D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (55 page)

Jumping off the ramp into chest-deep water, MacPhee barely made it to the beach. There, "I fell and for what seemed an eternity I lay there." He was hit three times, once in the lower back, twice in the left leg. His arm was paralyzed. "That did it. I lost all my fear and knew I was about to die. I made peace with my Maker and was just waiting."

MacPhee was lucky. Two of his buddies dragged him to the shelter of the seawall; eventually he was evacuated. He was told he had a million-dollar wound. For him the war was over.
¹

As the ramp on his Higgins boat went down, Sgt. Clayton Hanks had a flashback. When he was five years old he had seen a World War I photograph in a Boston newspaper. He had said to his mother, "I wish I could be a war soldier someday."

"Don't ever say that again," his mother had replied.

He didn't, but at age seventeen he joined the Regular Army. He had been in ten years when the ramp went down and he recalled his mother's words. "I volunteered," he said to himself. "I asked for this or whatever was to come." He leaped into the water and struggled forward.
²

Pvt. Warren Rulien came in with the second wave. Dead soldiers floated around in the water, which had risen past the first obstacles. He ducked behind a steel rail in waist-deep water. His platoon leader, a nineteen-year-old lieutenant, was behind another rail.

The lieutenant yelled, "Hey, Rulien, here I go!" and began attempting to run to the shore. A machine gun cut him down. Rulien grabbed one of the bodies floating in the water and pushed it in front of him as he made his way to the shore.

"I had only gone a short distance when three or four soldiers

began lining up behind me. I shouted, 'Don't bunch up!' and moved out, leaving them with the body. I got as low as I could in the water until I reached a sandbar and crossed it on my belly." On the inland side of the sandbar the water was up to his chest. He moved forward. "On the shore, there were officers sitting there, stunned. Nobody was taking command." He joined other survivors at the seawall.
³

The coxswain on Pvt. Charles Thomas's boat was killed by machine-gun fire as he was taking his craft in. A crew member took over. The platoon leader had his arm shot off trying to open the ramp. Finally the ramp dropped and the assault team leaped into the surf. Thomas had a bangalore torpedo to carry so he was last man in the team.

"As I was getting off I stopped to pick up a smoke grenade, as if I didn't have enough to carry. The guy running the boat yelled for me to get off. He was in a hurry, but I turned around and told him that I wasn't in any hurry."

Thomas jumped into chest-deep water. "My helmet fell back on my neck and the strap was choking me. My rifle sling was dragging under the water and I couldn't stand." He inflated his Mae West and finally made it to shore. "There I crawled in over wounded and dead but I couldn't tell who was who and we had orders not to stop for anyone on the edge of the beach, to keep going or we would be hit ourselves."

When he reached the seawall, "it was crowded with GIs all being wounded or killed. It was overcrowded with GIs. I laid on my side and opened my fly, I had to urinate. I don't know why I did that because I was soaking wet anyway and I was under fire, and I guess I was just being neat."

Thomas worked his way over to the left, where "I ran into a bunch of my buddies from the company. Most of them didn't even have a rifle. Some bummed cigarettes off of me because I had three cartons wrapped in waxed paper." Thomas was at the base of the bluff (just below the site of the American cemetery today). In his opinion, "The Germans could have swept us away with brooms if they knew how few we were and what condition we were in."

Capt. Fred Hall was in the LCVP carrying the 2nd Battalion headquarters group (Lt. Col. Herb Hicks, CO). Hall was battalion S-3. His heart sank when he saw yellow life rafts holding men in life jackets and he realized they were the crews from the DD tanks. He realized "that meant that we would not have tank support

on the beach." The boat was in the E Company sector of Easy Red. E Company was supposed to be on the far right of the 16th, linking up with the 116th at the boundary between Easy Green and Easy Red, but it came in near the boundary between Easy Red and Fox Green, a full kilometer from the nearest 116th unit on its right (and with sections of the badlv mislanded E Company of the 116th on its left).

