practically unnoticeable from the front. Their firing openings were toward the flank so that they could bring flanking crossfire to the beach as well as all the way up the slope of the bluff. The bunkers had diagrams of fields of fire, and these were framed under gla.s.s and mounted on the walls beside the firing platforms." To reporter A. J. Liebling, who climbed the bluff a few days later, it looked like "a regular Maginot Line."

56 The men attacking this formidable position had been on their Higgins boats since midnight. They were seasick, exhausted, their legs trembling from standing so long in the bouncing boats. Still, the misery caused by the spray hitting them in the face with each wave and by their seasickness was such that they were eager to hit the beach, feeling that nothing could be worse than riding on those d.a.m.ned landing craft. Adding to the problems for the Americans, no unit landed where it was supposed to. Companies were a kilometer or more off target. When the ramps went down, the Germans opened fire. "We hit the sandbar," one coast guardsman recalled, "dropped the ramp, and then all h.e.l.l poured loose on us. The soldiers in the boat received a hail of machine-gun bullets. The army lieutenant was immediately killed, shot through the head." In the lead boat, LCA (landing craft, a.s.sault) 1015, Capt. Taylor Fellers and every one of his men were killed before the ramp went down. LCA 1015 just vaporized. No one ever learned whether it was the result of hitting a mine or getting hit by an 88 sh.e.l.l.

All across the beach the German machine guns were hurling fire of monstrous proportions on the hapless Americans-one German gunner fired 12,000 rounds that morning.

Pvt. John Barnes, A Company, 116th, was in an LCA. As it approached the sh.o.r.eline abreast with eleven other craft, someone shouted, "Take a look! This is something that you will tell your grandchildren!" If we live, Barnes thought.

The LCA began to sink. "Suddenly, a swirl of water wrapped around my ankles," Barnes remembered.

"The water quickly reached our waist. I squeezed the CO2 tube in my life belt. The buckle broke and it popped away. I was going down under. I climbed on the back of the man in front of me and pulled myself up in a panic." Some men had wrapped Mae Wests around their weapons and inflated them.

Barnes saw a rifle floating by, then a flamethrower with two Mae Wests around it. "I hugged it tight but still seemed to be going down. I couldn't keep my head above the surface. I tried to pull the release straps on my jacket but I couldn't move. Lieutenant Gearing grabbed my jacket and used his bayonet to cut the straps and release me from the weight. I was all right now, I could swim." The a.s.sault team was about a kilometer offsh.o.r.e. Sergeant Laird wanted to swim in, but Lieutenant Gearing said, "No, we'll wait and get picked up by some pa.s.sing boat." But none would stop; the c.o.xswains' orders were to go on in and leave the rescue work to others.

After a bit, "we heard a friendly shout of some Limey voice in one of the LCAs. He stopped, his boat was empty. He helped us to climb on board. We recognized the c.o.xswain. He was from theEmpire Javelin. He wouldn't return to the beach. We asked how the others made out. He said he had dropped them off OK. We went back to theEmpire Javelin, which we had left at 0400 that morning. How long had it been? It seemed like just minutes. When I thought to ask, it was 1300." Barnes and his a.s.sault team were extraordinarily lucky. About 60 percent of the men of A Company came from one town, Bedford, Virginia; for Bedford, the first fifteen minutes at Omaha was an unmitigated disaster. G and F Companies were supposed to come in to the immediate left of A Company, but they drifted a kilometer farther east before landing, so all the Germans around the heavily defended Vierville draw concentrated their fire on A Company. When the ramps on the Higgins boats dropped, the Germans just poured the machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire on them. It was a slaughter. Of the 200-plus men of the company, only a couple of dozen survived, and virtually all of them were wounded. Sgt. Thomas Valance survived, barely. "As we came down the ramp, we were in water about knee-high and started to do what we were trained to do, that is, move forward and then crouch and fire. One problem was we didn't quite know what to fire at. I saw some tracers coming from a concrete emplacement which, to me, looked mammoth. I never antic.i.p.ated any gun emplacements being that big. I shot at it but there was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle."

