Posted on 06/07/2003 11:13:35 AM PDT by itsLUCKY2B
When he was promoted to officer rank at eighteen, S. L. A. MARSHALL was the
youngest shavetail in the United States Army during World War I. He rejoined
the Army in 1942, became a combat historian with the rank of colonel; and
the notes he made at the time of the Normandy landing are the source of this
heroic reminder. Readers will remember his frank and ennobling book about
Korea, THE RIVER AND THE GAUNTLET, which was the result of still a third
tour of duty.
First Wave at Omaha Beach by S.L.A. Marshall
When he was promoted to officer rank at eighteen, S. L. A. MARSHALL was the
youngest shavetail in the United States Army during World War I. He rejoined
the Army in 1942, became a combat historian with the rank of colonel; and
the notes he made at the time of the Normandy landing are the source of this
heroic reminder. Readers will remember his frank and ennobling book about
Korea, THE RIVER AND THE GAUNTLET, which was the result of still a third
tour of duty.
UNLIKE what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the
retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.
This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has
ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops
were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the
landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors.
It was this research by the field historians which first determined where
each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing
to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work
to show the troops where they had fought.
How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during
the field research. As published today, the map data showing where the
troops came ashore check exactly with the work done in the field; but the
accompanying narrative describing their ordeal is a sanitized version of the
original field notes.
This happened because the Army historians who wrote the first official book
about Omaha Beach, basing it on the field notes, did a calculated job of
sifting and weighting the material. So saying does not imply that their
judgment was wrong. Normandy was an American victory; it was their duty to
trace the twists and turns of fortune by which success was won. But to
follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human tragedy which
in the early hours bordered on total disaster. On this two-division front
landing, only six rifle companies were relatively effective as units. They
did better than others mainly because they had the luck to touch down on a
less deadly section of the beach. Three times that number were shattered or
foundered before they could start to fight. Several contributed not a man or
bullet to the battle for the high ground. But their ordeal has gone unmarked
because its detail was largely ignored by history in the first place. The
worst-fated companies were overlooked, the more wretched personal
experiences were toned down, and disproportionate attention was paid to the
little element of courageous success in a situation which was largely
characterized by tragic failure.
The official accounts which came later took their cue from this secondary
source instead of searching the original documents. Even such an otherwise
splendid and popular book on the great adventure as Cornelius Ryan's The
Longest Day misses the essence of the Omaha story.
In everything that has been written about Omaha until now, there is less
blood and iron than in the original field notes covering any battalion
landing in the first wave. Doubt it? Then let's follow along with Able and
Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Their story is lifted from
my fading Normandy notebook, which covers the landing of every Omaha
company.
ABLE Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand
yards from the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall
short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six
men drown before help arrives. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty
others paddle around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the
fight at the shore line. It's their lucky day. The other six boats ride
unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, where a shell into Boat
No. 3 kills two men. Another dozen drown, taking to the water as the boat
sinks. That leaves five boats.
Lieutenant Edward Tidrick in Boat No. 2 cries out: "My God, we're coming in
at the right spot, but look at it! No shingle, no wall, no shell holes, no
cover. Nothing!"
His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target.
They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the
boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher
than a man's head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff.
Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by
crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.
Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat,
center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The
first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five
yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the water logging
of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over
their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around
the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same
thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to
the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able
Company before it has fired a shot.
Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped
into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm
or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned
by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on
finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and
killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the
beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to
use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out
of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is
how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the
cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are
knocked off by machine-gun fire.
Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and
leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the
throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand
and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the
blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: "Advance
with the wire cutters!" It's futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order,
Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an
instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick
from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting
into the survivors as from a roof top.
Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfoot never make it.
They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft,
Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human
cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man
aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were
later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by
the sea.
Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives -- Lieutenant
Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the
belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes,
every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private
Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean
sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders
and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with
the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the
interests of survival.
To the right of where Tidrick's boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain
lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a
medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach.
