The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II (18 page)

Dawson expected to find a path up the bluff cleared out by F Company, but “as I landed I found nothing but men and bodies lying on the shore.” He got to the shingle where survivors from other boats of G Company joined him. Among them was Sgt. Joe Pilck. He recalled, “We couldn’t move forward because they had a double apron of barbed wire in front of us, and to our right it was a swampy area we couldn’t cross and to the left they had minefields laid out so we couldn’t go there.”

“Utter chaos reigned,” Dawson recalled, “because the Germans controlled the field of fire completely.” He realized that “there was nothing I could do on the beach except die.” To get through the barbed wire he had Pvts. Ed Tatara and Henry Peszek put two bangalore torpedoes together, shoved them under the wire, and blew a gap. They started through the minefield and up the bluff, engaging the enemy.

Dawson got to the top. How he got there is a story he tells best himself: “On landing I found total chaos as men and material were literally choking the sandbar just at the water’s edge. A minefield lay in and around a path extending to my right and upward to the crest of the bluff. After blowing a gap in the concertina wire I led my men gingerly over the body of a soldier who had stepped on a mine in seeking to clear the path. I collected my company at the base of the bluff and proceeded on. Midway toward the crest I met Lieutenant Spaulding.  “I proceeded toward the crest, asking Spaulding to cover me. Near the crest the terrain became almost vertical. This afforded complete defilade from the entrenched enemy above. A machinegun nest was busily firing at the beach, and one could hear rifle and mortar fire coming from the crest.  “I tossed two grenades aloft, and when they exploded the machine gun fell silent. I waved my men and Spaulding to proceed as rapidly as possible and I then proceeded to the crest where I saw the enemy moving out toward the E-3 exit and the dead Germans in the trenches.

“To my knowledge no one had penetrated the enemy defenses until that moment.  “As soon as my men reached me we debouched from that point, firing on the retreating enemy and moving toward a . . . wooded area, and this became a battleground extending all the way into town.”

In an analysis of how he became the first American to reach the top of the bluff

in this area, written in 1993, Dawson pointed out: “The Battle of Omaha Beach

was 1st, Deadly enemy fire on an exposed beach where total fire control favored

the defender and we were not givenany direct fire support from the Navy or

tanks. 2nd, the poor German marksmanship is theonly way I could have made it

across the exposed area because I could not engage the enemy nor even see him

until I reached the machine gun. 3rd, the fortunate ability to control my

command both in landing together and debouching up the bluff together as a

fighting unit. 4th, our direct engagement of the enemy caused him to cease

concerted small-arms, machine-gun and mortar fire with which he was sweeping the

beach below.” *

Dawson’s route to the top was approximately the same as the paved path that today leads from the beach to the lookout with the bronze panorama of Omaha Beach on the edge of the American cemetery.

At the top, Dawson was experiencing difficulties in moving on Colleville. Dawson led by example and gave orders that were simple, direct, impossible not to understand: “I said, ‘Men, there is the enemy. Let’s go get them.’ “ G Company worked its way to within a kilometer of Colleville. Dawson paused under a large oak tree. “There, a very friendly French woman welcomed us with open arms and said, ‘Welcome to France.’ “ Dawson advanced to the edge of Colleville. The dominant building, as always in the Normandy villages, was a Norman church, built of stone, its steeple stretching into the sky. “Sure enough,” Dawson noted, “in the steeple of the church there was an artillery observer.” He dashed inside the church with a sergeant and a private.

“Immediately, three Germans inside the church opened fire. Fortunately, we were not hit by this burst. But as we made our way through the church the private was killed, shot by the observer in the tower. I turned and we secured the tower by eliminating him. My sergeant shot the other two Germans and thus we took care of the opposition at that point.”

As Dawson ran out of the church, a German rifleman shot at him. Dawson fired back with his carbine, but not before the German got off a second shot. The bullet went through Dawson’s carbine and shattered the stock. Fragments from the bullet went through his kneecap and leg, which “caused my knee to swell and caused me to be evacuated the next day.”

Beyond the church, G Company ran into heavy fire from a full German company occupying the houses in Colleville. Built of stone, the positions were all but impregnable to small-arms fire. G Company got into what Dawson called “a very severe firefight,” but could not advance.