The tide was coming in, rapidly, and the men around Valance were getting hit. He found it difficult to stay on his feet-like most infantrymen, he was badly overloaded, soaking wet, exhausted, trying to 57 struggle through wet sand and avoid the obstacles with mines attached to them. "I abandoned my equipment, which was dragging me down into the water.

"It became evident rather quickly that we weren't going to accomplish very much. I remember floundering in the water with my hand up in the air, trying to get my balance, when I was first shot through the palm of my hand, then through the knuckle.

"Pvt. Henry Witt was rolling over toward me. I remember him saying, 'Sergeant, they're leaving us here to die like rats. Just to die like rats.' " Valance was. .h.i.t again, in the left thigh by a bullet that broke his hip bone. He took two additional flesh wounds. His pack was. .h.i.t twice, and the chin strap on his helmet was severed by a bullet. He crawled up the beach "and staggered up against the seawall and sort of collapsed there and, as a matter of fact, spent the whole day in that same position. Essentially my part in the invasion had ended by having been wiped out as most of my company was. The bodies of my buddies were was.h.i.+ng ash.o.r.e and I was the one live body in amongst so many of my friends, all of whom were dead, in many cases very severely blown to pieces." On his boat, Lt. Edward Tidrick was first off. As he jumped from the ramp into the water he took a bullet through his throat. He staggered to the sand, flopped down near Pvt. Leo Nash, and raised himself up to gasp, "Advance with the wire cutters!" At that instant, machine-gun bullets ripped Tidrick from crown to pelvis.

By 0640 only one officer from A Company was alive, Lt. E. Ray Nance, and he had been hit in the heel and the belly. Every sergeant was either dead or wounded. On one boat, when the ramp was dropped every man in the thirty-man a.s.sault team was killed before any of them could get out.

Pvt. George Roach was an a.s.sistant flamethrower. He weighed 125 pounds. He carried over a hundred pounds of gear ash.o.r.e, including his M-1 rifle, ammunition, hand grenades, a five-gallon drum of flamethrower fluid, and a.s.sorted wrenches and a cylinder of nitrogen.

"We went down the ramp and the casualty rate was very bad. We couldn't determine where the fire was coming from, whether from the top of the bluff or from the summer beach-type homes on the sh.o.r.e.

I just dropped myself into the sand and took my rifle and fired it at this house and Sergeant Wilkes asked, 'What are you firing at?' and I said, 'I don't know.' " The only other live member of his a.s.sault team Roach could see was Pvt. Gil Murdoch. The two men were lying together behind an obstacle.

Murdoch had lost his gla.s.ses and could not see. "Can you swim?" Roach asked. "No."

"Well, look, we can't stay here, there's n.o.body around here that seems to have any idea of what to do.

Let's go back in the water and come in with the tide." They fell back and got behind a knocked-out tank.

Both men were slightly wounded. The tide covered them and they hung onto the tank. Roach started to swim to sh.o.r.e; a c.o.xswain from a Higgins boat picked him up about halfway in. "He pulled me on board, it was around 1030. And I promptly fell asleep." Roach eventually got up to the seawall, where he helped the medics. The following day, he caught up with what remained of his company. "I met General [Norman] Cota and I had a brief conversation with him. He asked me what company I was with and I told him and he just shook his head. A Company was just out of action. When we got together, there were eight of us left from Company A ready for duty."

