The Far Shore

by Edward Ellsberg

  To the High Command—to Bradley, commanding the First U. S. Army for both beaches; to Gerow, commanding the V corps which was making the assault on Omaha; to Huebner, commanding the 1st Division and to Gerhardt, commanding the 29th Division, whose men were spearheading the invasion, the minutes went slowly by as they sweated it out on the naval flagships waiting for the first light of dawn to illuminate the effects of such dismal weather on their beautifully thought out plans.

  To the Navy’s young sea men, none of whom in any war theater had ever been under fire before, manning now a thousand landing craft of all kinds close in on a hostile shore, trying desperately to get their tossing boats into position for starting the long run in to those cliffs so far away they couldn’t even make them out as blobs in the night, the minutes went too fast as they cursed the seas that were threatening to ruin all chance of maneuvering their boats into the alignments they had so carefully rehearsed on the British beaches. But in some order or other, still in the darkness, they finally got underway.

  And to the seasick soldiers, cased in assault jackets jammed with ammunition and grenades, heavily laden with weapons, packed now into tossing LCVP’s, with every breaking wave drenching them with thick spray to add to their miseries, time seemed to stand still—they were mostly beyond caring as to whether it moved or not.

  The dawn broke at last, a misty, hazy dawn. There would be light now, of course, but the sun itself was something that obviously was not going to shine that morning. Visibility through the morning mist was very poor. To the strained eyes of the gunnery officers on the warships offshore, the cliffs over Omaha started slowly to take shape on the distant southern horizon. Through their director telescopes, the fire control officers, high up in the tripod masts, began to focus hairlines on the points on’ the distant cliffs which were their mapped targets. Obediently, the big guns in the turrets followed the directors to train on those objectives. Initially they would simply fire on points marked on their charts as the hidden locations of enemy guns, except for that one battery atop Pointe du Hoe—that isolated point the fire control officers on the Texas could actually see. Later, when the naval spotters in the little Piper Cubs from England came over the beachhead at H-hour, the guns could all be fired more accurately. Then the locations of the actual casemates on those cliffs would be disclosed by radio to the fire control parties on the warships, with the fall of the shots called for them and corrected by their spotters in the air. With such close-in spotting, results with heavy shells from naval guns were always sure—and swift.

  0550.

  Thunder and lightning broke the stillness off Omaha.

  The battle was on. All together the warships opened fire. From the 14-inch guns of the Texas, from the 12’s on the Arkansas, from the 8’s on the Augusta, from the 5’s.on eight destroyers, full salvos leaped on long arcs through the skies to come down all along the cliff line from Pointe du Hoe to Port-en-Bessin, to drive the defenders from their guns to such underground shelter as they might have provided.

  Meanwhile, even before those heavy naval shells began arching over their heads, the LCVP’s from twelve miles out had already got underway in the darkness. Now that there was light on the heaving seas, they struggled to rectify their ragged alignment. There were fifty boats in that formation, running in line abeam, one hundred yards between boats. And in that formation they were to hit the beach, well spread out, offering to enemy fire only a widely scattered set of targets covering evenly the whole extent of the sands from the Vierville Draw on their right to beyond the Colleville Draw on their left. This would disperse the fire of the machine guns on the bluffs and prohibit a heavy concentration on any single group of G.I.’s while wading ashore.

  Into the fifty landing craft in the first line were loaded the cream of the assault regiments, veterans of the North African and Sicilian landings, many of them—nine companies all told. There were eight companies of the Regimental Combat Teams of the 116th Infantry and of the 16th Infantry, augmented on the right flank by Company C of Lieut. Colonel Rudder’s 2nd Rangers.

  And simultaneously on the far right of this line and several miles due west of it, Lieut. Colonel James Rudder himself with three other companies of the 2nd Rangers, 250 men altogether, carried by ten British LCA’s, started in for their own desperate adventure against the cliffs and the guns of Pointe du Hoe. Theirs was to be an isolated battle, far removed from the main thrust.

