D-Day by Hine Al

Author:Hine, Al
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Military/World War II
ISBN: 9781936529629
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The story of Omaha Beach stands in stark contrast to what happened at Utah.

Omaha was at the center of the entire front. The assault at Utah Beach was to the west. East of here, the British Second Army stormed Gold Beach. Omaha linked the invasion force into one continuous lodgement. The plan was complex and carefully constructed. The first landings were to follow a flooding tide at 6:30 that morning of June 6. This was “H-Hour.” The hour before, naval and aerial bombardments were scheduled to soften the beach defenses. Very little went according to plan.

With the setting of the sun on the first day of this brutal battle, more than 156,000 Allied soldiers – about a third of them Americans – would gain the ground in Normandy. The dead, wounded and missing – grimly predicted at 75,000 – numbered fewer than 5,000. The diversion at Pas-de-Calais - which left the Germans at Normandy without their commander, any air cover, and delayed deployment of Hitler’s Panzer tanks by 10 hours – limited the loss of Allied lives. But, like all hard-fought combat, this battle was won on courage and determination. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley later said, “Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero.”

On the eve of the invasion, Harold Baumgarten, a 19-year-old rifleman with the 116th Infantry, wrote a letter to his sister in New York City. He told her to be the first to open the mail in the coming days. It would be up to her to break the news gently to their parents that he had died in battle. He did not expect to make it out of France alive.

Private Harry Parley, a flamethrower with the 116, noticed something different about his weapon. The flamethrower fuel was not the same pinkish-red that he had been accustomed to in training exercises, and with which he would sometimes spark a flame just small enough to light his cigarette. The liquid loaded into his weapon was instead a thick, mucus-like yellow. This was no training exercise, and no joke.

The evening of June 5, they boarded a ship in the seaport of Weymouth, England, which would carry them across the Channel. The port was packed with ships of all varieties, many waving the American flag. The hustle and energy of the harbor that night left no doubt that the fight was close at hand.

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