Voices from D-Day

by Jon E. Lewis

  At Omaha too, the Americans were moving inland, but here they had to fight savagely for every inch. Having reached the top of the bluffs behind the beach, the US 1st and 29th Divisions found a lattice-work of hedges, narrow fields and hamlets that made ideal defensive territory for the determined remnants of the 352nd and 716th Divisions of the Wehrmacht. It was a bitter foretaste of the fighting in the bocage that was to come. And the beach itself was still coming under heavy shell fire.

  Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division

  It [Omaha] was no summer resort. It was really a chaos, people were wounded, bodies were being piled up, equipment which had been destroyed was being pushed out of the way because of the continued flow of landing craft coming in. If they were blocked on landing they would have been dead targets, because the Germans could look right down the cliffs and shoot the craft right out of the water. By the time we landed the engineers had opened up the obstacles on the draw which went up to Vierville and St Laurent, but we were, I guess, not fifty yards off the beach when we got shelled by a heavy weapon which hit our ammunition truck, and there was a fire. Of our battery of sixty-eight men we lost seventeen right there. At moments like that you cope, you endure because of the training that you have received, the repetition of it, so you do everything naturally, on the spur of the moment. You just do what you were trained for so many months to do, and keep going.

  Captain Joseph T. Dawson, US 1st Infantry Division

  The Germans were now retreating, we were advancing and although we had some contact with them we didn’t experience any more active resistance from them until we had got across a small open field some 100 yards wide and entered into a wooded area which led to the town of Colleville. We had a very fierce battle all the way into the village, which was about a mile and a half from the crest of the ridge [at Omaha beach] … It was a long narrow little village commanded in a meaningful way by a church with a steeple which the Germans were using as an observation point, to direct artillery fire at the beach itself. I entered the church along with a sergeant and an enlisted man and we encountered Germans in there, just as we entered the door. They were trying to get out, as we came in. I lost my enlisted man and my sergeant was wounded; however, we were able to overcome the Germans. After we cleared that, we were able to secure and stabilize the village itself, so that subsequent troops landing were able to pass through us at approximately 3.30 in the afternoon.

  Shortly after the contingent of the following force of the 18th Infantry had passed through us our Navy started firing on us, on the village, and literally levelled it. During this time we suffered the worst casualties we had experienced in the whole day’s work. Fire from our own Navy; ‘friendly fire’ it was called. It happened due to the fact that I had lost communication with the Navy back at the beach when I lost my naval officer. The Navy didn’t realize we were in the village. I was frantically throwing smoke grenades up in the air to identify us as friendly, but it was too late for the barrage to not take effect. What was very disturbing to me was that they had waited until 15.30 to level the town and we had been there two hours by that time. Later when we brought an inquiry the Navy contended that their orders were to fire at H+6o and again as visibility would permit. They contended that the smoke and firing on the beach obscured their opportunity to see any targets until the pall of battle lifted sufficiently for them to have visual observation, which happened to be 15.30. I feel that the Navy’s interpretation of their orders was, shall we say, a little far-fetched. I was very bitter about it, but time has permitted me to mellow my feelings. We lost over eighteen men dead, and several wounded – I never did count them all. I’d suffered casualties throughout the day. Out of the day’s run we were over 50 per cent depleted by the end.

  Captain Albert H. Smith, US 1st Infantry Division

  I recall testing German defences south of the hedgerow along our dirt road [on top of the bluffs at Omaha beach]. Several rifle teams attempted an advance across the hedgerows – only to receive heavy arms fire from three directions. Somewhat later, a helmet raised on a stick just above the hedgerow vegetation drew immediate sniper fire. It was not difficult to conclude the enemy was in strength just to the south – in fact, right next door … Towards late afternoon I was happy to see Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Sisson and his 3rd Battalion, 18th Infantry, approaching our location. It was a great feeling to know reinforcements were at hand. I passed along what little I knew about friendly and enemy dispositions. Shortly thereafter, two lead companies were deployed from east to west along our dirt road; bayonets were fixed, and men charged south across the hedgerow. That bayonet charge – to the best of my recollection – was made sometime around 17.00. Initially, German small-arms fire was heavy; then, it seemed to fade as attacking companies moved further south to other hedgerows and fields.

  Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division

  All the troopers were firing now, and some of the ones closer to the road were lobbing grenades as fast as they could on the other side. It became a pitched battle with only a narrow black-top road separating the two forces. Actions became automatic, firing at fleeting shapes, crawling to different positions and firing, reloading and firing again and again.

  The Germans were in the ditch on the other side of the road while we were in the ditch on this side. A distance of not more than fifteen yards separated us. At times, just as I slipped my rifle through the foliage to fire, I could feel the muzzle blasts from the enemy rifles as they fired towards us. The Germans usually dropped back into the ditch while working the bolt of their rifles, but we could nearly always get off one to three shots before ducking back down. We were so close together that our faces were being blackened by the enemy’s muzzle blasts. They used a smokeless powder and were hard to locate, whereas our weapons spewed out billows of smoke that gave our positions away and kept us moving to keep from getting our brains blown out. There was very little wind and the smoke hung close around us. The smell of powder burned deep into our nostrils, leaving the backs of our throats and the roofs of our mouths dry, along with a taste like sucking an old copper penny.

  Lt. Elliott Johnson, US 4th Infantry Division

  We weren’t the only ones that got across the water. There was an anti-aircraft crew. This was the dangedest thing. You can’t imagine all this noise and all these shells exploding and fellows being hurt and killed, and here’s this crew sitting smoking cigarettes and reading a comic book. I couldn’t believe it. We stopped a hundred feet from them. I could see them out of the corner of my eye.

  All of a sudden – wham! – they were galvanized into action. I looked up and nobody had to say anything. All of us dived out of that thing and crawled under, ’cause here came these three German aircraft. These guys didn’t do any hiding. We did. It’s a good thing we did. The Germans hit that thing with those .50-calibre machine guns. And these guys hit every one of those three German airplanes and knocked them down. Every one of them.

  Pfc P.J. McCall, US 4th Infantry Division

  As we pushed inland from Utah I was sent ahead to check the road we were going along. I cautiously went around a corner, and everything seemed OK, but after I cleared the corner I suddenly knew someone had their sights on me. I could just feel it. I was about to dive to the ditch when this voice – in the other ditch – said, ‘Hey soldier, can you give me a light?’ A head popped up slightly, and it was grinning. I wasn’t sure for a moment whether it was a German playing a trick, but he had the drop on me anyway – and his voice was pure Bronx. He was 101st Airborne, and walked his way towards the beach through the night and morning.

  Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division

  We were always told to have nothing in our gas masks, always to have it ready because you’d have just 30 seconds to don it if gas came. I remember going around this churchyard above Omaha just after we got shelled, and I got tied up with communication wire. Somewhere along the line the Air Force had dropped yellow smoke, and the yellow smoke was knittin
g through the area and somebody shouted ‘Gas!’ I had my gas mask all tied up with the wire, and I couldn’t get to it and when I got to it I had oranges in there, I had cigarettes – everything I wasn’t supposed to have. I never did get the gas mask out, so if it had been gas I’d certainly still be there.

  …

  Off the beach there was a church surrounded by wire or some sort of wrought-iron fence. And there was a German in the tower and I think every GI on the beach shot at this German guy in the tower. We came to find out later that the German was tied in the tower, everybody shot at him figuring he was alive, but he’d been shot many times and had been tied so that he would not fall out.

  Able Seaman R.E. Hughes, aboard HMS Glasgow, off Omaha beach

  Diary, 6 June

  17.00. Urgent call for fire from beach.

  17.15. Troops had a sticky time being shelled by mobile AA. We cannot get range because they keep moving.

  Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division

  The officer had a bullet in his neck. The bullet had passed almost all the way through from the right side to the left and was lying pretty close to the surface, forming a big lump. He brought the tank to a stop and said he didn’t feel good, so we helped him from the tank and placed him on the grass under the trees. The other troopers said I had done a good job setting the arm earlier, so they elected me to remove the bullet. I didn’t want the job but someone had to do it.