  Only three minutes behind the first line of troop-laden LCVP’s came a line of 24 LCM’s, wallowing even more heavily along in the breaking waves than the LCVP’s. For the LCM’s were carrying the vital demolition parties. These were the combat engineers and the naval demolition groups, loaded down with the explosives needed to blast gaps in the obstacles to clear paths for the boats astern. And with them in some LCT’s were more combat engineers and sixteen bulldozers. These, when the demolition groups had blasted clear the way for them, were to waddle ashore, there to bulldoze openings in the shingle, the dunes, and the seawall to give immediate passage for mobile artillery and vehicles from off the beach sands up and on to the beach road. And from there, once the strongpoints guarding them had been knocked out, on to the four vital breaks in the cliffs leading to the plateau inland.

  Right astern these two leading lines of LCVP’s and LCM’s came a space of several miles of open sea, intended to give the demolition teams thirty minutes to cut clear their gaps, unimpeded by landing craft trying to come in while they were blasting obstacles. But seaward of that open stretch came line after line of landing craft of every kind carrying more infantry, more engineers, then the line of LCT (R)’s with their rockets, then dozens of Dukws with their 105 mms. for artillery support, then again more landing craft, till in all eighteen successive waves of landing craft, coming in at intervals of minutes only apart, had put ashore along that three mile beach 34,000 fighting men and over 3000 vehicles. These were the first wave only. On their heels, starting in at noon, the second wave would come.

  The guns on the warships kept belching shells at the cliffs. What the results might be, for the present they could only guess, except on Pointe du Hoe. That the 14-inch shells from the Texas, visibly exploding on top of Pointe du Hoe were at the very least keeping the German gunners there from their guns, was obvious from a fact noted with gratified surprise by General Bradley himself. Not one shell fired in counter-battery had come from those heavy howitzers on Pointe du Hoe, though now in the spreading daylight thousands of ships were within sight of it, many of them within easy range, as fine a set of targets as any artilleryman could ever hope to have offered him. But still, absolutely no counter-battery fire from Pointe du Hoe. The Texas kept on firing to keep the situation that way till Colonel Rudder and his Rangers had scaled the cliffs to take care of that battery from then on.

  The leading line of LCVP’s, growing more ragged as it advanced, came on past the Texas, then past the Augusta. The LCVP’s were having a desperate time of it amongst the waves. Green seas were breaking over their gunwales, starting to flood their open interiors. To avoid disaster from the water rapidly rising in their boats, coxswains shrieking to make themselves heard above the roar of nearby guns ordered their seasick passengers to forget their stomachs, to doff their helmets, and to bail for their lives. Most did, and managed to keep their LCVP’s afloat. In ten boats, however, for whatever reason, the bailing was not enough—they swamped and sank, leaving their troops, heavily weighted down, to flounder in the waves. And the first G.I.’s of many more to come began to strangle and drown in the breaking waves in the seas off Omaha. The rest of the LCVP’s, not daring to break formation to maneuver to try to rescue anybody, kept on for the beach.

  7000 yards away now; about two-thirds of the way in. Still too far off for any fire from the laterally sited guns on the cliffs ahead to reach them, but soon—unless they also swamped first—they would be within range. And then as they closed the beachhead, the naval fire would have to be lifted and those guns on the cliffs would ope
n up. First the casemated 88’s and the 75’s, then those hornets’ nests in the trenches, with their machine guns and mortars—unless they were countered. Anxiously the bailing soldiers, as they heaved helmets-ful of salt water over the gunwales, snatched a glimpse ahead at the stretch of tumbling sea still between them and the distant breakers. Not too far ahead of them now should be their first and their best counter—that flotilla of 64 DD tanks, over one tank for each LCVP, swimming in to touch down on the beachhead five minutes before they did and to provide there the counter-battery fire on which their lives depended.

