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The FReeper Foxhole Remembers D-Day On Omaha Beach (6/6/1944) - June 6th, 2003
The Atlantic Monthly ^
| November 1960
| S.L.A. Marshall
Posted on 06/06/2003 5:21:10 AM PDT by SAMWolf
![](http://d21c.com/coteblanche/trpspryr.gif)
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
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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.
![](http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/reference/Normandy/CG-2343.jpg) 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!"
![](http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/normandy/media/omaha/omaha33_web.jpg) 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.
![](http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/reference/Normandy/Sc320901t.jpg) 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.
![](http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/reference/Normandy/Sc190366t.jpg) 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.
![](http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/reference/Normandy/Omaha.jpg) 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.
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TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: 116thinfantry; 29thdivision; dday; france; freeperfoxhole; ingrates; ltwaltertaylor; michaeldobbs; normandy; omahabeach; veterans
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Happy Anniversary SAMWolf
Foxhole Readers, may I have your attention please!
I apologize for interupting another wonderful thread by SAM but he would never mention it, so I will!
Today is The FReeper Foxhole's 6th month anniversary.
SAMWolf has worked tirelessly on 99.99% of all the threads over the last six months, day in and day out.
I wanted to take a moment to thank him for all his hard work and dedication in bringing the Foxhole Readers these great threads!
And we can't forget the wonderful pictures he brings to the threads each day!
Thank you SAM, I know how much work it is and I'm impressed and amazed.
I am so happy you've recently invited me to play a small part in the Foxhole. I hope I am able to give you a small break even though I know you love your work here and never complain.
Now that I've completely embarrassed you, I will go hide in the corner. :)
Here's to six more months and many,many years at least. lol.
SAM, by my count, you've put together 175 threads over the past six months! Wow!
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The FReeper Foxhole Wishes Everyone A Merry Christmas - Dec. 25th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers the Sinking of the SS Leopoldville - Dec. 24th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers the Defense of Wake Island - Dec. 23rd, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Gen. Anthony McAuliffe at Bastonge - Dec. 22nd, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Navajo CodeTalkers - Dec 21st, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Profiles The American Ex-Prisoner of War Organization - Dec. 20th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Operation Linebacker II - DEC 19th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Typhoon Cobra - Disaster at Sea - Dec. 18 th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole - One Vietnam Vets Battle with the VA - Dec.17th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Battle of The Bulge - Dec. 16th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers THE COAST GUARD AT WAR - Dec.15th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole - Help Save A Veterans Memorial - Dec.14th,2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN - Dec. 13th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Spotlights The DAV - Dec.12th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers "Little Friends" - USAAF Fighter Escorts - Dec. 11th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Siege of Khe Sanh - Dec. 10th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole - Gulf War Syndrome: Fact vs. Fiction - Dec 9th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole - Remembers The Inchon Landing - Dec. 8th, 2002
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Pearl Harbor - Dec. 7, 2002
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf
I completely agree snippy. SAM thanks for your superhuman efforts!
22
posted on
06/06/2003 6:18:03 AM PDT
by
CholeraJoe
(White Devils for Sharpton. We're bad. We're Nationwide)
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf; aomagrat
That list reads like SamWolf's Greatest Hits!
Sam, great work, my friend. Thank you for sharing your research and knowledge with us - You are a scholar and gentleman.
Aomagrat thanks for your hard work, too. I always enjoy learning a little more about the Navy.
< virtual appluase > Hurrah!
To: stainlessbanner; SAMWolf
Well said. Thanks SAM.
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf
Hats off to SAMWolf. For the life of me, I have never understood how he find the time to carry out this marvelous task on a daily basis.
SAMWolf -- FreeRepublic's Designated Military Historian
"Long May You Run . . ."
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf
Wow! Congratulations SAMWolf and many thanks.
(P.S. snippy_about_it: Thanks to you, too)
26
posted on
06/06/2003 6:28:02 AM PDT
by
manna
To: SAMWolf; snippy_about_it; *all
Great Work Sam!
Thank you for your tireless work in the FOXHOLE.
And for allowing me to post my poetry here.
27
posted on
06/06/2003 6:34:14 AM PDT
by
Soaring Feather
(Thank you snippy for all you do too.)
