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June 06, 2012

Remembering D-Day


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Looking back across the 68 years since Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, it's easy to forget just how precarious, what a tremendous gamble the ambitious amphibious landing really was. General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, sat at his desk during the long, stormy night before the invasion and wrote a letter conceding failure -- just in case things went badly -- taking responsibility for the defeat. The following hours would be critical: Would the soldiers of the Third Reich throw the Americans, Brits and Canadians back into the sea?

Eisenhower's pencilled draft was found in a pocket by an aide some days after the Allies had broken through the German defenses and made their way off the beaches. Ike wrote:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops have been withdrawn.

My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.



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General Eisenhower issued this proclamation to the men before they set sail for France across the stormy Channel, reminding them of what was at stake during the coming desperate hours.



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The sounds of German machine guns and artillery echoed across the water as GIs huddled in their landing craft, heading towards Omaha Beach, waiting for the moment when the ramp dropped and their mad dash towards the waiting enemy began. Something catches the attention of these soldiers, and they peer over the side of their boat, steeling themselves, ready.



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GIs from Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, are amongst the first Americans to set foot on Hitler's Festung Europa in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. The waiting German troops greeted them with a hail of steel, MG-42 machine guns mowing down men with their distinctive "ripping-cloth" buzz.


Robert Edlin, fighting with the 2d Ranger Battalion, remembered the invasion getting off to a bad start:

"Our assault boat hit a sandbar. I looked over the ramp and we were at least seventy-five yards from the shore, and we had hoped for a dry landing. I told the coxswain, "Try to get in further." He screamed he couldn't. That British seaman had all the guts in the world but couldn't get off the sandbar. I told him to drop the ramp or we were going to die right there.

We had been trained for years not to go off the front of the ramp, because the boat might get rocked by a wave and run over you. So we went off the sides. I looked to my right and saw a B Company boat next to us with Lt. Bob Fitzsimmons, a good friend, take a direct hit on the ramp from a mortar or mine. I thought, there goes half of B Company.

It was cold, miserably cold, even though it was June. The water temperature was probably forty-five or fifty degrees. It was up to my shoulders when I went in, and I saw men sinking all about me. I tried to grab a couple, but my job was to get on in and get to the guns. There were bodies from the I I6th floating everywhere. They were facedown in the water with packs still on their backs. They had inflated their life jackets. Fortunately, most of the Rangers did not inflate theirs or they also might have turned over and drowned.



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Having left the relative -- and illusory --safety of the landing craft, GIs from the 16th Infantry Regiment begin the maddeningly slow slog toward the beach, as the German defenders hit them with mortars and machine gun fire.


I began to run with my rifle in front of me. I went directly across the beach to try to get to the seaway. In front of me was part of the II6th Infantry, pinned down and lying behind beach obstacles. They hadn't made it to the seaway. I kept screaming at them, 'You have to get up and go! You gotta get up and go!' But they didn't. They were worn out and defeated completely. There wasn't any time to help them.

I continued across the beach. There were mines and obstacles all up and down the beach. The air corps had missed it entirely. There were no shell holes in which to take cover. The mines had not been detonated. Absolutely nothing that had been planned for that part of the beach had worked. I knew that Vierville-sur-Mer was going to be a hellhole, and it was.

When I was about twenty yards from the seaway I was hit by what I assume was a sniper bullet. It shattered and broke my right leg. I thought, well, I've got a Purple Heart. I fell, and as I did, it was like a searing hot poker rammed into my leg. My rifle fell ten feet or so in front of me. I crawled forward to get to it, picked it up, and as I rose on my left leg, another burst of I think machine gun fire tore the muscles out of that leg, knocking me down again.

I lay there for seconds, looked ahead, and saw several Rangers lying there. One was Butch Bladorn from Wisconsin. I screamed at Butch, 'Get up and run!' Butch, a big, powerful man, just looked back and said, 'I can't.' I got up and hobbled towards him. I was going to kick him in the ass and get him off the beach. He was lying on his stomach, his face in the sand. Then I saw the blood coming out of his back. I realized he had been hit in the stomach and the bullet had come out his spine and he was completely immobilized. Even then I was sorry for screaming at him but I didn't have time to stop and help him. I thought, well, that's the end of Butch. Fortunately, it wasn't. He became a farmer in Wisconsin.



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Men from the 16th Infantry Regiment try to find protection from the German machine gunners, hiding for a few moments behind anti-tank obstacles placed on Omaha Beach as part of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's plan to keep the Allies from establishing a beachhead on the Normandy coast.