  Where were those DD’s, anyway? Launched from their LCT’s only 6000 yards offshore, they should be not more than 1000 yards ahead now, easily in sight even in that rough water, stretched out in a line longer even than theirs. But not a G.I. could spot one. And then with sinking hearts, they spotted the answer instead—close alongside as well as farther off in the waves. The water thereabouts was dotted with little knots of men on rubber rafts, some not on rafts but simply in Mae Wests, all bobbing violently about in the heaving seas, all wildly waving to the nearest LCVP to stop and drag them from the water. The DD’s, not so amphibious as had been hoped for, less seaworthy by far than the LCVP’s, had apparently all promptly swamped—those men struggling in the water were the tank crews—those few of them, that is, that had managed somehow to get out the escape hatches. Where the rest of the tank crews were with those ponderous monsters now submerged completely was not difficult to imagine.

  Dismally the seasick G.I.’s in the LCVP’s looked at each other. The sinking of those DD’s was as likely to be their death warrant as that of those men already drowned or drowning in those foaming seas. For there was not now going to be any close-in artillery support to smother the Nazi guns when they got to the beach!

  But they couldn’t stop bailing long enough to discuss what that might mean. And besides, there still was that carpet of bombs from the air, the rocket barrage, the Navy bombardment, and those dozens of 105’s coming in behind them on the Dukws, to take care of the Nazis. Those might yet save them. They kept on bailing. But the LCVP’s kept on also, in spite of the pleas from the drowning men in the water. The coxswains all had strict orders to keep formation and hold on for the beach, regardless, or many more men would certainly die as a result of their efforts to save a few.

  However, their formation was no longer what it should be. There were gaps where LCVP’s had sunk. And there was a much worse gap, a thousand yards at least, between most of the remaining LCVP’s and the half dozen or so carrying the infantry on the right flank. Unobserved by most of the coxswains, whose view of the none too obvious landmarks on the cliffs ahead was very badly obscured by smoke and mist, the three knot tidal current running flood along the coast was setting them down to the eastward. And this drift was further aggravated by a stiff wind blowing from the northwest.

  Only the LCVP’s carrying the right hand company, Company A of the 116th Infantry, and the two LCA’s with Company C of the 2nd Rangers traveling with them, avoided this mistake. Possibly Pointe de la Percée, somewhat to the right of their objective, an easily recognized cliff, gave the coxswains of these right flank boats a better mark to steer by. At any rate, the right flank alone, with touchdown not far off, was the only group still headed for its proper objective. All the others, with an unfortunately wide gap open in the line, were being bunched up too far to the east. The landing now could not possibly be the evenly spaced touchdown intended. A lot of men were going to be landed in front of terrain on which they had never been briefed and of which they knew nothing; and to make matters worse, so bunched together when they hit the beach as to make them luscious targets for the machine guns on the cliffs—unless those guns were themselves washed out first.

  0600.

  Thirty minutes to H-hour.

  Overhead, mingling with the thunder of the naval guns, came now the steady drone of over 1300 airplane engines as some 330 Liberators, the four-engined B-24’s, the heaviest bombing planes our air corps had, flew over to deliver the coup de grace to the Nazi defenses crowning the heights above the beach. Instantly every G.I. glanced hopefully skyward. With the DD’s washed out, those Liberators were now his best hope of survival. But he could see nothing of them. The bombers were all above the cloud cover.

  Unfortunately, neither could the bombardiers, in those B-24’s see anything of the beach below. They would consequently all have to bomb through overcast, by instrument. Sensing this probability, the Eighth Air Force the night before had already obtained from Eisenhower permisison to hold their drop a few seconds beyond the indicated instrument release point to insure dropping no bombs on our own landing craft approaching the beach.

  For over fifteen minutes, from about H-30 to H-15, the steady roar of invisible engines showed that huge formation of B-24’s still passing overhead to unload over the beachhead.

