The day dragged on and I saw some very badly wounded men. I saw a chap with his chin off staggering along. We gave out all our handkerchiefs because of course the first-aid personnel had been killed as well. I did have in my possession a little tin box of morphia injections but I didn’t give those up. I felt I might need them for my own men.
I’d lost my sea boots in the water and I was in bare feet. I couldn’t spend the day in shingle, so, when there was a lull, I crawled back to the water’s edge where there was literally a wall about two-foot high of dead bodies all along the surf line. The sea had washed all their clothing off and they were naked, their shirts and so on had all disappeared, washed off by the surf. And the strange thing too was they all had cropped heads and as the sea came inwards the hair lay flat and as the sea receded it all stood up on end so you had all these coconuts if you like, the hair on these heads, going backwards and forwards. I took a pair of boots off one. His toes looked just like mine. I took his boots and went back and put them on.
Stoker Albert Rogers
LBV crew
We thought we had to beach straight away but we got stopped and I suppose we laid off about a quarter of a mile. The coxswain had his own binoculars and we had the naval issue binoculars and we could see what was going on. People running along and going down and not getting up. It was just like being in a ten-pin bowling alley and they were knocking all the pins down together. Something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
We were then told to get out the way: an American boat came up and threatened to shoot the coxswain if we didn’t move. And being as I was on the Lewis guns I said if he pulled the trigger I’d cut him and the rest of his crew in half. I would have done if he’d pulled the trigger and shot the coxswain. Then a bloke on another of the ships there, wasn’t a big ship, it was about the size of an LST, he got a loudhailer and shouted down, ‘What’s the trouble?’ I shouted up, ‘He’s trying to shoot our coxswain and I’m going cut him in half if he pulls the trigger.’ Well, he told him to lower his pistol and hand it to the coxswain – the coxswain had always wanted an American .45 – and off they went. Then this naval officer on this landing craft, he had all scrambled eggs round his hat, he asked us to move, politely, as we were causing chaos because we were so low in the water that they couldn’t see us until they were nearly on top of us. We went down to Utah.
Leading Seaman Wally Blanchard
Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Unit
We’d heard an enormous amount of firing coming from our right – to use the civilian term, starboard to us – along the beach and it was, of course, Omaha. We knew who was going in on Omaha and some of the conveyance of the troops ashore was being carried out by the Royal Navy. This is not generally known but British naval personnel were also on Omaha Beach. Some were there for the same reason as we were on Gold and they were still on that beach along with United States combat engineers, trying to disable explosives and mines, when the first wave of landing craft came in and came under very heavy fire from the German defences, which were very well sited.
We were ordered up to give support. Well, we naturally thought that we were going up there to do what we’d been doing. We might get involved in fighting but the first, primary objective was to disarm whatever mines or explosives we could lay our hands on, to broaden the landing craft front so that you could get more landing craft in. Unfortunately, when we got there, there was an enormous firefight taking place and we had no alternative but to join in.
Leading Seaman Walter Blanchard DSM, who worked to clear mines and obstacles on Gold and Omaha beaches on D-Day. This photograph was taken in 1945, when he was serving in HMS Newfoundland.
We got in the water. Practically the first thing I became aware of was a lot of objects in the water and the peculiar colour of the water and the froth. I think everybody that was ever on that beach knows what I mean by this. The noise, the confusion, the stonk were overpowering. You had a heavy bombardment taking place in the sea. You had the cries and the screams, an awful lot of young men, bodies, nudging you in the water. I became, by turns, very afraid, then, as you do, you settle down and I became colder and more angry. The Germans were standing up shooting at them. They were throwing grenades down at them. I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’
There was a landing craft which was abandoned. I crouched alongside it and I opened fire along with other people. I was aware that there were comrades of mine also in action and exchanging fire. I don’t know how long this went on. I have no idea. I remember a lad clutching hold of my ankle. He was an American, badly bleeding. I had a knife on; I cut his equipment off him. The first landing craft that came in on the other side of me was fortunately a Red Cross one, one of ours, bearing ambulance marks. Not that the Germans cared about that, they fired at that as well; after all, they were defending their beachhead. I managed to get a few lads into there.
A surprising thing happened: I don’t know how long I’d been at it but I was given ammunition from Americans coming in. Seeing the weapon I was using, they dropped me off spare clips, a whole box of Remington ammunition. I noticed the flashes of course and some of them were 2nd Rangers, which upset me even more because I had trained with some of them.
Now and again there’d be a little lull and I’d spot something that had been uncovered that looked suspiciously like a mine and I would deal with it if I could. I thought, ‘I don’t want some poor sod to tread on that.’ There was enough going on as it was.
And something comes over you. Your actions are almost automatic. I was clipped more than once by bullets or ammunition. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing really hit me. It was pinging and clanging off you like rain. Tracer flying in all directions. Grenades. None of them came near me fortunately but an awful lot of people were being killed on that beach. The Royal Navy decided not to put them in the water where they were told to but were driving them right up the beach and turning them round, to try and give them some cover to get off.