There was nothing to be done about the mistake. The officers and men jumped into the water and "it was every man for himself crossing the open beach where we were under fire." Fourteen of the thirty failed to make it. Hall got up to the seawall with Hicks and "we opened our map case wrapped in canvas, containing our assault maps showing unit boundaries, phase lines, and objectives. I remember it seemed a bit incongruous under the circumstances."

The incoming fire was murderous. "And the noise—always the noise, naval gunfire, small arms, artillery, and mortar fire, aircraft overhead, engine noises, the shouting and the cries of the wounded, no wonder some people couldn't handle it." The assistant regimental commander and the forward artillery observer were killed by rifle fire. Lieutenant Colonel Hicks shouted to Hall to find the company commanders. To Hall, "It was a matter of survival. I was so busy trying to round up the COs to organize their men to move off the beach that there wasn't much time to think except to do what had to be done."

Hicks wanted to move his men to the right, where the battalion was supposed to be, opposite the draw that led up the bluff between St.-Laurent and Colleville, but movement was almost impossible. The tide was coming in rapidly, follow-up waves were landing, the beach was narrowing from the incoming tide, "it became very crowded and the confusion increased." So far as Hall could make out, "there was no movement off the beach.'"

In fact, one platoon from E Company, 16th Regiment, was making its way up to the top of the bluff. It was led by Lt. John Spaulding of E Company. He was one of the first junior officers to make it across the seawall, through the swamp and beach flat, and up the bluff.

At 0630, Spaulding's boat hit a sandbar. He and Sgt. Fred Bisco kicked the ramp down in the face of machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire. Spaulding jumped into the water. To his left he

could see other E Company boats, but to his right there was nothing. His platoon was the far-right flank of the 16th Regiment.

He spread his men and moved toward shore. The water depth at the sandbar was about a meter, but moving inland the platoon ran into a runnel where the water was over the men's heads. A strong undercurrent was carrying them to the left (Spaulding said he had learned to swim in the Ohio River; he found the current at Omaha was much stronger). Sergeant Streczyk and medic George Bowen were carrying an eighteen-foot ladder to be used for crossing the antitank ditch. Spaulding grabbed it. "Streczyk yelled at me, 'Lieutenant, we don't need any help,' but hell I was trying to get help, not to give it."

In these desperate circumstances, Spaulding ordered his men to abandon their heavy equipment and get ashore. There went the ladder, the flamethrower, the mortars, one of the two bazookas, and some of the ammunition. Most men were able to hold onto their rifles; to Spaulding's surprise, they were able to fire as soon as they came ashore: "It shows that the M-l is an excellent weapon," he commented.

The platoon took only a couple of casualties getting ashore. Luck was with Spaulding; he had come in at a spot where the German defenses were not particularly heavy, and besides the Germans had bigger targets than an isolated platoon. Once the men reached the beach, they stood up and started moving across the

sand.

"They were too waterlogged to run," Spaulding said, "but they went as fast as they could. It looked as if they were walking in the face of a real strong wind." At the seawall, Sgt. Curtis Colwell blew a hole in the wire with a bangalore. Spaulding and his men picked their way through.

Spaulding took his 536 radio off his shoulder, pulled the antenna out and tried to contact his CO. The radio didn't work. The mouthpiece had been shot away. "I should have thrown it away, but training habits were so strong that I carefully took the antenna down as I had always been taught to do and put the 536 back on my shoulder. Your training stays with you even when you

are scared."

Once across the seawall, the platoon began to take heavier small-arms fire. One man was killed. The swamp and beach flat to the front were mined. Sergeant Streczyk and Pvt. Richard Gallagher went forward to investigate. "We can't cross here," they

shouted and went to the left where they found a little defilade through the mined area. The platoon crossed to the base of the bluff, then began to climb it, following a faint trail.

"We could still see no one to the right and there was no one up to us on the left," Spaulding said. "We didn't know what had become of the rest of E Company. Back in the water boats were in flames. I saw a tank ashore, knocked out. After a couple of looks back, we decided we wouldn't look back anymore."

