Omaha Beach and the Beast of Omaha
Compiled by Cliff LeGrange from on line internet research
I have always been intrigued by Military History.
The Civil War, ie., The Battle of Gettysburg, and WW II the story of D-Day.
In the movie, ‘The Good, Bad and Ugly’, with Clint Eastwood that battle scene of Union and Rebel forces crossing the bridge always struck me… pure sucide.
I saw the movies “The Longest Day”and “Saving Private Ryan” about D-day. The “Saving Private Ryan” movie scared the hell out of me. What would I have done, when bullets start pinging off the ramp of the landing craft? ‘Look, Lieutenant don’t drop that damn ramp, until that pinging stops, that’s real bullets”.
I have always been an American Patriot, and supported our military, I served when called. But would I have measured up? The movie “Saving Private Ryan” really piqued my interest about what really happened on Omaha Beach that day.
What does the average person really know about the details of the day? I suspect most folks do not have a clue.
Preface to D – Day June 6 1944
The Allied leaders in WW II, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill knew that once the United States entered the war that a massive frontal invasion of mainland Europe would be critical to defeat the Germans.
A mainland Europe invasion would relieve some pressure from the Soviet army fighting the Nazis in the east and a two-front war for Germans would ensure a quicker victory for the allies.
Too weaken the Germans, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Northern Africa first and attack Europe’s “soft underbelly” through Italy and soften up the Axis (Germany and Italy) powers, before a frontal northern coastal invasion.
Special Note: My dad was the invasion of Sicily, Italy and southern France
D _ Day Planning -
The Allied forces would need an element of surprise, to improve chances of a successful invasion. Any thinking person would know the invasion was coming somewhere along the French coastline. The only elements of surprise left would be the timing and exact location. The Allies developed a massive deception campaign to trick the Nazis into thinking that the invasion would occur logically at Pas-de-Calais, the closest French coastline to England.
The allies would choose the sandy beaches of Normandy on northern French coastline.
Why Normandy?
It was one of the finest natural ports in France. 20 miles west of the Normandy beaches. If the Allies could take Cherbourg, a deep-water port, then American supplies and troops would have a direct pipeline to the European continent.
The Americans had been told by the French Resistance that the Normandy sector was seriously undermanned. According to the French Resistance, Normandy was being defended half by Germans and half by Polish prisoners forced to fight for the Germans at gunpoint. How hard would it be to defeat defenders who hated the Germans?
D-Day was carried out along five sections of beachfront along the Normandy coast code named, from West to East: “Utah,” “Omaha,” “Gold,” “Juno” and “Sword.”
Operation Overlord
The D day invasion, officially called "Operation Overlord," combined the forces of 156,115 U.S., British and Canadian troops, 6,939 ships and landing vessels, and 2,395 aircraft and 867 gliders that delivered airborne troops.
In the Normandy area the German defense strategy was to hold / stop any invasion on the beaches. If the Allies did manage a foothold on the beaches the Germans wanted to prevent them from advancing inlands with tanks and infantry through natural gaps in hills around Normandy. The strategy of the Germans revolved around defending and blocking those gaps.
On the other hand, the Americans wanted to capture and clear, as soon as possible the defenses covering these gaps mainly to prevent counter attack by the German tanks through these gaps and decimating vulnerable soldiers on the beach. Then to be able move their tanks inland. Through the gaps.There were four important gaps (aka 'draws') between the hills, that each side needed to successfully implement their victory strategy.
Each gap was named for the nearest town behind it. There was Colleville (E-3), Les Moulins (D-3), Vierville (D-1), and St Laurent (Ruquet Valley) (E-1).
The Germans had more land to cover than They had men. Consequently they did not spread out their forces evenly, but rather concentrated them in strongholds named "WiderstandsNester".
These "Resistance Nests" were designed mainly to protect the gaps that would allow Allied tanks inland. Studying the picture above, you will see red areas marked with WN62, WN71, etc. Those "WN"s were the German strong points.
The Horrors of Omaha Beach - The toughest fighting was on Omaha Beach.
At Omaha Beach, the fortifications behind the beach obstacles consisted of 15 “resistance nests” or Widerstandsnestern (WN), numbered 60 through 74… WN-60 in the east to WN-74 in the west.
Of the five landing zones, Omaha Beach was the hardest and quickly devolved into utter chaos. Tragically, Allied intelligence had miscalculated the level of German coastal defenses there.