  After building a fire from one of the German packing crates, I heated my trench knife while another trooper gave the officer a shot of morphine. He was cold and clammy-feeling, and his tan skin had suddenly taken on a pallor that looked kind of sickly, but he did not pass out, even when I cut in his neck. The bullet did not come out easily and when the ordeal was finally over, he looked up at me and said in a weak voice, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it.’

  It was the first thing he had said. All through the operation he hadn’t even groaned. We covered him as best we could to keep him warm against shock. The last time I saw him he was still living and looked as though he was getting better.

  Tom Treanor, LA Times war correspondent

  ‘Watch yourself, fella,’ someone said, ‘that’s a mine.’ A soldier sprawled on the bank was speaking. He had one foot blown half off and tied with a crude bandage. Pain had sucked his face white but still he remained conscious and still he took care lest someone should step on a live mine a few feet from his elbow. As each man edged up the path, he repeated the warning in a weak voice: ‘Watch yourself fella, that’s a mine.’

  He knew what a mine could do. He’d stepped on one a couple of hours earlier.

  I can stand the dead, but the wounded horrify me, and I only looked at him to thank him. He looked very tired but perfectly collected. ‘What you need is a medico,’ I said. ‘I will get one for you when I go back down.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but how are they going to get up here?’

  He was right. The pathway was so clogged with men and so heavily mined that it was impossible for stretcher-bearers to get up to him. The engineers would have to get up first.

  Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division

  Well, when you stand there and you’ve been with an individual – your sergeant, your right-hand man, say – and he’s gasping for his last breath and he’s speechless, it leaves you speechless. What would you say to him? What could you say?

  It was now evening on 6 June 1944. In the brilliance of the sinking sun the business of war continued.

  Driver John Osborne, 101 Company General Transport Amphibious

  In the evening I was sent out again to pick up some of our airborne chaps who had been caught in a flamethrower. They were in a bad way. Four of them were on stretchers placed across the DUKW. There was also a German who had been shot in the leg; he was the only one who complained. He kept on about losing his boot. (I later found the German’s damn boot in the DUKW; I don’t know if it was given to him.) With me too was a young chap from Ordnance Corps. He had been bombed by something in a house and was bomb happy. I gave him my home address and asked him to write to my mother to tell her I was all right. I learned later that he played on this and had money and food from her.

  Able Seaman Cooling, RN, aboard HMS Scorpion

  All that day we bombarded the coast without a break, but it was not until the evening that the gliders came over. We watched them come along thick and fast, towed over the beaches and away out of sight. It seemed almost impossible to count them. It was a wonderful sight indeed.

  Alan Melville, RAF war correspondent

  There was a wonderful sunset that evening. I was standing at the entrance to our dug-out during a lull in the shelling when the most almighty roar of aircraft brought everyone up from their holes. Two great waves came in from the sea; the first of glider-towing bombers, the second of paratroops. They went through exactly the same moves: they roared in majestically as though this was just one more exercise over Salisbury Plain, the bombers released their gliders and the gliders slipped down between our own position and the first rising slopes of the ridge of hills. The bombers swept majestically round – quite slowly: you would have thought they were lingering on purpose in the hope that the Luftwaffe or the enemy ack-ack guns would have a crack at them. Then, somewhat disappointed, they turned out to sea and went home for their suppers. The paratroops who followed did just the same; their aircraft swept over our heads and the parachutes began to drop just at the foot of the ridge. They opened and billowed out – hundreds of them. Pure white against a lovely sky: we use white parachutes for men, and coloured for supplies, and it was men that we were wanting that night. They disappeared from our view behind the clumps of trees, and it was days later when some of them filtered back to the beaches that we learned what had happened to them that night. Their aircraft, too, swept round and tore back home. The troops forgot all about the shelling and the snipers. They stood on the edges of their trenches and waved and yelled themselves silly. It was the greatest hoister of morale which anyone could have provided and it came at precisely the right minute. I talked next morning to some German prisoners, and the arrival of those two waves of aircraft seemed to have had an equally great effect on them. They said they had never imagined that we possessed so many aircraft, and that when they saw them – the first formations three miles inland and the tail of the armada still out on the horizon – they knew that it was hopeless.