There was a pillbox to Spaulding's left, its machine gun firing down on the beach. "We fired but couldn't hit them. We were getting terrific small-arms fire ourselves but few were hit." By this time the platoon was about halfway up the bluff, smack in the middle of the extensive German trench system. Pvt. Gallagher, in the lead, sent word that he had found a path toward the right that was in defilade, behind some trenches in a mined area. Spaulding moved forward.

Sergeant Bisco called out, "Lieutenant, watch out for the damn mines." The place was infested with them, Spaulding recalled, "but we lost no men coming through them, although H Company coming along the same trail a few hours later lost several men. The Lord was with us and we had an angel on each shoulder on that trip."

A machine gun was firing from above. Sergeant Blades fired the platoon's only bazooka at it and missed. He was shot in the left arm; a private was shot down; Sergeant Phelps moved up with his BAR and was hit in both legs. Spaulding decided to rush the machine gun.

"As we rushed it the lone German operating the gun threw up his hands and yelled,
'Kamerad.'
We needed prisoners for interrogating so I ordered the men not to shoot."

The "German" turned out to be Polish. He told Spaulding (Sergeant Streczyk interpreting) there were sixteen other Poles in the nearby trenches and said they had taken a vote on whether to fight and had voted not to, but the German noncoms forced them to fire. "He also said that he had not shot at us, although I had seen him hit three. I turned the PW over to Sergeant Blades, who was wounded. Blades gave his bazooka to another man and guarded the prisoner with a trench knife."

Spaulding moved his wounded men into a defile where Pvt. George Bowen, the medic, gave them first aid. Spaulding paid Bowen a tribute: "He covered his whole section of the beach that

day; no man waited more than five minutes for first aid. His action did a lot to help morale. He got the DSC for his work."

Spaulding moved his platoon up the bluff, taking advantage of every irregularity in the ground. "Coming up along the crest of the hill Sgt. Clarence Colson began to give assault fire from his BAR as he walked along, firing the weapon from his hip. He opened up on the machine gun to our right, firing so rapidly that his ammunition carrier had difficulty getting ammo to him fast enough." It was about 0800. Americans were clearing out the trenches and advancing toward the high ground.
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Spaulding and his men, and other small units in the 116th and 16th led by such men as Capt. Joe Dawson and Capt. Robert Walker, were doing a great thing. The exemplary manner in which they had seized their opportunity, their dash, boldness, initiative, teamwork, and tactical skills were outstanding beyond praise. These were exactly the qualities the Army had hoped for—and spent two years training its civilians-turned-soldiers to achieve—in its junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men.

The industrial miracle of production in the United States in World War II was one of the great accomplishments in the history of the Republic. The job the Army did in creating and shaping the leadership qualities in its junior officers—just college-age boys, most of them—was also one of the great accomplishments in the history of the Republic.

At 0800 the small groups making their way up the bluff were unaware of each other. Spaulding and his men were about midway between Colleville and St.-Laurent. The latter village was their target. There they expected to link up with E Company, 116th, coming in from their right. Actually, E Company, 116th, had been on their
left
on the beach, and was still stuck behind the seawall.

L Company of the 16th was on the far left. It came in at 0700, a half hour late, almost a kilometer from its target. Scheduled to land at the foot of the draw that led directly to Colleville, instead it was at Fox Green, the eastern edge of Omaha Beach, at the place where the tidal flat almost reached the bluff and where the first rise of the bluff was clifflike in steepness.

Because the boats were late, the tide had covered the outermost line of beach obstacles. No company had been scheduled to

land on Fox Red, so no engineers had been there to blow the obstacles. Pvt. Kenneth Romanski saw the boat to his right blow up. He looked left and that boat also hit a mine. He saw a GI go up about ten feet in the air, arms and legs outstretched and his whole body in flame.

"About that time, our platoon leader, Lieutenant Godwin, said, 'Back it up! Back it up! Put the damn thing in reverse.' " The British coxswain did. He pulled back about 100 meters and went over to the left.