These "WiderstandsNester" consisted of 8 concrete bunkers containing 75 mm or greater artillery, 35 pillboxes, 18 anti-tank guns, six mortar pits, 35 Nebelwerfer (multi-barrel rocket launchers), 85 machine gun nests, 6 tank turrets and supporting infantry.
Germany’s 352nd Infantry Division, controlled the high ground with the help of an extensive system of trenches, were well-positioned to blanket the beach with bullets and could move troops and ammunition out of site upon an invasion.
Bombardments to destroy fortifications were totally ineffective in wiping out several German positions located above Omaha Beach. Cloudy skies made it hard for them to hit their targets.
The first wave of troops reached the beach at about 6:30 A.M. Troops coming ashore were decimated by German fire due to an absence of cover.
Most of the first wave of soldiers who landed on Omaha beach were shot dead or drowned before they could even fire a shot.
Survivor Sergeant Ray Lambert
“When we got within a thousand yards of the beach, you could hear the machine-gun bullets hitting off the front ramp of the boat,” recalled Lambert, a medic who was in the first wave to hit Omaha Beach.
Survivor Sergeant John Trippon
Trippon had to shed his ammunition, grenades, and weapons in order to swim to shore. “All the time the German machine-gunner was mowing people down. Why the hell I didn’t die there I can’t say. I guess he was too busy killing other guys.German gunners successfully rained deadly crossfire into the ranks of the invading troops. Thousands of injured and dead troops littered the beach and floated in the water. Destroyed landing crafts and tanks were strewn about the beach and water’s edge, and by about 8:30 a.m. troop landings ceased.
“It is reported that there were so many bodies lying in the water they stopped bringing any more troops ashore because it was freaking people out to see all these guys dead.
Later, bulldozers were used to push the bodies into a trench so they couldn’t be seen.”
“Epic Human tragedy.”
In short, Omaha turned out to be an “epic human tragedy.”While there are no exact figures for the number of casualties suffered at Omaha Beach. Omaha Beach became a slaughter of the worst magnitude. Over 2,000 Americans died at Omaha Beach on D-Day out of 7,800 who participated in the initial assault. That rounds out to a 26%. casuality rate” — far more than at any other beach.
The movie, Saving Private Ryan‘s opening sequence (the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach) while taking some liberties with actual accounts is overwhelming, but according historians and eye witnesses is said to be closest portrayal of the scene.
Allies Plan of attack
Omaha was divided into ten sectors, codenamed (from west to east): Charlie, Dog Green, Dog White, Dog Red, Easy Green, Easy White, Easy Red, Fox Green, Fox White, and Fox Red.
The 116th RCT of the 29th Infantry Division was to land two battalions in the western four beaches, . The landings were scheduled to start at 06:30, "H-Hour". Followed 30 minutes later by a third battalion.
WN62
Strong point WN62 was important for several reasons. WN62 guarded an important GAP that led to a village known as Colleville. Unlike the other three gaps which were easily defended valleys, this particular gap was very wide and not steep at all. Even if the road was destroyed, there were large fields that would allow tanks far much too much freedom for German Commander Erwin Rommel's comfort. This area was especially vulnerable.
Accordingly, Rommel made sure that WN62 was made to be especially powerful.
Unfortunately, the Americans agreed with Rommel. They saw that "Exit E3" was unusually inviting. As a result, they made this area a focal point of their attack and walked straight into a trap.
WN62 gained notoriety on D-Day for killing more Americans than any other single spot in the entire war! 1,000 men died the largest strongpoint defending Omaha Beach.
WN-62 was 332 meters long by 324 meters wide and between 12 and 50 meters above the beach, depending on the distance from the shore, with a good overview of the beach area.
On D-Day (June 6, 1944) WN-62 was manned by 27 members of the 716th Infantry Division and 13 members of the 352nd Division, whose task was to direct fire of the 10.5 cm artillery batteries located 5 kilometres inland at Houtteville.[7]
Defenses included two type H669 concrete casemates, one empty and the other with a 75mm artillery piece, a 50mm anti-tank gun, two 50mm mortars, a twin-barrelled MG34 7.92mm machine gun on an anti-aircraft mount and two prewar Polish machine guns. Another 50 mm anti-tank gun covered the rear, and the perimeter was ringed by barbed wire and anti-personnel mines.[8]
The twin-barrelled MG34 7.92mm machine gun on an anti-aircraft mount (49°21′36″N 0°50′50″W) was 170 meters from the sea wall and around 450 meters from the landing area of the first wave of Higgins Boats. The strongpoint had large concrete walls protruding to the seaward side at the front to protect them from an attack directly from the front.