The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on
the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where
they stand.
By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No
orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied
survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time
job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the
force of a strong example.
Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the
sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands
there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then
he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by
the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at
the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin's example, the
strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they
pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun
fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act,
shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both
together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his
work indomitably.
By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is
forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is
for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or
first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company
riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly
evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.
By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across
the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of
defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked
to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by
to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted
pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every
landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems.
By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat
section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few
rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no
farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the
company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a
group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to
the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the
day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company's contribution to
the D Day fire fight is a cipher.
BAKER Company which is scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and
right on top of it, supporting and reinforcing, has had its full load of
trouble on the way in. So rough is the sea during the journey that the men
have to bail furiously with their helmets to keep the six boats from
swamping. Thus preoccupied, they do not see the disaster which is overtaking
Able until they are almost atop it. Then, what their eyes behold is either
so limited or so staggering to the senses that control withers, the assault
wave begins to dissolve, and disunity induced by fear virtually cancels the
mission. A great cloud of smoke and dust raised by the mortar and
machine-gun fire has almost closed a curtain around Able Company's ordeal.
Outside the pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few
heads bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough
for the British coxswains. They raise the cry: "We can't go in there. We
can't see the landmarks. We must pull off."
In the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt .45 and says:
"By God, you'll take this boat straight in." His display of courage wins
obedience, but it's still a fool's order. Such of Baker's boats as try to go
straight in suffer Able's fate without helping the other company whatever.
Thrice during the approach mortar shells break right next to Zappacosta's
boat but by an irony leave it unscathed, thereby sparing the riders a few
more moments of life. At seventy-five yards from the sand Zappacosta yells:
"Drop the ramp !" The end goes down, and a storm of bullet fire comes in.
Zappacosta jumps first from the boat, reels ten yards through the elbow-high
tide, and yells back: "I'm hit." He staggers on a few more steps. The aid
man, Thomas Kenser, sees him bleeding from hip and shoulder. Kenser yells:
"Try to make it in; I'm coming." But the captain falls face forward into the
wave, and the weight of his equipment and soaked pack pin him to the bottom.
Kenser jumps toward him and is shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom
Dallas of Charley Company, who has come along to make a reconnaissance, is
the third man. He makes it to the edge of the sand. There a machine-gun
burst blows his head apart before he can flatten.
Private First Class Robert L. Sales, who is lugging Zappacosta's radio (an
SCR 300), is the fourth man to leave the boat, having waited long enough to
see the others die. His boot heel catches on the edge of the ramp and he
falls sprawling into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every
man who tries to follow him is either killed or wounded before reaching dry
land. Sales alone gets to the beach unhit. To travel those few yards takes
him two hours. First he crouches in the water, and waddling forward on his
haunches just a few paces, collides with a floating log -- driftwood. In
that moment, a mortar shell explodes just above his head, knocking him
groggy. He hugs the log to keep from going down, and somehow the effort
seems to clear his head a little. Next thing he knows, one of Able Company's
tide walkers hoists him aboard the log and, using his sheath knife, cuts
away Sales's pack, boots, and assault jacket.
Feeling stronger, Sales returns to the water, and from behind the log, using
it as cover, pushes toward the sand. Private Mack L. Smith of Baker Company,
hit three times through the face, joins him there. An Able Company rifleman
named Kemper, hit thrice in the right leg, also comes alongside. Together
they follow the log until at last they roll it to the farthest reach of high
tide. Then they flatten themselves behind it, staying there for hours after
the flow has turned to ebb. The dead of both companies wash up to where they
lie, and then wash back out to sea again. As a body drifts in close to them,
Sales and companions, disregarding the fire, crawl from behind the log to
take a look. If any one of them recognizes the face of a comrade, they join
in dragging the body up onto the dry sand beyond the water's reach. The
unfamiliar dead are left to the sea. So long as the tide is full, they stay
with this unique task. Later, an unidentified first-aid man who comes
wiggling along the beach dresses the wounds of Smith. Sales, as he finds
strength, bandages Kemper. The three remain behind the log until night
falls. There is nothing else to be reported of any member of Zappacosta's
boat team.
