by Oliver North
By the end of the war, Bernard Ryan was one of the most highly decorated medical officers in the U.S. Army. His two Silver Stars—the nation’s third highest decoration for bravery—and two Purple Hearts for wounds in action indicated the kind of combat he and his fellow paratroopers endured taking on the Wehrmacht.
Though many of the U.S. parachute infantrymen failed to hit their assigned objectives in Normandy, the airborne assault succeeded nonetheless. The 13,000 American and 4,300 British paratroopers blocked roads and bridges that the Germans would have to use to launch a counter-attack. Though casualties among the follow-on glider-borne troops were high, most survived the crash landings of their Horsa and Waco gliders. And for many hours after the landings, the dispersion of the airborne and glider-borne troopers confused German commanders about where—and how many—there were.
Medics treat the wounded after the invasion.
This was not the case for the amphibious forces closing in on the Norman coast. Remarkably, given the magnitude of the operation and the marginal weather, things were generally on time—and most units landed reasonably close to where the voluminous Overlord Operations Plan ordered them to go.
• 0100 U.S. and Royal Navy warships in the van of the Allied armada called all hands to General Quarters as a flotilla of tiny minesweepers began clearing sea lanes into the invasion beaches.
• 0200 The first Allied bombers took off from bases in England to pound targets around the beachheads.
• 0300 Thousands of British and American troops aboard Horsa and Waco gliders began descending on fields and roads up to ten miles inland to reinforce the paratroopers.
• 0309 One of the few German radars that was still operable detected the invasion fleet off Le Havre. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, comfortable in the chateau he occupied at Saint-Germain outside of Paris, declined recommendations by his staff to start moving Panzers toward Normandy.
• 0330 Agents of the French resistance “Centurie” network were at work cutting both civilian and German military telephone and telegraph lines, sowing confusion among various levels of command in the Wehrmacht.
• 0400 Word was passed aboard the thousands of Allied ships now gathered off the assault beaches: “Prepare to land the landing force,” the signal for 150,000 British, Canadian, and American men to start moving to their disembarkation stations and their landing craft.
• 0515 The battleships Texas, Nevada—a Pearl Harbor survivor—and Arkansas opened up on Omaha and Utah beaches from 11,000 yards offshore. Joining the old battlewagons closer in, the heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa, Quincy, and Augusta—along with more than two dozen destroyers and gunboats—began blasting German fortifications emplacements ashore.
• 0530 The naval bombardment paused for fifteen minutes for waves of heavy bombers to pass overhead for the only scheduled air strike on the beach defenses. Unfortunately, because of the cloud cover, most of the 4,400 bombs dropped on Utah beach by 276 B-26 bombers fell short and into the water. At Omaha beach it was even worse. Not a single one of the 480 B-24 Liberators dispatched on the mission hit even close to the beach or the coastal defenses. All the bombs fell well inland.
• 0630 H-hour on the American beaches—the men of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry, 4th Division, landing on Utah beach became the first U.S. soldiers to come ashore at Normandy. Though the wind and tide had pushed them almost a mile south of their target, they encountered little opposition. By nightfall, more than 21,000 troops, 1,700 vehicles, and 2,000 tons of supplies would be ashore on Utah—at a cost of fewer than 200 casualties.
On Omaha beach it was an entirely different story. The German fortifications covering Omaha between Port en-Bessin on the left and the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on the right were largely unscathed by the pre-H-Hour bombardment. Enfilade fire from 88 mm guns mounted in concrete casements cut to pieces the assault waves of the 116th Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division and the 18th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division as they reached the beach.
The members of the U.S. Navy Combat Demolitions Team that led them into the maelstrom were the first Americans to touch down at Omaha. Among them was twenty-four-year-old Chief Petty Officer Jerry Markham from Jacksonville, Florida.