This seemed to go on for an interminable time. Eventually the Rangers did it. Somehow they got off that beach. The other troops were still pinned down but the 2nd Rangers went up that damned cliff. They took an awful lot of casualties trying to do it.
I found a bit of space and was able to get on with some mine clearance and one or two more of our mine people appeared but I think we took quite a few casualties along that beach. Then I was withdrawn from there and repaired to one of our depot craft to get cleaned up, get some food, get a bit of sleep and go back in again to my own beach, Gold Beach, which by this time was secure. There was still fighting going on for Omaha but they had more or less got a good foothold. But that was a terrible, terrible experience. Bear in mind that I had no idea I was going to be an infantryman when I joined the navy and that’s basically what I became for that time. I only thank my lucky stars that I knew how and when to use weapons.
During the course of that particular day, that peculiar day, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned round it was a German. My Remington carbine was up his nose in an instant but he was only trying to surrender. He too was paralysed with fright; he’d been wounded; it turned out he was a German military policeman, a much older man than us, obviously conscripted into the army. I covered him so he wouldn’t get hit again, I put him into one of the Red Cross landing craft, a Royal Navy one, and our lads took care of him. And before he left he got something out of his tunic pocket and pressed it into my hand. It looked like an Iron Cross; it turned out to be a German police long-service medal, which I still have to this day.
That’s how action is. There’s so much confusion; surprising things happen. You look along the beach and suddenly you see a whole warship, a minesweeper, she’s struck a mine, she seems to go up in the air and disinte-grate completely. People scream, they shout. They call out for mothers and Lord knows what. They all seem younger than you. I was eighteen.
Sub Lieutenant Hilaire Benbow
LCA commander
We spent th
e afternoon making our way slowly along this beach to where activity was happening, things were coming in and going out and so on. One quite large ship had been somehow beached and grounded, bows-on, to the beach and we came round the bows and that was a shock, because there were all these bodies, stretcher cases, laid out in the shelter of this great ship.
I was the only British officer around and a lot of British naval ratings who’d been shipwrecked in the same way as we had, either blown up on a mine or hit a sandbar or something, they all came to me. I had sixteen of them at least, maybe more, some from my own ship, others from other ships, and I got them all down to the water’s edge and I went aboard this American LCT and said, ‘I’ve got a party of British naval ratings here. Could you take us back to England?’ ‘Yes, all right.’ So I said, ‘Come on, lads,’ and we walked up the ramp and on board this LCT.
As we left we listened to the radio and there was Howard Marshall, the sort of Richard Dimbleby of his day, with a very deep voice, very slow. He was commenting on the success of it all and how it was all going so smoothly and to plan and I could have smashed that radio because it was so untrue as far as Omaha was concerned.
Overnight they transferred us to a large troopship and that came back within sight of the Isle of Wight and then all the way round the coast to Tilbury and we were debriefed in Tilbury. I knew there was great restriction on telephones but I was in an office and there was a telephone and I dialled up my mother and father and I got through and I said, ‘Hello, I’m safe, I’m here.’
Commander Felix Lloyd-Davies
HMS Glasgow (Royal Navy cruiser)
Omaha was of course quite the worst and bloodiest landing of the whole lot. At one-thirty that afternoon the American 1st Division and other troops were still on the beach and hadn’t got off, having suffered incredible casualties. They had over two thousand men killed and wounded on the beach. We closed in as far as we could until the ship was practically aground and with the destroyers started bombarding the emplacements with broadsides of six-inch, and the other ships were doing the same. Eventually the Americans got off the beach but they were only about a mile-and-a-half inland when dark came.
Brigadier David Belchem
21st Army Group planning staff
It was a tremendous achievement of the American infantry that they hung on and, incidentally, justified the policy of utilising highly experienced divisions in a sandwich formation with new, unbaptised divisions. The 1st US Infantry Division, which I think was one of the best in the Allied armies, was involved in this and only a division of that calibre could have done it. Assisted by the Rangers, by the way.
Sub Lieutenant Jimmy Green
LCA flotilla commander
I remember getting back on board the Javelin and offloading the troops we’d brought back, the people we took out of the water and the LCA crew we’d picked up off the beach. We made sure they were off-loaded and people went to the sickbay to get their wounds dealt with.
And then I don’t remember a thing after that. I must have flaked out. I must have gone and had something to eat but I don’t remember it. Don’t remember talking to anybody at all. In fact the next thing I remember was when the Empire Javelin entered Plymouth Harbour to the sounds of the sirens of all the ships. We’d lost a third of our craft in Normandy and they could see the vacant spots on the davits where the six LCAs had been and they knew where we’d been, and they really gave us a welcome I shall never forget.
UTAH BEACH
Utah was the westernmost beach of the invasion. Thirteen miles west of Omaha, it was a low-lying strip of coastline, nine miles wide and backed by dunes and marshland, at the south-east corner of the Cherbourg/Cotentin peninsula.