Only one other Baker Company boat tries to come straight in to the beach.
Somehow the boat founders. Somehow all of its people are killed -- one
British coxswain and about thirty American infantrymen. Where they fall,
there is no one to take note of and report.
FRIGHTENED coxswains in the other four craft take one quick look,
instinctively draw back, and then veer right and left away from the Able
Company shambles. So doing, they dodge their duty while giving a break to
their passengers. Such is the shock to the boat team leaders, and such their
feeling of relief at the turning movement, that not one utters a protest.
Lieutenant Leo A. Pingenot's coxswain swings the boat far rightward toward
Pointe du Hoc; then, spying a small and deceptively peaceful-looking cove,
heads directly for the land. Fifty yards out, Pingenot yells: "Drop the
ramp!" The coxswain freezes on the rope, refusing to lower. Staff Sergeant
Odell L. Padgett jumps him, throttles him, and bears him to the floor.
Padgett's men lower the rope and jump for the water. In two minutes, they
are all in up to their necks and struggling to avoid drowning. That quickly,
Pingenot is already far out ahead of them. Padgett comes even with him, and
together they cross onto dry land. The beach of the cove is heavily strewn
with giant boulders. Bullets seem to be pinging off every rock.
Pingenot and Padgett dive behind the same rock. Then they glance back, but
to their horror see not one person. Quite suddenly smoke has half blanked
out the scene beyond the water's edge. Pingenot moans: "My God, the whole
boat team is dead." Padgett sings out: "Hey, are you hit?" Back come many
voices from beyond the smoke. "What's the rush?" "Take it easy!" "We'll get
there." "Where's the fire?" "Who wants to know?" The men are still moving
along, using the water as cover. Padgett's yell is their first information
that anyone else has moved up front. They all make it to the shore, and they
are twenty-eight strong at first. Pingenot and Padgett manage to stay ahead
of them, coaxing and encouraging. Padgett keeps yelling: "Come on, goddam
it, things are better up here!" But still they lose two men killed and three
wounded in crossing the beach.
In the cove, the platoon latches on to a company of Rangers, fights all day
as part of that company, and helps destroy the enemy entrenchments atop
Pointe du Hoc. By sundown that mop-up is completed. The platoon bivouacs at
the first hedgerow beyond the cliff.
The other Baker Company boat, which turns to the right, has far less luck.
Staff Sergeant Robert M. Campbell, who leads the section, is the first man
to jump out when the ramp goes down. He drops in drowning water, and his
load of two bangalore torpedoes takes him straight to the bottom. So he
jettisons the bangalores and then, surfacing, cuts away all equipment for
good measure. Machine-gun fire brackets him, and he submerges again briefly.
Never a strong swimmer, he heads back out to sea. For two hours he paddles
around, two hundred or so yards from the shore. Though he hears and sees
nothing of the battle, he somehow gets the impression that the invasion has
failed and that all other Americans are dead, wounded, or have been taken
prisoner. Strength fast going, in despair he moves ashore rather than drown.
Beyond the smoke he quickly finds the fire. So he grabs a helmet from a dead
man's head, crawls on hands and knees to the sea wall, and there finds five
of his men, two of them unwounded.
Like Campbell, Private First Class Jan J. Budziszewski is carried to the
bottom by his load of two bangalores. He hugs them half a minute before
realizing that he will either let loose or drown. Next, he shucks off his
helmet and pack and drops his rifle. Then he surfaces. After swimming two
hundred yards, he sees that he is moving in exactly the wrong direction. So
he turns about and heads for the beach, where he crawls ashore "under a rain
of bullets." In his path lies a dead Ranger. Budziszewski takes the dead
man's helmet, rifle, and canteen and crawls on to the sea wall. The only
survivor from Campbell's boat section to get off the beach, he spends his
day walking to and fro along the foot of the bluff, looking for a friendly
face. But he meets only strangers, and none shows any interest in him.