In addition, there were anti-tank ditches and mine fields around the site. The site had many zig zag trenches which enabled the defenders to move from one position to another with cover from incoming fire. This was a powerful position indeed.
As you can see from the picture above. WN62 had a completely unobstructed view of the beach. The hill was not very steep.
The first wave from the U.S. V Corps that landed on Omaha carried troops from the 1st Infantry Division (two battalions of the 16th Regiment) and the 29th Infantry Division (two battalions of the 116th Regiment - Virginia National Guard) along with about 400 Rangers.
Four tank companies were also part of the first wave - they were to come ashore utilizing duplex drive systems that allowed them to move at about 3–4 mph in calm seas.
The waters off Omaha were anything but calm and most of the tanks were capsized - that created scores of casualties with hardly any tanks reaching Omaha Beach.
Basically, the 4 lead battalions of the Corps took 40% casualties attempting to get ashore.
Company A of the 116th suffered 60–70% casualties within the first 15 minutes at Dog Green beach - the company was out of action for the remainder of the day.
Historical account of the First Wave at Omaha Beach
Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of stories often skip over the horror of war.
Many recollections about Omaha 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
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 shoreline. 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 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.
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 into 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. T
he 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.
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….
WN-62 & Heinrich Severloh, the Infamous 'Beast of Omaha'.
Severloh manned a machine gun in a submerged foxhole at WN62. He fired on the waves of approaching American GIs with his machine gun and two Karabiner 98k rifles. He relied on his comrades using trenches to maintain a continuous flow of ammunition to him. While they re-armed his machine gun, he would pick off more targets with the rifles. Not a moment was wasted.
Starting at 6 am, by 3 pm, Severloh had fired approximately 12,000 rounds with the machine gun and 400 rounds with the two rifles. Severloh was credited with killing close to 1,000 men. Amazingly, Severloh claimed he killed even more than that!
German machine gun crews and riflemen probably did not have the luxury of working over a landing craft as thoroughly as they might have because there were other landing craft arriving on the left and right.
Area circled in red thought to be area occupied by Corporal Heinrich Severloh of the 352nd Inf Division defending against the U.S. 16th Inf Regiment at Omaha Beach. He was perfectly positioned at WN62 at the east end of 'Easy Red' sector, also overlooking Fox Green.
Consequently, wounded GI’s had a chance to survive if they could just keep from attracting fire from the German defenders - and many soldiers did this - playing “possum” on the edge of the surf.
Severloh's story
It is a remarkable story, however Severloh's story is not widely regarded as totally factual, though a recently released aerial image of the landing appears to support his story.
This image approximates Severloh's position in red.
A staggering amount of dead can be seen all over the image but, if you examine closely around WN-62, it seems that most of the carnage happened there.
The water seems to be gushing with blood around tide-drawn landing craft and the ground is littered with lying bodies. First-hand accounts also describe the worst loss as happening right between WN-61 and WN-62- right where all the bloody water is.
A staggering amount of dead can be seen all over the image but, if you examine closely around WN-62, it seems that most of the carnage happened there. The water seems to be gushing with blood around tide-drawn landing craft and the ground is littered with lying bodies.
First-hand accounts also describe the worst loss as happening right between WN-61 and WN-62- right where all the bloody water is.
Reflections of the Military Combat veterans / experts:
It is the impression of many, that the men who planned this attack failed miserably. The utter cluelessness of the planners was impossible to overlook. "the draws, the natural exits off the beaches, were the main targets in the initial assault plan.
However, the strongly concentrated defenses around these draws meant that the troops landing near them quickly wound up in no shape to carry on a further assault.
Only in the areas between the draws, at the bluffs, were units able to land in greater strength. Defenses were always weaker away from the draws. Hindsight is 20-20 and all the other clichés.
There cannot be any question of the bravery of the American soldiers that day. The Greatest Generation!
Which begs the question, Would we measure up to the standards of the men of D-Day?
Remember their sacrifice...Freedom ain't free.
aim straight... Chachie
updated 6-6 2021
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/
http://www.ssqq.com/travel/oslo2010dday1a.htm