It was shortly after noon. Maj. William Washington, executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Regiment, came up, arriving at about the same time as Spaulding’s platoon. Washington set up a command post (CP) in a drainage ditch just west of Colleville. He sent the E Company platoon to the right (south) of the village. Spaulding moved out and got separated from Dawson. Germans moved into the gap; in forty minutes Spaulding’s platoon was surrounded. Just that quickly, Spaulding realized that instead of attacking, he was being counterattacked. He set up a defensive position in the drainage ditches. Several squads of Germans came toward the platoon. Spaulding’s men were able to beat them off.

Spaulding saw a runner coming from the battalion CP with a message from Major Washington. “The Germans opened fire on him. After he fell they fired at least a hundred rounds of machinegun ammunition into him. It was terrible but we do the same thing when we want to stop a runner bearing information.” Spaulding’s platoon spent the remainder of the day in the ditches, fighting a defensive action. By nightfall, Spaulding was down to six rounds of carbine ammunition; most of his men were down to their last clip. The platoon was still surrounded.

It had been the first platoon to take prisoners. It had eliminated several machine-gun posts on the bluff and the emplacement looking down the E-1 draw. It had landed with thirty men; by nightfall, two had been killed, seven wounded.  Five men in the platoon were awarded DSCs, personally presented by General Eisenhower: they were Lt. John Spaulding, Kentucky; Sgt. Philip Streczyk, New Jersey; Pvt. Richard Gallagher, New York; Pvt. George Bowen, Kentucky; Sgt.  Kenneth Peterson, New Jersey.

Spaulding’s and Dawson’s and the other small groups were like magnets to the men along the shingle embankment. If they can make it so can I, was the thought.  Simultaneously, the men were being urged forward by other junior officers and NCOs, and by the regimental commander, forty-seven-year-old Col. George Taylor.  He landed about 0800. Pvt. Warren Rulien watched him come in. “He stepped across the sandbar and bullets began hitting the water around him. He laid down on his stomach and started crawling toward shore, his staff officers doing the same.” “He had a couple of tattered-ass second louies following him,” according to Pvt.  Paul Radzom, who was also watching. “They looked like they were scared to death.”

When Taylor made it to the seawall, Rulien heard him say to the officers, “If we’re going to die, let’s die up there.” To other groups of men, Taylor said, “There are only two kinds of people on this beach: the dead and those about to die. So let’s get the hell out of here!”

Men got to work with the bangalores, blowing gaps in the barbed wire. Engineers with mine detectors moved through, then started laying out tape to show where they had cleared paths through the minefields. Others hit the pillboxes at the base of the bluff. “I went up with my flamethrower to button up the aperture of a pillbox,” Pvt. Buddy Mazzara of C Company remembered, “and [Pvt.] Fred Erben came in with his dynamite charge. Soon some soldiers came out of the pillbox with their hands up saying, ‘No shoot. No shoot. Me Pole.’ “ Pvt. John Shroeder, his machine gun cleaned and ready to fire, watched as a rifleman moved out. “So the first man, he started out across, and running zigzag he made it to the bluff. So we all felt a little better to see that we had a chance, we were going to get off. And the minefield was already full of dead and wounded. And finally it came my turn and I grabbed my heavy .30-cal and started up over the shingle and across the minefield, trying to keep low. Finally I got to the base of the bluff.” There he ducked behind the old foundation of a house.  Two others joined him. “It was just the three of us there, we couldn’t find our platoon leaders or our platoon sergeants or anybody.” But they could see two heartening sights. One was Americans on the crest of the bluff. The other was a line of POWs, sent down by Captain Dawson under guard.  The enemy prisoners “were really roughed up. Their hair was all full of cement, dirt, everything. They didn’t look so tough. So we started up the bluff carrying our stuff with us, and the others started following us.” Lt. William Dillon gathered the survivors from his platoon, joined three bangalores together, shoved them under the barbed wire, blew a gap, dashed through, crossed the swamp, swam across an antitank ditch filled with water, and made it to the base of the bluff.