IN Lieutenant William B. Williams' boat, the coxswain steers sharp left and
away from Zappacosta's sector. Not seeing the captain die, Williams doesn't
know that command has now passed to him. Guiding on his own instinct, the
coxswain moves along the coast six hundred yards, then puts the boat
straight in. It's a good guess; he has found a little vacuum in the battle.
The ramp drops on dry sand and the boat team jumps ashore. Yet it's a close
thing. Mortar fire has dogged them all the way; and as the last rifleman
clears the ramp, one shell lands dead center of the boat, blows it apart,
and kills the coxswain. Momentarily, the beach is free of fire, but the men
cannot cross it at a bound. Weak from seasickness and fear, they move at a
crawl, dragging their equipment. By the end of twenty minutes, Williams and
ten men are over the sand and resting in the lee of the sea wall. Five
others are hit by machine-gun fire crossing the beach; six men, last seen
while taking cover in a tidal pocket, are never heard from again. More
mortar fire lands around the party as Williams leads it across the road
beyond the sea wall. The men scatter. When the shelling lifts, three of them
do not return. Williams leads the seven survivors up a trail toward the
fortified village of Les Moulins atop the bluff. He recognizes the ground
and knows that he is taking on a tough target. Les Moulins is perched above
a draw, up which winds a dirt road from the beach, designated on the
invasion maps as Exit No. 3.
Williams and his crew of seven are the first Americans to approach it D Day
morning. Machine-gun fire from a concrete pillbox sweeps over them as they
near the brow of the hill, moving now at a crawl through thick grass.
Williams says to the others: "Stay here; we're too big a target!" They hug
earth, and he crawls forward alone, moving via a shallow gully. Without
being detected, he gets to within twenty yards of the gun, obliquely
downslope from it. He heaves a grenade; but he has held it just a bit too
long and it explodes in air, just outside the embrasure. His second grenade
hits the concrete wall and bounces right back on him. Three of its slugs hit
him in the shoulders. Then, from out of the pillbox, a German potato masher
sails down on him and explodes just a few feet away; five more fragments cut
into him. He starts crawling back to his men; en route, three bullets from
the machine gun rip his rump and right leg.
The seven are still there. Williams hands his map and compass to Staff
Sergeant Frank M. Price, saying: "It's your job now. But go the other way --
toward Vierville." Price starts to look at Williams' wounds, but Williams
shakes him off, saying: "No, get moving." He then settles himself in a hole
in the embankment, stays there all day, and at last gets medical attention
just before midnight.
On leaving Williams, Price's first act is to hand map and compass (the
symbols of leadership) to Technical Sergeant William Pearce, whose seniority
the lieutenant has overlooked. They cross the draw, one man at a time, and
some distance beyond come to a ravine; on the far side, they bump their
first hedgerow, and as they look for an entrance, fire comes against them.
Behind a second hedgerow, not more than thirty yards away, are seven
Germans, five rides and two burp guns. On exactly even terms, these two
forces engage for the better part of an hour, apparently with no one's
getting hit. Then Pearce settles the fight by crawling along a drainage
ditch to the enemy flank. He kills the seven Germans with a Browning
Automatic Rifle.
For Pearce and his friends, it is a first taste of battle; its success is
giddying. Heads up, they walk along the road straight into Vierville,
disregarding all precautions. They get away with it only because that
village is already firmly in the hands of Lieutenant Walter Taylor of Baker
Company and twenty men from his boat team.
Taylor is a luminous figure in the story of D Day, one of the forty-seven
immortals of Omaha who, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated
points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and
disaster. Courage and luck are his in extraordinary measure.