  13,000 bombs cascaded down from those B-24’s. With the mist, the dust and the smoke from the naval bombardment already obscuring the beachhead, from the tossing LCVP’s still over two miles offshore nobody aboard could see anything in particular of what as the result was happening ashore. Nevertheless, all hands, seasick and worn from bailing as they were, bucked up appreciably as they heard the distant rumble of the exploding bombs. 13,000 bombs! There wouldn’t be any Nazis left now, nor any barbed wire or land mines either to bother about. Instinctively, they all felt better. Bailing now was their, only problem. When they got there, the Omaha Beach would be as thoroughly drenched as if a tropical cloudburst had struck it—except that the drenching would have come from a cloudburst of exploding bombs. The beach was going to be a shambles. 13,000 bombs!

  0615.

  H-15 now. The last of the invisible B-24’s had unloaded its bombs and passed inland. The LCVP’s had still somewhat over a mile to go till they reached the breakers. A couple of thousand yards astern, anyone looking aft could see the rocket launching LCT(R)’s jockeying to get into position for their show; that is, to come up on their firing line exactly at the right instant. But they were in trouble, both from the rough seas and from the wash of the wakes of other landing craft surging about them. It all made station keeping for the LCT(R)’s an almost impossible task. Their rockets were all set for a range of 3000 yards—were they that far off, or closer? Or maybe too far out? That last could be bad. In such a case, they’d land their rockets on our own men. It was safer to be in a little too much than out a little too far. They edged in a bit to make sure, and then struggled with the sea to hold alignment and the proper distance as they came in, keeping their eyes on the leading line of LCVP’s. They must hold that rocket barrage to the last second they dared. If they fired too soon, the Nazis, holed up by the naval fire, would still be in their underground shelters—they wouldn’t catch them exposed. And if they fired too late, they might spray our own troops, already unloading on the beach.

  0627.

  The bursts from heavy naval shells exploding on the cliffs lifted suddenly and shifted to targets in the hinterland. The dust clouds fringing the bluffs started slowly to drift clear. A long minute went by. If the Nazi defenders were ever coming out to man their guns, now was that time; our landing craft were hardly 500 yards off. And if those Nazis were coming out, now was the time to catch them exposed.

  Part of another minute went by. On the flat decks of the LCT(R)’s, bristling all over with rockets like porcupines with quills erected, the crews waited tensely. Their alignment was far from what was intended, but there was no time any more to waste on checking alignment.

  300 yards more to go for the LCVP’s to get to where the breakers marked the shoreline.

  The nine LCT(R)’s burst suddenly into billowing flame as if they had themselves exploded, 9000 high explosive rockets, each streaming fire, leaped skyward in such a fireworks exhibition as no man thereabouts had ever seen before. In graceful arcs they curved upward over the LCVP’s, turned, and came down to explode in a second massive drenching that should tear to piece
s everything in the beachhead area that might have escaped the bombs.

  But no longer did the men in the boats pay any attention to where those rockets came down, or indeed to anything else any more going on outside their own bobbing landing craft. In seconds from then, down would go the ramps of their LCVP’s, and they would be in action. All bailing stopped. They needed their tin hats now for something else than bailing cans. Back on their heads went their helmets. Each man then tested cautiously the adjustment on his Mae West—even more than on his helmet, his life might well depend on the buoyancy of his life belt. A man, especially should he be wounded now, would badly need its support.

  Alongside, the waves were cresting up as the water shoaled on the flat sands. Ahead, close now, was the roar of the surf—bad surf, with ominous breakers running three and four feet high—tough for a naked swimmer to negotiate, terrifying to a heavily laden man with a pack on his back and his hands full of weapons. But seasick as he was, each G.I., if he could still think at all, comforted himself with the thought that if only he could get through the surf, in a few minutes that torture would be over—seasickness was a thing that left you with startling speed once the motion causing it had ceased. And especially when you had other matters to take your mind off it.