(Cota asked Roach what he was going to do when the war was over. "Someday I'd like to go to college and graduate," Roach replied. "I'd like to go to Fordham." Five years to the day later, Roach did graduate from Fordham. "Over the years," he said in 1990, "I don't think there has been a day that has gone by that I haven't thought of those men who didn't make it.") Sgt. Lee Polek's landing craft was about to swamp as it approached the sh.o.r.e. Everyone was bailing with helmets. "We yelled to the crew to take us in, we would rather fight than drown. As the ramp dropped we were hit by machine-gun and rifle fire. I yelled to get ready to swim and fight. We were getting direct fire right into our craft. My three 58 squad leaders in front and others were hit. Some men climbed over the side. Two sailors got hit. I got off in water only ankle deep, tried to run but the water was suddenly up to my hips. I crawled to hide behind a steel beach obstacle. Bullets. .h.i.t off it, others. .h.i.t more of my men. Got up to the beach to crawl behind the s.h.i.+ngle and a few of my men joined me. I took a head count and there was only eleven of us left, from the thirty on the craft. As the tide came in we took turns running out to the water's edge to drag wounded men to cover. Some of the wounded were hit again while on the beach. More men crowding up and crowding up. More people being hit by sh.e.l.lfire. People trying to help each other.

"While we were huddled there, I told [Pvt.] Jim Hickey that I would like to live to be forty years old and work forty hours a week and make a dollar an hour (when I joined up I was making thirty-seven-and-a-half cents an hour). I felt, boy, I would really have it made at $40 a week. "Jim Hickey still calls me from New York on June 6 to ask, 'Hey, Sarge, are you making forty bucks per yet?' " A Company had hardly fired a weapon. Almost certainly it had not killed any Germans. It had expected to move up the Vierville draw and be on top of the bluff by 0730, but at 0730 its handful of survivors were huddled up against the seawall, virtually without weapons. It had lost 96 percent of its effective strength.

But its sacrifice was not in vain. The men had brought in rifles, BARs (Browning automatic rifles), grenades, TNT charges, machine guns, mortars and mortar rounds, flamethrowers, rations, and other equipment. This was now strewn across the sand at Dog Green. The weapons and equipment would make a life-or-death difference to the following waves of infantry, coming in at higher tide and having to abandon everything to make their way to sh.o.r.e. F Company, 116th, supposed to come in at Dog Red, landed near its target, astride the boundary between Dog Red and Easy Green. But G Company, supposed to be to the right of F at Dog White, drifted far left, so the two companies came in together, directly opposite the heavy fortifications at Les Moulins. There was a kilometer or so gap to each side of the intermixed companies, which allowed the German defenders to concentrate their fire. For the men of F and G Companies, the two hundred meters or more journey from the Higgins boats to the s.h.i.+ngle was the longest and most hazardous trip they had ever experienced, or ever would. The lieutenant commanding the a.s.sault team on Sgt. Harry Bare's boat was killed as the ramp went down. "As ranking noncom," Bare related, "I tried to get my men off the boat and make it somehow to get under the seawall. We waded to the sand and threw ourselves down and the men were frozen, unable to move.

My radioman had his head blown off three yards from me. The beach was covered with bodies, men with no legs, no arms-G.o.d it was awful."

As what was left of A, F, G, and E Companies of the 116th huddled behind obstacles or the s.h.i.+ngle, the following waves began to come in: B and H Companies at 0700; D at 0710; C, K, I, and M at 0720.

Not one came in on target. The c.o.xswains were trying to dodge obstacles and incoming sh.e.l.ls, while the smoke drifted in and out and obscured the landmarks and what few marker flags there were on the beach.

On the command boat for B Company, the CO, Capt. Ettore Zappacosta, heard the British c.o.xswain 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 G.o.d, you'll take this boat straight in."

The c.o.xswain did. When the ramp dropped, Zappacosta was first off. He was immediately hit. Medic Thomas Kenser saw him bleeding from 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 ramp he was shot dead. Every man in the boat save one (Pvt. Robert Sales) was either killed or wounded before reaching the beach.

59 Nineteen-year-old Pvt. Harold Baumgarten of B Company got a bullet through the top of his helmet while jumping from the ramp, then another hit the receiver of his M-1 as he carried it at port arms. He waded through the waist-deep water as his buddies fell alongside him.

