The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan

Author:Cornelius Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

On the flagship Augusta lying off the American beaches, Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley plugged his ears with cotton and then trained his binoculars on the landing craft speeding toward the beaches. His troops, the men of the U.S. First Army, were moving steadily in. Bradley was deeply concerned. Up to a few hours before he had believed that an inferior and overextended German “static” division, the 716th, was holding the coastal area, roughly from Omaha Beach all the way east to the British zone. But just before he left England, Allied intelligence had passed on the information that an additional German division had moved into the invasion area. The news had arrived too late for Bradley to inform his already briefed and “sealed” troops. Now the men of the 1st and 29th division were heading for Omaha Beach, unaware that the tough, battle-tested 352nd Division manned the defenses.*

The naval bombardment which Bradley prayed would make their job easier was about to begin. A few miles away, Contre-Amiral Jaujard, on the French light cruiser Montcalm, spoke to his officers and men. “C’est une chose terrible et monstrueuse que d’être obligé de tirer sur notre propre patrie,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion, “mais je vous demande de le faire aujourd’hui [It is a terrible and monstrous thing to have to fire on our homeland, but I want you to do it this day].” And four miles off Omaha Beach on the destroyer U.S.S. Carmick, Commander Robert O. Beer pressed a button on the ship’s intercom and said, “Now hear this! This is probably going to be the biggest party you boys will ever go to—so let’s all get out on the floor and dance!”

The time was 5:50 A.M. The British warships had been firing off their beaches for more than twenty minutes. Now the bombardment in the American zone began. The entire invasion area erupted with a roaring storm of fire. The maelstrom of sound thundered back and forth along the Normandy coast as the big ships slammed steadily away at their preselected targets. The gray sky brightened with the hot flash of their guns and along the beaches great clouds of black smoke began to bunch up into the air.

Off Sword, Juno and Gold the battleships Warspite and Ramillies lobbed tons of steel from their 15-inch guns toward powerful German gun batteries at Le Havre and around the mouth of the Orne. Maneuvering cruisers and destroyers poured streams of shells into pillboxes, concrete bunkers and redoubts. With incredible accuracy, the sharpshooting H.M.S. Ajax of River Plate fame knocked out a battery of four 6-inch guns from six miles offshore. Off Omaha, the big battleships Texas and Arkansas, mounting between them a total of ten 14-inch, twelve 12-inch and twelve 5-inch guns, pumped six hundred shells onto the coastal battery position atop Pointe du Hoc in an all-out attempt to ease the way for the Ranger battalions even now heading for the one-hundred-foot-high sheer cliffs. Off Utah, the battleship

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