“I knew that the Germans had to have a path up the hill that was clear of mines.  I looked around. When I was younger I’d been a good hunter and could trail a rabbit easily. I studied the ground and saw a faint path zigzagging to the left up the hill, so I walked the path very carefully. Something blew up behind me. I looked back and a young soldier had stepped on a mine and it had blown off his foot up to his knee. I brought the others up the path. At the top we saw the first and only Russian soldiers I have ever seen.” In his column for June 12, 1944, reporter Ernie Pyle wrote, “Now that it is over it seems to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all. . . . As one officer said, the only way to take a beach is to face it and keep going. It is costly at first, but it’s the only way. If the men are pinned down on the beach, dug in and out of action, they might as well not be there at all. They hold up the waves behind them, and nothing is being gained.  “Our men were pinned down for a while, but finally they stood up and went through, and so we took that beach and accomplished our landing. We did it with every advantage on the enemy’s side and every disadvantage on ours. In the light of a couple of days of retrospection, we sit and talk and call it a miracle that our men ever got on at all or were able to stay on.” It was not a miracle. It was infantry. The plan had called for the air and naval bombardments, followed by tanks and dozers, to blast a path through the exits so that the infantry could march up the draws and engage the enemy, but the plan had failed, utterly and completely failed. As is almost always the case in war, it was up to the infantry. It became the infantry’s job to open the exits so that the vehicles could drive up the draws and engage the enemy.  Exhortation and example, backed by two years of training, got the GIs from the 16th Regiment to overcome their exhaustion, confusion, and fear and get out from behind the shingle and start up the bluff. Colonel Taylor and many others pointed out the obvious, that to stay behind the “shelter” was to die. Retreat was not possible.

Captain Dawson, Lieutenants Spaulding and Dillon, and many others provided the example; their actions proved that it was possible to cross the swamp, the antitank ditch, the minefields, and find paths to the top of the bluff.  As they came onto the beach, the junior officers and NCOs saw at once that the intricate plan, the one they had studied so hard and committed to memory, bore no relationship whatsoever to the tactical problem they faced. They had expected to find ready-made craters on the beach, blasted by the bombs from the B-17s, to provide shelter in the unlikely event that they encountered any small-arms fire when they made the shoreline. They had expected to go up the draws, which they anticipated would have been cleared by the DD tanks and dozers, to begin fighting up on the high ground. They had expected fire support from tanks, half-tracks, artillery. Nothing they had expected had happened.  Yet their training had prepared them for this challenge. They sized up the situation, saw what had to be done, and did it. This was leadership of the highest order. It came from men who had been civilians three or even two years earlier.

Sgt. John Ellery of the 16th Regiment was one of those leaders. When he reached the shingle, “I had to peer through a haze of sweat, smoke, dust, and mist.” There was a dead man beside him, another behind him. Survivors gathered around him; “I told them that we had to get off the beach and that I’d lead the way.” He did. When he got to the base of the bluff, he started up, four or five men following. About halfway up, a machine gun opened up on them from the right.  “I scurried and scratched along until I got within ten meters of the gun position. Then I unloaded all four of my fragmentation grenades. When the last one went off, I made a dash for the top. The other kids were right behind me and we all made it. I don’t know if I knocked out that gun crew but they stopped shooting. Those grenades were all the return fire I provided coming off that beach. I didn’t fire a round from either my rifle or my pistol.” In giving his account Ellery spoke about leadership. “After the war,” he said, “I read about a number of generals and colonels who are said to have wandered about exhorting the troops to advance. That must have been very inspirational! I suspect, however, that the men were more interested and more impressed by junior officers and NCOs who were willing to lead them rather than having some general pointing out the direction in which they should go.” Warming to the subject, Ellery went on: “I didn’t see any generals in my area of the beach, but I did see a captain and two lieutenants who demonstrated courage beyond belief as they struggled to bring order to the chaos around them.” Those officers managed to get some men organized and moving up the bluff. One of the lieutenants had a broken arm that hung limply at his side, but he led a group of seven to the top, even though he got hit again on the way. Another lieutenant carried one of his wounded men thirty meters before getting hit himself.  “When you talk about combat leadership under fire on the beach at Normandy,” Ellery concluded, “I don’t see how the credit can go to anyone other than the company-grade officers and senior NCOs who led the way. It is good to be reminded that there are such men, that there always have been and always will be. We sometimes forget, I think, that you can manufacture weapons, and you can purchase ammunition, but you can’t buy valor and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.”