"I saw Pvt. Robert Ditmar of Fairfield, Connecticut, hold his chest and heard him yell, 'I'm hit, I'm hit!' I hit the ground and watched him as he continued to go forward about ten more yards. He tripped over an obstacle and, as he fell, his body made a complete turn and he lay sprawled on the damp sand with his head facing the Germans, his face looking skyward. He was yelling, 'Mother, Mom.' "Sgt. Clarence 'Pilgrim' Robertson had a gaping wound in the upper-right corner of his forehead. He was walking crazily in the water. Then I saw him get down on his knees and start praying with his rosary beads. At this moment, the Germans cut him in half with their deadly crossfire."

Baumgarten had drawn a Star of David on the back of his field jacket, with "The Bronx, New York"

written on it-that would let Hitler know who he was. He was behind an obstacle. He saw the reflection from the helmet of one of the German riflemen on the bluff "and took aim and later on I found out I got a bull's-eye on him." That was the only shot he fired because his damaged rifle broke in two when he pulled the trigger.

Sh.e.l.ls were bursting about him. "I raised my head to curse the Germans when an 88 sh.e.l.l exploded about twenty yards in front of me, hitting me in my left cheek. It felt like being hit with a baseball bat, only the results were much worse. My upper jaw was shattered, the left cheek blown open. My upper lip was cut in half. The roof of my mouth was cut up and teeth and gums were laying all over my mouth. Blood poured freely from the gaping wound."

The tide was coming in. Baumgarten washed his face with the cold, dirty Channel water and managed not to pa.s.s out. The water was rising about an inch a minute (between 0630 and 0800 the tide rose eight feet) so he had to get moving or drown. He took another hit, from a bullet, in the leg. He moved forward in a dead man's float with each wave of the incoming tide. He finally reached the seawall where a medic dressed his wounds. Mortars were coming in, "and I grabbed the medic by the s.h.i.+rt to pull him down. He hit my hand away and said, 'You're injured now. When I get hurt you can take care of me.' " *

Baumgarten was wounded five times that day, the last time by a bullet in his right knee as he was being carried on a stretcher to the beach for evacuation. He went on to medical school and became a practicing physician. He concluded his oral history, "Happily, in recent years when I've been back to Normandy, especially on Sept. 17, 1988, when we dedicated a monument to the 29th Division in Vierville, I noted that the French people really appreciated us freeing them from the Germans, so it made it all worthwhile." Sgt. Benjamin McKinney was a combat engineer attached to C Company. When his ramp dropped, "I was so seasick I didn't care if a bullet hit me between the eyes and got me out of my misery." As he jumped off the ramp, "rifle and machine-gun fire hit it like rain falling." Ahead, "it looked as if all the first wave were dead on the beach." He got to the s.h.i.+ngle. He and Sergeant Storms saw a pillbox holding a machine gun and a rifleman about thirty meters to the right, spraying the beach with their weapons. Storms and McKinney crawled toward the position. McKinney threw hand grenades as 60 Storms put rifle fire into it. Two Germans jumped out; Storms killed them. The 116th was starting to fight back.

Capt. Robert Walker was on LCI (landing craft, infantry) 91. As it approached the beach, the craft began taking rifle and machine-gun fire. Maneuvering through the obstacles, the craft got caught on one of the pilings and set off the Teller mine. The explosion tore off the starboard landing ramp. The skipper tried to back off. Walker moved to the port-side ramp, only to find it engulfed in flames. A man carrying a flame-thrower had been hit by a bullet; another bullet had set the jellied contents of his fuel tank on fire.

Screaming in agony, he dove into the sea. "I could see that even the soles of his boots were on fire." Men around him also burned; Walker saw a couple of riflemen "with horrendous drooping face blisters."

The skipper came running to the front deck, waving his arms and yelling, "Everybody over the side."