CHIEF PETTY OFFICER JERRY MARKHAM, USN
US Navy Combat Demolition Unit #46
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
6 June 1944
A Navy lieutenant commander named Draper Kauffman convinced the Navy to form up our Combat Demolition Units. We nicknamed our team the “Tough Potatoes”—five men and an officer who were together because we wanted to be, not because we were ordered or assigned. At twenty-four, I was the “old man.” We had great esprit de corps and knew each other and our jobs well. We had been well trained for combat reconnaissance and demolition work. When we finished our training in Virginia, all eleven Combat Demolition units shipped to England in December 1943.
We trained in Wales and in different parts of the Bristol Channel and English Channel in all kinds of terrain and different kinds of beaches and obstacles. Because we didn’t know where we might end up, we trained for a little bit of everything.
About two months before D-Day, we were given the intelligence on the different landing sites and invasion beachheads for Normandy—though the maps and charts didn’t have labels as to location.
The Omaha beachhead was a crescent-shaped curve about five miles long and 300 yards wide at mean low tide. It has a twenty-six-foot tide and the Germans had placed mines and obstacles at different tide levels—from low to high tide—to rip or blow the bottom out of landing craft or amphibious ships no matter when they came in.
Our job was to blow a fifty-yard path through those mined obstacles, all the way up to the high water mark, and mark it with buoys so that that the landing forces coming behind us could get ashore without hitting a mine. After the mines were cleared, we were to go in and remove booby traps on the beach. And after the beachhead was established, we were supposed to clear the ravines above the beach so that the troops could get off the beach quickly.
Our rubber boat hit the beach at mean low tide. Our explosives were made up of packs specially designed to detonate mines and flatten obstacles like the Belgian Gates that the Germans had built. We also had Bangalore torpedoes to blast through barbed wire and mine fields on the exits from the beach.
We were supposed to do all this during darkness but we were delayed getting to the beach and the Germans saw us coming. Even before we landed, their mortars knocked out some of our boats with direct hits. When we got ashore it was in a shower of machine-gun fire. They had every inch of that beach zeroed in for crossfire. The cliffs about a half-mile behind the beach were about 100 to 150 feet high and they had concrete gun emplacements inside the cliffs, firing down.
On our right and left they had their 88s—mounted in concrete pillboxes to fire down the beach. The velocity of an 88 mm projectile is so high that it would hit or go past before you heard the gun fire. As we got to shallow water we jumped out to haul our rubber boat up on the beach and a shell hit and killed my officer and two of our men. We never heard it coming.
Those of us who were left got about a third of the way up the beach, fighting strong crosscurrents. The demolition units on my right were pretty badly shot up and began to drift down to us. We took shelter as best we could behind the obstacles that the Germans had constructed in the water and did succeed in blowing a partial gap.
We had two units completely wiped out when direct mortar hits on their boats detonated their demolition charge and killed everybody. Within that first hour we had over 50 percent casualties.
When I finally reached the high water mark at the beach, the Germans lobbed a mortar in and hit the top of an embankment, and caved it in, covering three soldiers. Without thinking, I rushed over and dug their heads out with my hands and helped them get out, not realizing I was exposing myself to machine-gun fire. That’s when I got wounded.
In order to help the soldiers get o
ff the beach, two of our Navy destroyers came into the shallows, and fired their 5-inch guns point blank into the German gun emplacements on the cliff. They used their 40 mm guns to help clear the ravines and knock out the German machine guns and mortars.
I spent the night of D-Day in a foxhole I dug out on the beach. Lots of ration cans floated ashore with the tide, so we had plenty of food. I got off the beach the fourth day because I had started passing blood from a shell concussion. I had made the mistake of going down to a hospital ship for some medication to stop the internal bleeding. And they slapped a tag on me, threw me on a litter and took me back to England. About two days in the hospital there, I started badgering the nurses and trying to donate blood—because I heard they give you three ounces of Scotch if you donate blood. They said, “Get out of here! You don’t have enough blood to spare, and you’re driving the nurses crazy.”