  Lieutenant C.T. Cross, Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  The glider flight was bloody! It was, of course, longer than most we’d done before because of the business of getting into formation, collecting fighter escort and so on. After about quarter of an hour I began to be sick and continued until we were over the Channel where the air was much calmer. The Channel was a wonderful sight – especially the traffic this end – Piccadilly Circus wasn’t in it.

  The landing was ghastly. Mine was the first glider down though we were not quite in the right place, and the damn thing bucketed along a very upsy-downsy field for a bit and then broke across the middle – we just chopped through those anti-landing poles (like the ones I used to cut down during my forestry vac.) as we went along. However, the halves of the glider fetched up very close together and we quickly got ourselves and our equipment out and lay down under the thing, because other gliders were coming in and jerries were shooting things about at them and us – so it wasn’t very healthy to wander about. Our immediate opposition – a machine gun in a little trench – was very effectively silenced by another glider which fetched up plumb on the trench, and a couple of Huns – quite terrified – came out with their hands up.

  Donald Thomas, 53rd Airlanding Light Regiment, RA

  On the way over in the glider one of my colleagues was very nervous. I was sitting between him and somebody else in the tail end. I remembered that the major … in his briefing of the day before [5 June] had promised an umbrella of fighters flying above us. Half-way across the Channel I went to look thro
ugh the window for these fighters and this nervous chap pulled me back saying, ‘Sit down, you’ll affect the balance of the glider!’ (He stayed very nervous, and was sent back to England after four or five days. I was glad because he was making me nervous as well.) We landed in a cornfield, hit one of the posts planted there and finished up at a bad angle … Getting out we could hear machine-gun fire and we went down to the ground. I always remember the smell of the ground – a sweet, scented smell. After all, I had my nose in it.

  As well as delivering airborne reinforcements, the Allied air forces continued their bombing of targets in Normandy.

  Odette Lelanoy, Vire

  My father had found on his way to work that morning in Vire – we lived about 1.5 km away, in the countryside – lots of pamphlets on the roadside path. The pamphlets had been dropped by the Allies, and had written on them, ‘URGENT, townspeople leave the town quickly because you are going to be shelled’ – something like that. So my father, at the factory where he worked, gave out these pamphlets to everyone, telling them to ‘head for the countryside, don’t stay where you are.’ He went to see friends to convince them and tried to convince everyone, but no one listened. Not even our friends. It was awful because on 6 June at 8 o’clock in the evening, when we were still outside in the garden, we heard aeroplanes coming in high overhead, Flying Fortresses at a height of about 3,000 feet in tight formation. The next thing, in a space of a few seconds, there was a ripping sound – as though silk was being torn. After that there followed a whistling and then explosions. They had dropped bombs from these Flying Fortresses which, at 3,000 feet, looked really tiny. They looked like fleas, no bigger than that.

  We began to see dust and flames as more and more waves passed over us. We hid for cover in the house behind the thickest walls and stayed there throughout, in the thick of it, this fire, this deluge. I don’t know how long we stayed there. It seemed like an eternity. It terrifies me even now as I look back. Afterwards my father, who had been in the 1914–18 war, told my mother and I to leave for a farm about 1.5 or 2 km away where we knew the farmer, and we set off for it on foot. My father went into town to see if our friends were still alive. He went to all the places we had lived. Our old flat was destroyed, everything opposite was destroyed. All he found there was a fragment of thread hanging in a tree, which he recognized from the smock of a child. He stayed in the town all night, helping the wounded.