D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (53 page)

A shell exploded within ten meters of Hamlett and blew his rifle from his hands while sending his helmet flying off his head. Crawling on his elbows and knees, he retrieved his rifle and helmet, then waited to regain his strength "and to see if my legs would support my weight." They did. By short leaps and advances, using obstacles for protection, he worked his way toward the shingle. While he was resting behind an obstacle, "Private Gillingham, a young soldier, fell beside me, white with fear. He seemed to be begging for help with his eyes.

* "On our recent 1987 annual reunion," Hamlett said, "O. T. told me his back still hurt because of mv heavy boot."

"I said, 'Gillingham, let's stay separated, 'cause the Germans will fire at two quicker than they will at one.' He remained silent as I jumped and ran forward again."

A shell burst between them. "It took Gillingham's chin off, including the bone, except for a small piece of flesh. He tried to hold his chin in place as he ran toward the shingle. He made it and Bill Hawkes and I gave him his morphine shot. We stayed with him for approximately thirty minutes until he died. The entire time he remained conscious and aware that he was dying."

From the beach, to the GIs, that shingle looked like the most desirable place in the world to be at that moment. But when they reached it, they found concertina wire covering it, no way to get across without blowing the wire, nothing on the other side but more death and misery. And although they were now protected from machine-gun and rifle fire coming down from the German trenches on the bluff, they were exposed to mortar fire. The few who made it had no organization, little or no leadership (Lieutenant Wise of F Company, one of the few officers to make it to the wall, was trying to force a gap in the concertina when he was hit by a bullet in the forehead and killed), only a handful of weapons. They could but huddle and hope for follow-up waves to bring in bangalore torpedoes to blow the wire.

E Company, 116th, landed farthest from its target. Scheduled to come in at Easy Green, it actually landed on the boundary between Easy Red and Fox Green, a kilometer off and intermixed with men from the 16th Regiment, 1st Division. Pvt. Harry Parley was a flamethrower, so far as he is aware "the only flamethrower to come off the beach unscathed."* He landed with a pistol, a holster, a shovel, a Mae West, a raincoat, a canteen, a block of dynamite, and his eighty-pound flamethrower.

"As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down," Parley recalled, "I became a visitor to hell." Boats on either side were getting hit by artillery. Some were burning, others sinking. "I shut everything out and concentrated on following the men in front of me down the ramp and into the water."

He immediately sank. "I was unable to come up. I knew I was drowning and made a futile attempt to unbuckle the flamethrower harness." A buddy grabbed his flamethrower and

Pvt. Charles Neighbor, of E Company, was an assistant flamethrower who made it ashore and took over when his No. 1 became a casualty.

pulled Parley forward, to where he could stand. "Then slowly, half-drowned, coughing water, and dragging my feet, I began walking toward the chaos ahead."

He had 200 meters to go to the beach. He made it, exhausted. Machine-gun fire was hitting the beach. As it hit the sand "it made a 'sip sip' sound like someone sucking on their teeth. To this day I don't know why I didn't dump the flamethrower and run like hell for shelter. But I didn't." He was behind the other members of the team. "Months later, trying to analyze why I was able to safely walk across the beach while others running ahead were hit, I found a simple answer. The Germans were directing their fire down onto the beach so that the line of advancing attackers would run into it and, since I was behind, I was ignored. In short, the burden on my back may well have saved my life."

When Parley reached the shingle, he found chaos. "Men were trying to dig or scrape trenches or foxholes for protection from the mortars. Others were carrying or helping the wounded to shelter. We had to crouch or crawl on all fours when moving about. To communicate, we had to shout above the din of the shelling from both sides as well as the explosions on the beach. Most of us were in no condition to carry on. We were just trying to stay alive.

"The enormity of our situation came as I realized that we had landed in the wrong sector and that many of the people around me were from other units and strangers to me. What's more, the terrain before us was not what I had been trained to encounter. I remember removing my flamethrower and trying to dig a trench while lying on my stomach. Failing that, I searched and found a discarded BAR. But we could see nothing above us to return the fire. We were the targets."