As I moved forward, I hobbled. After you've been hit by gunfire, your legs stiffen up, not all at once but slowly. The pain was indescribable. I fell to my hands and knees and tried to crawl forwards. I managed a few yards, then blacked out for several minutes. When I came to, I saw Sgt. Bill Klaus. He was up to the seaway. When he saw my predicament, he crawled back to me under heavy rifle and mortar fire and dragged me up to the cover of the wall.

Klaus had also been wounded in one leg, and a medic gave him a shot of morphine. The medic did the same for me. My mental state was such that I told him to shoot it directly into my left leg, as that was the one hurting the most. He reminded me that if I took it in the ass or the arm it would get to the leg. I told him to give me a second shot because I was hit in the other leg. He didn't.

There were some Rangers gathered at the seaway - Sgt. William Courtney, Pvt. William Dreher, Garfield Ray, Gabby Hart, Sgt. Charles Berg. I yelled at them, 'You have to get off of here! You have to get up and get the guns!' They were gone immediately.

My platoon sergeant, Bill White, an ex-jockey whom we called Whitey, took charge. He was small, very active, and very courageous. He led what few men were left of the first platoon and started up the cliffs. I crawled and staggered forward as far as I could to some cover in the bushes behind a villa. There was a round stone well with a bucket and handle that turned the rope. It was so inviting. I was alone and I wanted that water so bad. But years of training told me it was booby-trapped.



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Photographer Frank Capa lay in the surf of the Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach, snapping pictures from the furthest edge of the American assault, capturing the frenzied rush to get ashore and stop being a sitting duck in the surf. Capa's photos were rushed back to London, where the majority were destroyed in an accident in the lab. Only a few survived, comprising the most compelling images of the D-Day landings taken on the American beaches.


I looked up at the top of the cliffs and thought, I can't make it on this leg. Where was everyone? Had they all quit? Then I heard Dreher yelling, 'Come on up. These trenches are empty.' Then Kraut burp guns cut loose. I thought, oh God, I can't get there! I heard an American tommy gun, and Courtney shouted, 'Damn it, Dreher! They're empty now.'

There was more German small-arms fire and German grenades popping. I could hear Whitey yelling, 'Cover me!' I heard Garfield Ray's BAR [Browning automatic rifle] talking American. Then there was silence.

Now, I thought, where are the 5th Rangers? I turned and I couldn't walk or even hobble anymore. I crawled back to the beach. I saw 5th Rangers coming through the smoke of a burning LST that had been hit by artillery fire. Co!. Schneider had seen the slaughter on the beaches and used his experience with the Rangers in Africa, Sicily, and Anzio. He used the smoke as a screen and moved in behind it, saving the 5th Ranger Battalion many casualties.



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A wounded GI is helped ashore at Omaha Beach my some of his fellow soldiers. Note the still-inflated life preserver on the soldier to his left.


My years of training told me there would be a counterattack. I gathered the wounded by the seaway and told them to arm themselves as well as possible. I said if the Germans come we are either going to be captured or die on the beach, but we might as well take the Germans with us. I know it sounds ridiculous, but ten or fifteen Rangers lay there, facing up to the cliffs, praying that Sgt. White, Courtney, Dreher, and the 5th Ranger Battalion would get to the guns. Our fight was over unless the Germans counterattacked.

I looked back to the sea. There was nothing. There were no reinforcements. I thought the invasion had been abandoned. We would be dead or prisoners soon. Everyone had withdrawn and left us. Well, we had tried. Some guy crawled over and told me he was a colonel from the 29th Infantry Division. He said for us to relax, we were going to be okay. D, E, and F Companies were on the Pointe. The guns had been destroyed. A and B Companies and the 5th Rangers were inland. The 29th and Ist Divisions were getting off the beaches.

This colonel looked at me and said, 'You've done your job." I answered, 'How? By using up two rounds of German ammo on my legs?" Despite the awful pain, I hoped to catch up with the platoon the next day."



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An Army medic moves down the beach providing aid to the wounded, as exhausted troops huddle against the base of chalk cliffs, protected for the moment from the barrage of incoming German fire.



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Less than 24 hours earlier the same GIs had marched through the streets of seaside English towns, on the way to the docks where they'd board the troop transports for the ride across the English Channel to the Normandy coast. It's impossible not to wonder how many of these men made it off the beach the next morning.



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For some GIs, their war ended on the cold Normandy sand; their friends marked their deaths with impromptu markers, like these crossed rifles, then fought their way off the beaches. Ahead lay the battle of the hedgerows, the liberation of Paris, the Operation Market Garden debacle, and the bone-chilling despair -- and victory -- of the Battle of the Bulge.

A long 11 months lay ahead for D-Day's survivors.

Posted by Mike Lief at June 6, 2012 12:03 AM | TrackBack

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