The FReeper Foxhole Remembers D-Day On Omaha Beach (6/6/1944) - June 6th, 2003

The Atlantic Monthly ^ | November 1960 | S.L.A. Marshall

[SAMWolf]

Dear Lord,

There's a young man far from home,
called to serve his nation in time of war;
sent to defend our freedom
on some distant foreign shore.

We pray You keep him safe,
we pray You keep him strong,
we pray You send him safely home ...
for he's been away so long.

There's a young woman far from home,
serving her nation with pride.
Her step is strong, her step is sure,
there is courage in every stride.
We pray You keep her safe,
we pray You keep her strong,
we pray You send her safely home ...
for she's been away too long.

Bless those who await their safe return.
Bless those who mourn the lost.
Bless those who serve this country well,
no matter what the cost.

Author Unknown

.

FReepers from the The Foxhole
join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time.

.

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The First Wave at Omaha Beach

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.


Men from Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division are in the initial wave to assult the beach at OMAHA.

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!"


At low tide, the assaulting troops had to cross more than 300 meters of completely exposed beach to gain entrance to the Vierville draw.

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 waterlogging 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.


American assault troops in a landing craft huddle behind the protective front of the craft as it nears a beachhead, on the Northern Coast of France. Smoke in the background is Naval gunfire supporting the land. 6 June 1944.

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.


Members of an American landing party lend helping hands to other members of their organization whose landing craft was sunk be enemy action of the coast of France. These survivors reached Utah Beach, near Cherbourg, by using a life raft. Photographer: Weintraub, 6 June 1944

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.


OMAHA BEACH
France
Joseph Gary Sheahan, 1944

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.

[SAMWolf]

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."


When viewing the beach from one of the German positions, one gains an appreciation of the task facing the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions.

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.

Within several hours of landing, the tide at the beaches had significantly risen, providing the assaulting soldiers with only a small strip of dry land. Contrast this view with the one immediately above.

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.

Covered by smoke, haze, and lethal fire, the bluffs at OMAHA Beach loom above the American troops.
Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment on Omaha Beach immediately ran into intense and devastating fire from the German forces.

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.

[SAMWolf]

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. br>

Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment seek shelter from German machine-gun fire in shallow water behind 'Czech hedgehog' beach obstacles

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.


American assault troops of the 3d Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st U.S. Infantry Division, who stormed Omaha Beach, and although wounded, gained the comparative safety offered by the chalk cliff at their backs. Food and cigarettes were available to lend comfort to the men at Collville-Sur-Mer, Normandy, France. 6/6/44.

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.


A medic of the 3d Bn., 16th Inf. Regt., 1st U.S. Inf. Div., moves along a narrow strip of Omaha Beach administering first aid to men wounded in the landing. The men, having gained the comparative safety offered by the chalk cliff at their backs, take a breather before moving into the interior of the continent. Collville, Sur-Mer, Normandy, France. Photographer: Taylor, 6 June 1944

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!"


Another view at low tide, illustrating the Germans' unobstructed fields of fire across the beach.

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 artilleryproof 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.


After securing Omaha Beach, reinforcements of men and equipment arrive to move inland.

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.

Additional Sources:

www.ku.edu
www.dean.usma.edu
www.army.mil
www.6juin1944.com
home.planet.nl
www.ngb.army.mil

[SAMWolf]

Omaha Beach

The landing by regiments of the 1st and 29th Infantry divisions and Army Rangers on OMAHA Beach was even more difficult than expected. When the first wave landed at 6:30 a.m., the men found that naval gunfire and prelanding air bombardments had not softened German defenses or resistance. Along the 7,000 yards of Normandy shore German defenses were as close to that of an Atlantic Wall as any of the D-Day beaches. Enemy positions that looked down from bluffs as high as 170 feet, and water and beach obstacles strewn across the narrow strip of beach, stopped the assault at the water's edge for much of the morning of D-Day.