Parley lay behind the shingle, "scared, worried, and often praying. Once or twice I was able to control my fear enough to race across the sand to drag a helpless GI from drowning in the incoming tide. That was the extent of my bravery that morning."
¹⁹
Not true, as will be seen.

Capt. Lawrence Madill of E Company was urging his men forward. "One of the episodes I remember the most was debarking from the landing craft and trying to take shelter from the enemv fire behind one of their obstacles," recalled Walter A. Smith. "Captain Madill came up behind me and others, ordering all that could move to get off the beach. I looked up at him and his left arm appeared to be almost blown off."

Madill made it to the seawall, where he discovered that one

of his company mortars had also made it but had no ammunition. He ran back to the beach to pick up some rounds. As he was returning, he was hit by machine-gun fire. Before he died, Madill gasped, "Senior noncom, take the men off the beach."
²⁰

As what was left of A, F, G, and E companies of the 116th huddled behind obstacles or the shingle, the following waves began to come in: B and H companies at 0700, D at 0710, C, K, I, and M at 0720. Not one came in on target. The coxswains were trying to dodge obstacles and incoming shells, while the smoke drifted in and out and obscured the landmarks and what few marker flags there were on the beach.

On the command boat for B Company, the CO, Capt. Et-tore Zappacosta, heard the British coxswain cry out, "We can't go in there. We can't see the landmarks. We must pull off."

Zappacosta pulled his Colt .45 and ordered, "By God, you'll take this boat straight in."

The coxswain did. When the ramp dropped, Zappacosta was first off. He was immediately hit. Medic Thomas Kenser saw him bleeding from hip and shoulder. Kenser, still on the ramp, shouted, "Try to make it in! I'm coming." But the captain was already dead. Before Kenser could jump off the ramp he was shot dead. Every man in the boat save one (Pvt. Robert Sales) was either killed or wounded before reaching the beach.
²¹

Nineteen-year-old Pvt. Harold Baumgarten of B Company got a bullet through the top of his helmet while jumping from the ramp, then another hit the receiver of his M-l as he carried it at port arms. He waded through the waist-deep water as his buddies fell alongside him.

"I saw Pvt. Robert Ditmar of Fairfield, Connecticut, hold his chest and heard him yell, 'I'm hit, I'm hit!' I hit the ground and watched him as he continued to go forward about ten more yards. He tripped over an obstacle and, as he fell, his body made a complete turn and he lay sprawled on the damp sand with his head facing the Germans, his face looking skyward. He was yelling, 'Mother, Mom.'

"Sgt. Clarence 'Pilgrim' Robertson had a gaping wound in the upper right corner of his forehead. He was walking crazily in the water. Then I saw him get down on his knees and start praying with his rosary beads. At this moment, the Germans cut him in half with their deadly crossfire."

Baumgarten had drawn a Star of David on the back of his

field jacket, with "The Bronx, New York" written on it—that would let Hitler know who he was. He was behind an obstacle. He saw the reflection from the helmet of one of the German riflemen on the bluff "and took aim and later on I found out I got a bull's eye on him." That was the only shot he fired because his damaged rifle broke in two when he pulled the trigger.

Shells were bursting about him. "I raised my head to curse the Germans when an 88 shell exploded about twenty yards in front of me, hitting me in my left cheek. It felt like being hit with a baseball bat only the results were much worse. My upper jaw was shattered, the left cheek blown open. My upper lip was cut in half. The roof of my mouth was cut up and teeth and gums were laying all over my mouth. Blood poured freely from the gaping wound."

The tide was coming in. Baumgarten washed his face with the cold, dirty Channel water and managed not to pass out. The water was rising about an inch a minute (between 0630 and 0800 the tide rose eight feet) so he had to get moving or drown. He took another hit, from a bullet, in the leg. He moved forward in a dead man's float with each wave of the incoming tide. He finally reached the seawall where a medic dressed his wounds. Mortars were coming in, "and I grabbed the medic by the shirt to pull him down. He hit my hand away and said, 'You're injured now. When I get hurt you can take care of me.' "*

Sgt. Benjamin McKinney was a combat engineer attached to C Company. When his ramp dropped, "I was so seasick I didn't care if a bullet hit me between the eyes and got me out of my misery." As he jumped off the ramp, "rifle and machine-gun fire hit it like rain falling." Ahead, "it looked as if all the first wave were dead on the beach." He got to the shingle. He and Sergeant Storms saw a pillbox holding a machine gun and a rifleman about thirty meters to the right, spraying the beach with their weapons. Storms and McKinney crawled toward the position. McKinney threw hand grenades as Storms put rifle fire into it. Two Germans jumped out; Storms killed them. The 116th was starting to fight back.