When Baker Company's assault wave breaks up just short of the surf where
Able Company is in ordeal, Taylor's coxswain swings his boat sharp left,
then heads toward the shore about halfway between Zappacosta's boat and
Williams'. Until a few seconds after the ramp drops, this bit of beach next
to the village called Hamel-au-Prêtre is blessedly clear of fire. No mortar
shells crown the start. Taylor leads his section crawling across the beach
and over the sea wall, losing four men killed and two wounded (machine-gun
fire) in this brief movement. Some yards off to his right, Taylor has seen
Lieutenants Harold Donaldson and Emil Winkler shot dead. But there is no
halt for reflection; Taylor leads the section by trail straight up the bluff
and into Vierville, where his luck continues. In a two-hour fight he whips a
German platoon without losing a man.
The village is quiet when Pearce joins him. Pearce says: "Williams is shot
up back there and can't move."
Says Taylor: "I guess that makes me company commander."
Answers Pearce: "This is probably all of Baker Company." Pearce takes a head
count; they number twenty-eight, including Taylor.
Says Taylor: "That ought to be enough. Follow me!"
Inland from Vierville about five hundred yards lies the Château de Vaumicel,
imposing in its rock-walled massiveness, its hedgerow-bordered fields all
entrenched and interconnected with artillery proof tunnels. To every man but
Taylor the target looks prohibitive. Still, they follow him. Fire stops them
one hundred yards short of the château. The Germans are behind a hedgerow at
mid-distance. Still feeling their way, Taylor's men flatten, open fire with
rifles, and toss a few grenades, though the distance seems too great. By
sheer chance, one grenade glances off the helmet of a German squatting in a
foxhole. He jumps up, shouting: "Kamerad! Kamerad!" Thereupon twenty-four of
the enemy walk from behind the hedgerow with their hands in the air. Taylor
pares off one of his riflemen to march the prisoners back to the beach. The
brief fight costs him three wounded. Within the château, he takes two more
prisoners, a German doctor and his first-aid man. Taylor puts them on a
"kind of a parole," leaving his three wounded in their keeping while moving
his platoon to the first crossroads beyond the château.
Here he is stopped by the sudden arrival of three truckloads of German
infantry, who deploy into the fields on both flanks of his position and
start an envelopment. The manpower odds, about three to one against him, are
too heavy. In the first trade of fire, lasting not more than two minutes, a
rifleman lying beside Taylor is killed, three others are wounded, and the
B.A.R. is shot from Pearce's hands. That leaves but twenty men and no
automatic weapons.
Taylor yells: "Back to the château!" They go out, crawling as far as the
first hedgerow; then they rise and trot along, supporting their wounded.
Taylor is the last man out, having stayed behind to cover the withdrawal
with his carbine until the hedgerows interdict fire against the others. So
far, this small group has had no contact with any other part of the
expedition, and for all its members know, the invasion may have failed.
They make it to the château. The enemy comes on and moves in close. The
attacking fire builds up. But the stone walls are fire-slotted, and through
the midday and early afternoon these ports well serve the American riflemen.
The question is whether the ammunition will outlast the Germans. It is
answered at sundown, just as the supply runs out, by the arrival of fifteen
Rangers who join their fire with Taylor's, and the Germans fade back.
Already Taylor and his force are farther south than any element of the right
flank in the Omaha expedition. But Taylor isn't satisfied. The battalion
objective, as specified for the close of D Day, is still more than one half
mile to the westward. He says to the others: "We've got to make it."
So he leads them forth, once again serving as first scout, eighteen of his
own riflemen and fifteen Rangers following in column. One man is killed by a
bullet getting away from Vaumicel. Dark closes over them. They prepare to
bivouac. Having got almost to the village of Louvieres, they are by this
time almost one half mile in front of anything else in the United States
Army. There a runner reaches them with the message that the remnants of the
battalion are assembling seven hundred yards closer to the sea; Taylor and
party are directed to fall back on them. It is done.
Later, still under the spell, Price paid the perfect tribute to Taylor. He
said: "We saw no sign of fear in him. Watching him made men of us. Marching
or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else
to do."
Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was
won by a handful of men like Taylor who on that day burned with a flame
bright beyond common understanding.
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