By mid-morning, initial reports painted such a bleak portrait of beachhead conditions that Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley, United States First Army commander, considered pulling off the beach and landing troops elsewhere along the coast. However, during these dark hours, bravery and initiative came to the fore. As soldiers struggled, one leader told his men that two types of people would stay on the beach--the dead and those going to die--so they'd better get the hell out of there, and they did.

Slowly, as individuals and then in groups, soldiers began to cross the fire-swept beach. Supported by Allied naval gunfire from destroyers steaming dangerously close to shore, the American infantrymen gained the heights and beach exits and drove the enemy inland. By day's end V Corps had a tenuous toehold on the Normandy coast, and the force consolidated to protect its gains and prepare for the next step on the road to Germany.

Of all the Allied invasion beaches on D-Day, OMAHA Beach was clearly the most heavily contested. Despite the massive aerial and naval bombardments before the amphibious assault, soldiers from the 16th and 116th Infantry Regiments of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions, respectively, faced stiff resistance from the German defenders. In many of the rifle companies, American casualties exceeded 50%. As one veteran later recalled of his experience, "As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell." Yet despite the heavy German fire and the resulting casualties, the small unit leaders took control and moved their men up the slopes and beyond the bluffs. By the evening of D-Day, elements of both divisions were firmly ashore and ready to continue the assault..

[SAMWolf]

[SAMWolf]

Due to circumstances beyond my control (blame my MIL) I will not be able to post the Foxhole for the next two weeks.

However, Snippy_about_it, the Foxhole Foxette, has graciously volunteered to post the thread for me.



Snippy

[Darksheare]

I'm back.
Now if I could only get my hands on a penguin, a fedora, and a victrola I'd be set.

[aomagrat]

Today's classic warship, USS Nevada (BB-36)

Nevada class battleship
Displacement. 27,500
Length. 583'
Beam. 85'3"
Draft. 28'6"
Speed. 20.5 k.
Complement. 864
Armament. 10 14", 21 5", 4 21" tt. (as built)

The USS Nevada (BB-36) was laid down 4 November l912 by the Fore River Shipbuilding Co., Quincy, Mass.; launched 11 July 1914; sponsored by Miss Eleanor Anne Seibert, niece of Governor Tasker L. Oddie of Nevada and descendant of Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert; and commissioned 11 March 1916, Capt. William B. Sims in command.

Nevada joined the Atlantic Fleet at Newport 26 May 1916 and operated along the east coast and in the Caribbean until World War I. After training gunners out of Norfolk, she sailed l3 August 1918 to serve with the British Grand Fleet, arriving Bantry Bay, Ireland 23 August. she made a sweep through the North Sea and escorted transport George Washington, President Woodrow Wilson embarked, during the last day of her passage into Brest, France, before sailing for home 14 December.

Nevada served in both Atlantic and Pacific Fleets in the period between the wars. In September 1922 she represented the United States in Rio de Janeiro for the Centennial of Brazilian Independence. From July to September 1926, she participated in the U.S. Fleet's goodwill cruise to Australia and New Zealand, which demonstrated to our friends down under, and to the Japanese, our ability to make a self-supported cruise to a distance equal to that to Japan. Nevada was modernized in 1927-30, exchanging her "cage" masts for tripods. The update work also included the installation of a new superstructure, relocation of her five-inch secondary battery, new anti-aircraft guns and significant improvements to her firepower and protection. Nevada served in the Pacific Fleet for the next decade.

On 7 December 1941, Nevada was moored singly off Ford Island, and had a freedom of maneuver denied the other 8 battleships present during the attack. As her gunners opened fire and her engineers got up steam, she was struck by one torpedo and two, possibly three, bombs from the Japanese attackers, but was able to get underway. While attempting to leave harbor she was struck again. Fearing she might sink in the channel, blocking it, she was beached at Hospital Point. Gutted forward, she lost 60 killed and 109 wounded.

Refloated 12 February 1942, Nevada repaired at Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound Navy Yard, then sailed for Alaska where she provided fire support for the capture of Attu 11 to 18 May. In June she sailed for further modernization at Norfolk Navy Yard, receiving permanent repairs and improvements, including a greatly enhanced anti-aircraft gun battery.