* Baumgarten was wounded five times that day, the last time by a bullet in his right knee as he was being carried on a stretcher to the beach for evacuation. He went on to medical school and became a practicing physician. He concluded his oral history, "Happily, in recent years when I've been back to Normandy, especially on Sept. 17, 1988, when we dedicated a monument to the 29th Division in Vierville, I noted that the French people really appreciated us freeing them from the Germans, so it made it all worthwhile."

At 0730 the main command group of the 116th began to come in, including the regimental commander, Col. Charles Can-ham, and the assistant commander of the 29th Division, Brig. Gen. Norman Cota. They were in an LCVP with an assault team from Company K. The boat got hung up on a beach obstacle to which a Teller mine was attached. Although the boat rose and fell in the swells, by some miracle the mine did not go off, but the LCVP was under heavy machine-gun, mortar, and light-cannon fire. Three men, including Maj. John Sours, the regimental S-4, were instantly killed as the ramp went down.

Pvt. Felix Branham was in that boat. "Colonel Canham had a BAR and a .45 and he was leading us in," Branham said. "There he was firing and he got his BAR shot out of his hand and he reached and he used his .45. He was the bravest guy."
²³

The scene the commanders saw as they struggled their way to the beach was described by Cota's aide-de-camp, Lt. J. T. Shea, in a letter he wrote ten days later: "Although the leading elements of the assault had been on the beach for approximately an hour, none had progressed farther than the seawall at the inland border of the beach. [They] were clustered under the wall, pinned down by machine-gun fire, and the enemy was beginning to bring effective mortar fire to bear on those hidden behind the wall." The beach was jammed with the dead, the dying, the wounded, and the disorganized.

When Cota got to the wall, he made an immediate and critical command decision. He saw at once that the plan to go up the draws was obsolete. It simply could not be done. Nor could the men stay where they were. They had to get over the shingle, get through the heavily mined swamp, and climb the bluff to drive the Germans from their trenches and take the draws from the inland side.

Lieutenant Shea described Cota's actions: "Exposing himself to enemy fire, General Cota went over the seawall giving encouragement, directions, and orders to those about him, personally supervised the placing of a BAR, and brought fire to bear on some of the enemy positions on the bluff that faced them. Finding a belt of barbed wire inside the seawall, General Cota personally supervised placing a bangalore torpedo for blowing the wire and was one of the first three men to go through the wire."

Six mortar shells fell into the immediate area. Thev killed

three men and wounded two others, but Cota was unharmed. "At the head of a mixed column of troops he threaded his way to the foot of the high ground beyond the beach and started the troops up the high ground where they could bring effective fire to bear on the enemy positions." Behind him, engineers with mine detectors began marking a path through the minefield, using white tape.
²⁴

Some of the boats in the follow-up waves got in relatively unscathed. It was a question of luck and numbers. The luck was avoiding mined obstacles, now well underwater. The numbers of boats coming in meant that the Germans could no longer concentrate their fire; they had too many targets. By 0730 what was supposed to have happened with the first wave was beginning to take place—the assault teams were coming forward on every sector of the beach (not always or even usually the right one).

Others had bad luck. LCI 92, approaching Dog White about 0740, was hit in the stern by an 88 as it made its first attempt to get through the obstacles. Sgt. Debs Peters of the 121st ECB was on the craft. He recalled, "We lost headway and turned sideways in the waves and were parallel to the beach for a few seconds. We were hit directly midship and blew up. Those of us on deck were caught on fire with flaming fuel oil and we just rolled overboard. I fell into the water and went down like a rock." He inflated his Mae West and popped to the surface.