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf
WOW.
I wasn't aware that it's been six full months, nor was I aware of ALL THOSE THREADS.
SAM, when are you going on vacation?
28
posted on
06/06/2003 6:38:13 AM PDT
by
Darksheare
(Nox aeternus en pax.)
To: bentfeather
Good Morning Feather.
29
posted on
06/06/2003 6:45:19 AM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Do ghost trains stop at manife-stations?)
To: snippy_about_it
Congradulations to the Freeper Foxhole on six years of service to the Free Republic.
30
posted on
06/06/2003 6:51:25 AM PDT
by
E.G.C.
To: E.G.C.
On no, only six months. lol. But six months EVERY day is a feat indeed by our SAMWolf. :)
To: snippy_about_it; AntiJen; All
![](http://web.icq.com/images/0,,474,00.gif)
Awwww. Thank you, Snippy.
Antijen was a big help by doing all the initial work to get the Foxhole started and managed the pinglist for most of these last six months.
You've been doing the threads on Monday, handling the pinglist and are about to take on another day.
I had a lot of help from other Freepers who suggested topics, gave me links, and who contribute to the thread each day.
Now I'll go hide in a corner for the rest of the day and die of embarrassment.
32
posted on
06/06/2003 7:03:17 AM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Do ghost trains stop at manife-stations?)
To: SAMWolf
Now isn't it just like you not to take credit when credit is due. You're too modest SAMWolf. LOL.
Only a few more hours til MIL arrives, don't spend it in the corner! :)
To: snippy_about_it
I'm gonna get you for this. ;-)
34
posted on
06/06/2003 7:16:36 AM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Do ghost trains stop at manife-stations?)
To: SAMWolf
ruh-roh. lol.
To: SAMWolf; snippy_about_it; AntiJen
Come out from that corner you're hiding in, Sam. Y'all have done a great job these past six months. Thank You!
To: SAMWolf
An excerpt from an interview with Stephen Ambrose
(snip)
The true story is, junior officers and noncoms who had been college students two years before and had ROTC commissions pinned down at that sea wall and couldn't retreat, couldn't go back -- it was just chaos back behind them -- couldn't, as the plan called for, go up the draws. They were getting butchered where they were all the sea wall because the Germans had it all zeroed in with their mortars that were coming down on top of them. And, "Over here, Captain," "Over here, Lieutenant, over here." A sergeant looked at this situation and said, "The hell with this. If I'm going to get killed, I'm going to take some Germans with me." And he would call out, "Follow me," and up he would start. Hitler didn't believe this was ever possible. Hitler was certain that the soft, effeminate children of democracy could never become soldiers. Hitler was certain that the Nazi youth would always outfight the Boy Scouts, and Hitler was wrong.
The Boy Scouts took them on D-Day. Joe Dawson led Company G. He started off with 200 men. He got to the top of the bluff with 20 men, but he got to the top. He was the first one to get there. He's going to be introducing President Clinton tomorrow at Omaha Beach. John Spaulding was another. He was a lieutenant. Many of them are nameless. I don't know their names. I've talked to men who've said, "I saw this lieutenant and he tossed a grenade into the embrasure of that fortification, and out came four Germans with their hands up. I thought to myself, hell, if he can do that, I can do that." "What was his name?" I will ask. "Geez, I don't know. I never found out his name. I never saw him before, and I never saw him again, but he was a great man. He got me up that bluff."
For the entire interview
http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1202
37
posted on
06/06/2003 7:33:31 AM PDT
by
Valin
(Age and deceit beat youth and skill)
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf
First, excellent thread as usual.
Congratulations on the six month anniversary of the foxhole. I'm sorry had to miss the very first foxhole thread though, it was the same day of the Louisiana Senate runoff.
One final thing, snippy, I'm sure you'll do just fine the next two weeks while SAM is out.
38
posted on
06/06/2003 7:41:59 AM PDT
by
Sparta
(Tagline removed by moderator)
To: Sparta
lol. I think SAM is still in the corner. ;)
Thank you for your vote of confidence.
SAM will still be doing all the work as usual, I'm just going to try and put it together and post it in the correct order! lol.
You do a fine job yourself on your Western Civlization Military History threads and I know you know what it must take to do this day in and day out.
To: manna
:)
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