Walker jumped into water about eight feet deep. He was carrying so much equipment that despite two Mae Wests he could not stay afloat. He dropped his rifle, then his helmet, then his musette bag, which enabled him to swim to where he could touch bottom. "Here I was on Omaha Beach. Instead of being a fierce, well-trained, fighting infantry warrior, I was an exhausted, almost helpless, unarmed survivor of a s.h.i.+pwreck." When he got to waist-deep water he got on his knees and crawled the rest of the way.

Working his way forward to the seawall, he saw the body of Captain Zappacosta. At the seawall, "I saw dozens of soldiers, mostly wounded. The wounds were ghastly to see."

(Forty-nine years later, Walker recorded that the scene brought to his mind Tennyson's lines in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," especially "Cannon to right of them/Cannon to left of them/Cannon in front of them/Volley'd and thunder'd." He added that so far as he could tell every GI knew the lines, "Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die," even if the soldiers did not know the source. Those on Omaha Beach who had committed the poem to memory surely muttered to themselves, "Some one had blunder'd.") Walker came to Cota's conclusion. Anyplace was better than this; the plan was kaput; he couldn't go back; he set out on his own to climb the bluff. He picked up an M-1 and a helmet from a dead soldier and moved out. "I was alone and completely on my own."

Maj. Sidney Bingham (USMA 1940) was CO of 2nd Battalion, 116th. When he reached the s.h.i.+ngle he was without radio, aide, or runner. His S-3 was dead, his HQ Company commander wounded, his E Company commander dead, his F Company commander wounded, his H Company commander killed, "and in E Company there were some fifty-five killed out of a total of something just over two hundred who landed." Bingham was overwhelmed by a feeling of "complete futility. Here I was, the battalion commander, unable for the most part to influence action or do what I knew had to be done." He set out to organize a leaderless group from F Company and get it moving up the bluff.

By this time, around 0745, unknown others were doing the same, whether NCOs or junior officers or, in some cases, privates. Staying on the beach meant certain death; retreat was not possible; someone had to lead; men took the burden on themselves and did. Bingham put it this way: "The individual and small-unit initiative carried the day. Very little, if any, credit can be accorded company, battalion, or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and/or their coordination of the action."

Bingham did an a.n.a.lysis of what went wrong for the first and second waves. Among other factors, he said, the men were in the Higgins boats far too long. "Seasickness occasioned by the three or four hours in LCVPs played havoc with any idealism that may have been present. It markedly decreased the combat effectiveness of the command."

In addition, "The individual loads carried were in my view greatly excessive, hindered mobility, and in some cases caused death by drowning." In his view, "If the enemy had shown any sort of enthusiasm and moved toward us, they could have run us right back into the Channel without any trouble." From June 6, 61 1944, on to 1990, Bingham carried with him an unjustified self-criticism: "I've often felt very ashamed of the fact that I was so completely inadequate as a leader on the beach on that frightful day." That is the way a good battalion commander feels when he is leading not much more than a squad-but Bingham got that squad over the s.h.i.+ngle and into an attack against the enemy, which was exactly the right thing to do, and the only thing he could do under the circ.u.mstances.

The Germans did not counterattack for a number of reasons, some of them good ones. First, they were not present in sufficient strength. Gen. Kraiss had but two of his infantry battalions and one artillery battalion on the scene, about two thousand men, or less than 250 per kilometer. Second, he was slow to react. Not until 0735 did he call up his division reserve,Kampfgruppe Meyer (named for the CO of the 915th Regiment of Kraiss's 352nd Division), and then he decided to commit only a single battalion, which did not arrive until midday. He was acting on a false a.s.sumption: that his men had stopped the invasion at Omaha. Third, the German infantrymen were not trained for a.s.saults, only to hold their positions and keep firing.

One German private who was manning an MG 42 on top of the bluff put it this way in a 1964 radio interview: "It was the first time I shoot at living men. I don't remember exactly how it was: the only thing I know is that I went to my machine gun and I shoot, I shoot, I shoot."

The sacrifice of good men that morning was just appalling. Capt. Walter Schilling of D Company, who had given a magnificent briefing to his magnificently trained men, was in the lead boat in the third wave.