A successful thrust here, hoped the D-Day planners, would lead in subsequent days to the isolation of the peninsula and the capture of the important port of Cherbourg. The United States Army’s 4th Infantry Division was tasked with making the assault, forging the beachhead and reaching the US 101st Airborne Division, which, with the 82nd Airborne, would have dropped inland during the night to secure the western flank. The first landing craft hit the beach at 0630 hours. The British contribution to events on Utah was primarily in the form of naval assistance, which included many landing craft crews. These were employed not only in taking men and armour to the shore but also in landing stores.
Of all the beaches assaulted on D-Day, Utah was the least costly to take. It was not problem-free: early confusion was caused by strong currents and poor visibility, which led to many units landing in the wrong locations, and by the mining of several command landing craft. Fortunately, the Americans met light opposition only. Accurate naval gunfire had silenced many of the enemy positions while many soldiers found they beached in places considerably less fortified than their planned landing sites.
Once ashore, engineers and others worked hard to clear paths off the beach, but it took time. Reinforcements and the incoming tide caused congestion, as they did on other beaches, which compelled some units, to their cost, to try to find their way forward through minefields before they were swept. By one o’clock in the afternoon, however, the 4th Infantry was through and advancing inland and firm contact was soon made with the 101st, which had secured the beach exits despite a badly scattered drop. Well before nightfall and for the loss – according to recent estimates – of around three hundred men killed, wounded and missing, the 4th Infantry Division was ashore in force and had achieved the majority of its D-Day objectives.
Sub Lieutenant Herbert Male
LCT crew
We were attached to the American Assault Engineers. We were loaded with tanks and we went into Utah about twenty minutes after H-hour: H-plus-twenty. We saw not one German aircraft over the beaches all the time I was over there. There were lots of mines on the beaches and obstructions that had to be got through but we had a team of underwater divers who’d disposed of most of those anyway. We weren’t bothered at all. We had a free run into the beach. Everything went not bad at all. I’d do a D-Day once a week than go back to Tobruk once a year.
Lieutenant Richard Charles Bird
LCT crew
We went into the beach at 8.45 in the morning. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. We were expected to be lost but although we got a lot of shellfire it wasn’t too bad and all our flotilla got off actually.
The fellows we took were very good. They were the 22nd Infantry and they were like American commandos. Very good, they were, very good. Real professionals. They were a bit like Errol Flynn; they went running up the beaches. We wanted to get off, of course, and I remember the old captain was going around shaking hands, saying, ‘For God’s sake, get off,’ because once we got rid of all our vehicles and so forth we were allowed to come off. We had to form up and go right down all the beaches to the Sword area.
Stoker Albert Rogers
LBV crew
We went straight in. We beached there. Then we had a row. All of a sudden military police came up, what they called ‘snowdrops’ in the American Navy. ‘You can’t beach there!’ Then a two-and-a-half ringer [Royal Navy lieutenant commander] came up and said, ‘What’s the trouble?’ I told him. He said, ‘What have you got on there?’ He sent the snowdrop to have a look and he came running back and he said, ‘They’ve got jerrycans of petrol!’ This two-and-a-half ringer said, ‘How many is there?’ I said, ‘Five hundred.’ Now, where these trucks come from, I don’t know. But they were there unloading those jerrycans of petrol like nobody’s business.
Lieutenant Richard Charles Bird
LCT crew
The organisation was terrific. It was no good having all the vehicles one end of the beach and no petrol. We were all carrying different things so you had to go in on your spot because they had it all organised, where the petrol dumps were going to be and so forth.
American soldiers of the US 7th Corps wading ashore on Utah Beach.
Tom Treanor
War correspondent
We came
sliding and slewing in on some light breakers and grounded. I stepped ashore on France, walking up a beach where men were moving casually about carrying equipment inshore. Up the coast, a few hundred yards, German shells were pounding in regularly, but in our area it was peacefully busy. ‘How did you make out?’ I asked one of the men. ‘It was reasonably soft,’ he said. ‘The Germans had some machine-gun posts and some high-velocity guns on the palisades and made it a little hot at first. They waited until the landing craft dropped their ramps, then opened up on them while the men were still inside. In a few cases we took heavy casualties. Then the navy went to work on the German guns and it wasn’t long before they were quiet.’
The general lack of fortifications at this point was astonishing. The barbed wire consisted of four single strands such as we use at home to fence in cattle. A man could get through by pushing down on one wire and lifting up another, provided they weren’t booby-trapped. The engineers and beach battalions, however, had blown gaps in the wire through which we could move vehicles. A few dead lay about and some wounded were here and there on stretchers awaiting transport to ships out at sea. All up and down the broad beach as far as I could see, men, jeeps, bulldozers and other equipment were moving about like ants. A few columns of black greasy smoke marked equipment which had been hit by shellfire and set on fire. The German shelling continued steadily at various points up and down the beach but so far had not reached the area in which I was walking. It would work over an area, then move on to another. It was accurate, landing for the most part close to the water’s edge, and I saw one small landing craft catch fire after taking a hit. Men came scurrying out of it into water waist-deep. From time to time there were huge concussions as the engineers set off demolitions. The ground would shake and the troops would throw themselves violently on the ground.
Forgotten Voices of D-Day Page 28