In April 1944 she reached British waters to prepare for the Normandy Invasion. In action from 6 to 17 June, and again 25 June, her mighty guns pounded not only permanent shore defenses on the Cherbourg Peninsula, but ranged as far as 17 miles inland, breaking up German concentrations and counterattacks. Shore batteries straddled her 27 times, but failed to diminish her accurate fire.

Between 15 August and 25 September, Nevada fired in the invasion of Southern France, dueling at Toulon with shore batteries of 13.4-inch guns taken from French battleships scuttled early in the war. Her gun barrels were relined at New York, and she sailed for the Pacific, arriving off Iwo Jima 16 February 1945 to give marines invading and fighting ashore her massive gunfire support through 7 March.

On 24 March, Nevada massed off Okinawa with the mightiest naval force ever seen in the Pacific, as pre-invasion bombardment began. She pounded Japanese airfields shore defenses, supply dumps, and troop concentrations through the crucial operation, although 11 men were killed and a main battery turret damaged when she was struck by a suicide plane 27 March. Another 2 men were lost to fire from a shore battery 5 April. Serving off Okinawa until 30 June, from 10 July to 7 August she ranged with the 3rd Fleet which not only bombed the Japanese home islands, but came within range for Nevada's guns during the closing days of the war.

Returning to Pearl Harbor after a brief occupation duty in Tokyo Bay, Nevada was surveyed and assigned as a target ship for the Bikini atomic experiments. The tough old veteran survived the atom-bomb test of July 1946, returned to Pearl Harbor to decommission 29 August, and was sunk by gunfire and aerial torpedoes off Hawaii 31 July 1948.

Nevada received 7 battle stars for World War II service.

Big guns in action!

[Valin]