So I went back to our base. A few weeks later they put what was left of us on a transport ship and transferred us back to New York so we could get rested up to go to the Pacific theater.
As Jerry Markham’s Navy Combat Demolition Unit struggled to clear the mines and obstacles on Omaha beach, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was struggling to scale the sheer 130-foot cliffs three miles to the west at Pointe du Hoc. Their task was one of the most difficult at Normandy: after attaining the heights, they had to cross the mined and obstacle-ridden crest under fire to destroy six 155 mm cannon mounted in reinforced concrete casements—all before the guns could bring fire to bear on the beaches below and the fleet offshore. Twenty-four-year-old New Jersey native Leonard Lomell was one of the handpicked volunteers chosen for the mission.
FIRST SERGEANT LEONARD LOMELL, US ARMY
Company D, 2nd Ranger Battalion
Normandy, France
6 June 1944
I was the first sergeant of D Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, formed in Fort Mead, Maryland, out of the 76th Infantry Division. We were always told that we were supposed to be the best of the best, but that we’d have the toughest missions. We went through 2,000 volunteers to make our team of 500.
We started preparing for in England in late April, for Pointe du Hoc. Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder, our battalion commander, pushed us hard—telling us that we were going up against the best-defended shoreline in the world. General Omar Bradley, commanding officer of the American ground forces, told us that this would be the most dangerous mission he ever assigned anybody. So, 225 specially chosen Rangers—and I was one of them—were picked to make that raid.
That day was terrible—stormy, cold, rainy, and windy. Our company had a three-pronged mission: First, climb the cliffs and destroy the six big guns on top so they wouldn’t kill thousands of men on Omaha beach and Utah beach. Second, get to the coast road between Omaha beach and Utah beach and establish a roadblock so that the Germans couldn’t reinforce their troops at the beaches. And third, destroy any German communications equipment we found so they couldn’t communicate.
Though we didn’t know it, several days before D-Day, the Germans relocated the guns inland to an alternate position. No aerial photos or intelligence showed that they were gone. The Germans had disguised the move by sticking telephone poles out of the casements to fool our reconnaissance.
On D-Day we had breakfast at about 0300, loaded British LCAs—about twenty-five men per boat—and we were lowered into the water at about 0400. We headed into the beach but our British guide boat led us to the wrong point—about three or four miles west of where we were supposed to be. When we got close to shore, our team leaders realized we were in the wrong place and told the coxswains—and then the LCAs had to run whole distance back to where we belonged—while about 200 yards off the coast—as the Germans fired mortars and small arms at us from atop the cliffs.
As we landed, we lost one of the LCAs—a lot of our officers and one-third of our company were gone in a few seconds. As our ramp went down and I jumped into the water, I was the first one shot—through the right side.
By the time we got to the cliffs we had lost the element of surprise and the Germans were waiting for us. We were very lightly armed and equipped because climbing hand-over-hand up a 100-foot rope is exhausting. All I carried was what I was wearing—a pair of trousers, shirt, and a light jacket—and a harness for grenades and ammunition, a first aid kit, my sub-machine gun, and a side arm.
The British LCAs that brought us in were equipped with six rocket launchers—three on each side—and the rockets were connected to grappling hooks and coils of climbing line. As soon as the ramps opened, the rockets fired—and soon the face of the cliff had all these ropes hanging down it—and Rangers climbing up—while the Germans fired down on us and dropped grenades on our heads.
The face of the cliff was clay—which is slippery when wet. Soon it was like the climbing line had been coated with grease. We finally got to the top of the cliff by sheer willpower—and with the help of a U.S. Navy destroyer that came in close to fire over our heads to pin down the Germans.
When we got to the top, we discovered that the big guns were gone so a dozen of us headed to the coast road. We let group of about 180 Germans pass by us while we hid behind a rock wall—and then followed them at a distance. That’s how we found the guns at about 0830 in the morning.