On This Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on June 06:
1436 Regiomontanus (Johannes Mller) prepares astronomical tables
1599 Diego Vel zquez Spain, painter (Rokeby Venus) (baptized)
1606 Pierre Corneille France, dramatist (Le Cid, Horace)
1755 Nathan Hale hanged patriot, had but one life to give for his country
1756 John Trumbull US painter (Declaration of Independence)
1799 Aleksandr Sergeyevich Russia, poet, founder of modern Russian Lit
1799 Alexandr Pushkin Russia, writer (Eugene Onegin) (5/26 OS)
1850 Karl F Braun codeveloped wireless telegraphy (Nobel 1909)
1868 Robert Falcon Scott leader of ill-fated south polar expedition
1872 Alexandra last Russian tsarina (1894-1918)
1875 Thomas Mann Germany, novelist (Magic Mountain-Nobel 1929)
1875 Walter Percy Chrysler found Chrysler Corp (1925)
1886 Paul Dudley White heart specialist
1890 Dorothy Heyward NYC, playwright (Porgy)
1896 Robert Sheriff playwright (Journey's End)
1898 Walter Abel actor St Paul Mn, actor (Suspicion, Dream Girl)
1901 Sukarno Java, PM of Indonesia (1945-67)
1903 Aram Khachaturian Tiflis Georgia, Russia, musician/composer (Gayane)
1905 John Gart Russia, orch leader (Paul Winchell Show)
1907 Bill Dickey NY Yankee hall-of-fame catcher (1928-43), manager (1946)
1915 Vincent Persichetti Phila Pennsylvania, composer (Sibyl)
1917 Kirk Kerkorian CEO (MGM, UA)
1918 Richard Crane Newcastle Ind, actor (Surfside 6)
1926 Klaus Tennstedt Merseburg Germany, conductor (Fidelio)
1928 George Deukmejian Menands NY, (Gov-Cal)
1932 Billie Whitelaw Coventry England, actress (Omen, Adding Machine)
1932 David R Scott San Antonio Tx, Col USAF/astronaut (Gem 8, Apol 9, 15)
1933 Heinrich Rohrer Swiss physicist (tunneling microscope-Nobel 1986)
1934 Philippe Entremont France, pianist/conductor (Vienna Chamber Orch)
1935 Bobby Mitchell NFL running back, wide receiver (Browns, Redskins)
1935 Dalai Lama Tibet, spiritual leader of Tibet's Lamaistic Buddhists
1936 Levi Stubbs rocker (4 Tops-Same Old Song)
1939 Gary "US" Bonds [Anderson] singer/songwriter (New Orleans)
1939 Marian Wright-Edelman health care president (Childrens Defense Fund)
1942 Sandra Morgan US 4 X 100m freestyle swimmer (Olympic-gold-1956)
1946 Chelsea Brown Chicago Ill, comedienne (Laugh-in, Matt Lincoln)
1947 Marion Coakes England, equestrian show jumper (Olympic-silver-1968)
1949 Richard Lewis comedian/actor (Anything But Love) (or June 29)
1949 Robert Englund actor (Freddy Kreuger-Nightmare on Elm St, V)
1951 Dwight Twilley country singer (Twilley Don't Mind)
1954 Harvey Fierstein playwright (Torch Song Trilogy)
1955 Dana Carvey Missoula Montana, comedian (Church Lady-SNL)
1955 Sandra Bernhard comedian/actress bugs Letterman (King of Comedy)
1956 Bjorn Borg Sodertlage Sweden, tennis champ (Wimbeldon 1976-79)
1956 Marilyn Jones Pitts Pa, actress (Carey-King's Crossing)
1959 Amanda Pays actress (Max Headroom, Off Limits)
1960 Gary Graham actor (Money on the Side)
1961 Sydney Walsh actress (Mo-Hooperman)
1961 Terri Nunn Calif, singer (Berlin-You Take my Breathe Away)
1964 Dee C Lee [Diane Sealey], rocker (Style Council-You're Best Thing)
1964 Sherry J Traylor Mexico Missouri, Miss Missouri-America (1991)
1965 David Whyte rocker (Brother Beyond-Can You Keep a Secret)
1967 Max Casella actor (Vinnie-Doogie Howser)
1969 Douglas Lee Mitchell Miles Mi, heavy metal artist (Southgang)
1975 Damon Pampolina rocker (Party-Rodeo, That's Why)
1975 Staci Keanan [Anastasia Love Sagorsky], actress (Nicole-My 2 Dads)
1976 Lukas Hass actor (Lady in White)

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Deaths which occurred on June 06:
1862 Gen Turner Ashby is killed near Harrisonburg, VA
1956 Margaret Wycherly actress (Claudia), dies at 75
1961 Dr Carl Gustav Jung Swiss psychatrist, dies at 85
1962 Guinn Williams actor (Big Boy-Circus Boy), dies at 63
1965 Lester Matthews (Sir Dennis-Adv of Fu Manchu), dies at 64
1966 Claudette Orbison wife of singer Roy, dies in a motorcyle crash
1967 Edward G Givens Jr astronaut, dies in an auto accident at 37
1968 Robert F Kennedy (Sen-D-NY), assassinated in LA by Sirhan Sirhan
1975 Larry Blyden actor (Joe & Mabel, What's My Line), dies at 49
1976 J Paul Getty oil magnate dies at 83 in London
1988 Ella Raines actress, dies of throat cancer at 67
1991 Larry Kert actor (Tony-West Side Story), dies from AIDS
1991 Stan Getz jazz saxophonist (Girl from Impanima), dies at 64
1991 Sylvia Porter economist/author, dies at 77

---

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1964 KLUSMANN CHARLES F. SAN DIEGO CA.
[08/31/64 ESCAPED, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1967 SON HA VAN VIETNAM
[COMMANDO RELEASED 02/03/89, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1968 BURGARD PAUL E. PORTLAND OR.
[06/68 REMAINS RECOVERED]
1968 HARPER RALPH LEWIS INDIANAPOLIS IN.
1968 LA PLANT KURT ELTON LENEXA KS.
1968 PALACIOS LUIS FERNANDO LOS ANGELES CA.
1968 SANCHEZ JOSE R. NEW YORK NY.
1972 FOWLER JAMES A. BISMARK ND.
[PROB DIED IN ACFT]
1972 SEUELL JOHN W. WHEELING MO.
[PROB DIED IN ACFT]


POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

---

On this day...
1523 Gustavus I becomes king of Sweden (Swedish National Day)
1639 Massachusetts grants 500 acres of land to erect a gunpowder mill
1813 US invasion of Canada halted at Stoney Creek (Ont)
1816 10" snowfall in New England, the "year without a summer" (Krakatoa)
1831 2nd national black convention (Phila)
1844 Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) founded in London
1862 Battle of Memphis-the city is surrendered
1882 Cyclone in Arabian Sea (Bombay India) drowns 100,000
1882 Electric iron patented by Henry W. Seely, NYC
1885 The opera "Lakm‚" is produced (Paris)
1889 Great Fire in Seattle destroys 25 downtown blocks
1890 United States Polo Association formed, NYC
1896 George Samuelson leaves NY harbor to row across the Atlantic
1904 National Tuberculosis Association organized, Atlantic City, NJ
1911 Nicaragua signs treaty turning over customs to US (not ratified)
1913 Rabbit Maranville, was thrown out trying to steal home 3 times
1914 1st air flight out of the sight of land (Scotland to Norway)
1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, 1st US victory of WW I
1919 Man O' War wins 1st victory as a 2-year-old at Belmont
1924 S Belyavskij discovers asteroid #1031 Arctica
1925 Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp (Iacocca was 8 months old)
1931 G Neujmin discovers asteroid #1210 Morosovia
1931 Yanks turn triple-play but lose 7-5 to the Indians
1932 US Federal gas tax enacted
1933 1st drive-in theatre opens (Camden NJ)
1933 US Employment Service created
1934 Securities & Exchange Commission established
1934 Yankee Myrl Hoag hits 6 singles in one game
1936 Aviation gasoline 1st produced commercially Paulsboro NJ
1937 Phillies trailing 8-2 to St Louis, forfeit game
1941 1st navy vessel constructed as mine layer Terror launched
1942 1st nylon parachute jump (Hartford Ct-Adeline Gray)
1942 Japanese forces retreat, ending Battle of Midway
1942 Nazis burn village of Lidice Bohemia, as reprisal of killing Heydrich
1944 D-Day: 150,000 Allied Expeditionary Force lands in Normandy, France
1944 Theodore Roosevelt Jr receives congressional medal of honor
1946 Henry Morgan is 1st to take off shirt on TV
1946 The 11 Basketball of America Assn teams meet to schedule 1st season
1953 J Churms discovers asteroid #2025
1955 Bill Haley & Comets, "Rock Around the Clock" hits #1
1960 Roy Orbison releases "Only the Lonely"
1962 Beatles meet their producer George Martin for the 1st time
Beatles record "Besame Mucho" with Peter Best on drums
1965 Yankees Tom Tresh bangs 3 consecutive homers beating White Sox 12-0
1966 Activist James Meredith shot in Mississippi
1966 Claus Von Bulow & Martha (Sunny) Crawford wed
1966 James Meredith wounded by white sniper
1966 NFL & AFL announce their merger
1967 6 day war between Israel & Arab neighbors begin
1971 Air West filght 706 collides with Navy Phantom jet over LA, 50 die
1971 Soyuz 11 takes 3 cosmonauts to Salyut 1 space station
1972 David Bowie releases "Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust"
1972 Explosion at world's largest coal mine kills 427 (Wankie Rhodesia)
1972 Gold hits record $60 an ounce in London
1975 British voters decide to remain in Common Market
1975 Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam established
1976 Celtics beat Suns for NBA championship, 4 games to 2
1977 Doobie Brothers sponser a Golf Classic & Concert for United Way
1977 Joseph L Howze installed as bishop of Roman Catholic diocese (Miss)
1977 Supreme Court tossed out automatic death penalty laws
1978 A Mrkos discovers asteroids #2199 Klet & #3339
1978 Proposition 13 cuts California property taxes 57%
1979 200th running of horse's Derby in England
1979 Willie Horton becomes 43rd player to hit 300 HRs in the majors
1980 Bjorn Borg beats John McEnroe for Wimbeldon title
1982 30,000 Israeli troops invade Lebanon to drive out PLO
1982 Israel invades southern Lebanon, site of Palestinian guerrilla
1984 1,200 die in Sikh "Golden Temple" uprising India
1985 Body of Nazi criminal, Dr Josef Mengele located & exhumed
1985 Chris Evert wins a grand slam title for 13th straight year (French)
1985 Soyuz T-13 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 7 space station
1986 Kathy Ormsby, a 21-year-old member of the NC State track team jumps off a bridge permanently paralyzing herself
1987 NY Yankees play their 13,000th game
1988 George Bush makes campaign promise to support reparations for WW II Japanese-American internees (promise broken, May 1989)
1989 Mets turn their 1st triple play in 7 years but lose to Cubs 8-4
1991 Dana Plato receives 6 yr suspended sentence for robbing a video store
1992 2nd WLAF World Bowl
2012 Transit of Venus (between Earth & Sun) occurs