Sergeant Jack Cume from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and I went down this road and came upon a group of about seventy-five Germans getting briefed by their officers. They were in various states of undress and putting themselves together.
Jack covered me while I took two Thermite grenades and put ’em into the gears of the big guns. Thermite is a magnesium—and it burns hot enough to melt metal. In an artillery piece it will weld a breech block closed or lock the elevating and traversing mechanism, rendering the gun inoperable. To me it was a chemical wonder. And it didn’t make any noise—it didn’t draw any attention from the Germans—so we got the job done.
To destroy the gun sights, I took my jacket off and wrapped it around my stock of my sub-machine gun so it wouldn’t make any sound. Without that padding, it would sound like a hammer hitting it. And it worked out well.
These guns had a range of twelve miles, and that’s where the invasion fleet was anchored. That’s why it was imperative that these guns be destroyed. When we were done we ran like scared rabbits back to our roadblock.
We held the roadblock for three days and nights against all the German units that tried to get through to Omaha beach on that road. And though we took a lot of casualties, no German unit got past us. We started out with 295 men and by the time we were relieved we only had ninety men still standing that could fight on.
When the Rangers were finally relieved, Len Lomell’s wounded side was severely infected and gangrenous. He was evacuated to England where he was operated on. After a two-month recuperation, he rejoined his fellow Rangers.
While 1st Sergeant Lomell and his Rangers were struggling to scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, the soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions below them on Omaha beach were being cut to pieces. The German fire was so lethal that in some cases entire units disappeared before ever getting to the beach. Lt. Art Van Cook from the Bronx was an “old man” of twenty-six on D-Day. He trained as an artillery officer near his base at Plymouth, England, and landed on Omaha beach under a hail of small arms and mortar fire.
FIRST LIEUTENANT ARTHUR “ART” VAN COOK
111th Field Artillery Battalion, 116th Infantry,
29th Infantry Division
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
6 June 1944
They sent me over to Europe in early 1943. I joined the 29th Infantry Division in England and I was assigned to the 111th Field Artillery Battalion—a 105 mm howitzer unit assigned to provide artillery support to the 116th Infantry Regiment.
When we put out to sea on the way to Normandy we could see thousands of ships of every kind, size, and shape. We were embarked on an LST—for Landing Ship Tank. Inside the well deck of the LST were our twelve
105 mm howitzers, loaded into DUKW amphibious trucks—we called them “Ducks.”
Each one of the DUKWs also carried fourteen or fifteen men, and ammunition. The “Ducks” were supposed to “swim” ashore and then drive forward on their wheels to put our artillery tubes into position to support the 116th Regiment—the assault wave for the 29th Division.
We were meant to “splash” the DUKWs about a mile or so offshore. But instead, the LST dropped us off about nine miles out and the sea state was terrible. As we headed in just after dawn, the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers were blazing away but I was somewhat skeptical that we were going to make it into the beach.
My DUKW started to take on water faster than the pumps could handle it and we couldn’t bail fast enough. Some of the DUKWs rolled down the LST ramp and went straight to the bottom. We had practiced this before—but never in heavy seas. As it turned out, we lost eleven of our twelve howitzers before we ever got to the beach.
I transferred over to what they call an LCVP—Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel. It didn’t make it either. So I wound up on something called a Rhino Ferry—a flat barge powered by two diesel engines with a ramp. Once ashore the Rhino Ferries could be linked together as causeway sections. This one was loaded with trucks, half-tracks, a single howitzer, ammunition, supplies, and equipment and we slowly rumbled toward the beach.
About 100 yards off the beach one of the engines was knocked out by an exploding German shell. It seemed like it was raining lead and steel all around us—and we’re all just standing on this flat barge!
As the Rhino Ferry beached, one of the soldiers was hit by machine-gun fire as he jumped off into the water. Several others were killed and wounded by machine-gun and small arms fire as they tried to get up the beach.