---

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Malaysia : King's Birthday
New Zealand : Queen's Birthday - - - - - ( Monday )
South Korea : Memorial Day
Sweden : Constitution Day/Flag Day/National Day (1523, 1809)
Massachusetts : Teachers' Day - - - - - ( Sunday )
Ireland : Bank Day - - - - - ( Monday )
Bahamas : Labour Day - - - - - ( Friday )
Western Australia : Foundation Day (1838) - - - - - ( Monday )

---

Religious Observances
RC : Mem of St Norbert, abp of Magdeburg, confessor (opt)
RC : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

---

Religious History
1622 Gregory XV published the bull 'Inscrutabili Divinae,' which reminded the Church of its mission to the newly discovered native populations in the recently discovered Americas.
1799 Birth of Alexis F. Lvov, Russian church musician who composed the tune to the hymn, 'God, the Almighty One! Wisely Ordaining.'
1882 Blind Scottish Presbyterian clergyman George Matheson penned the words to the hymn, 'O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.'
1907 Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, a graduate school for biblical and rabbinical studies, was chartered in Philadelphia.
1977 Joseph Lason was installed as Bishop of Biloxi, Mississippi, becoming the first African- American Roman Catholic bishop consecrated since the 19th century.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

---

Thought for the day :
"A husband is the medicine that cures all the ills of girlhood."

[snippy_about_it]

.......FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!

Good Morning Everyone!


If you would like added or removed from our ping list let me know.

[SAMWolf]

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the history of the Nevada. Great pictures of her.

She went down like a warship with a proud service record should.

[manna]

Present!

[SAMWolf]

1967 6 day war between Israel & Arab neighbors begin

I remember the Six Day War. I was in High school and we were cheering the Israeli's on. It amazed those of us who knew something about military history.

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning Snippy

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning SAM, Snippy, residents of the FOXHOLE!

[snippy_about_it]

Good Morning SAM.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning feather. Where's your elephant off to today?

[Darksheare]

ALLRight!
C:_ Wear fedora.
Fedora, taken. Fedora, worn.
C:_ Play Victrola.
The victrola is now playing a tune that you swear you've heard before but can't quite put your finger on.
The Penguin starts dancing about the room, stops at a painting on the wall, and pushes a button.
The painting, and part of the wall paneling, swings out away from the wall revealing a door.
There are exits to your east and south now.
C:_

History bump.

[E.G.C.]

Howdy, Snippy.

Got about an inch of rain last night. A littlew bit of lightning and thunder and that's about it.

[snippy_about_it]

Not too bad. :)

The sun is finally out here! We are going to get above 70 degrees finally by Sunday. Maybe dry up a bit. Yeah!