What They Saw When They Landed

By Douglas Brinkley Interviews for this story were drawn from the oral- history project at the Eisenhower Center for American Studies in New Orleans as well as reporting by Helen Gibson/London, James Graff/Paris and Barbara Maddux/New York

It was quite a sight. There was the oldest man in the D-day invasion, 56year-old Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (son of the former President) barking orders at Utah Beach. Although he had a heart condition, Roosevelt insisted that his presence and leadership would help boost troop morale. With German artillery exploding all around him, he paraded up and down Utah Beach, ordering U.S. tanks to secure the flanks and U.S. engineers to breach eight 50-yd. lanes through beach obstacles. He refused to wear a helmet, preferring to don a knit wool hat. "We have landed in the wrong place," shouted Roosevelt, who would receive the Medal of Honor for his valor that day. "But we will start the war from here."

Everything about D-day was dramatic--the overarching strategy, the vast mobilization, the sheer number of troops. But it's the daring boldness and intrepid courage of the men that stand out. One can read biographies of Dwight Eisenhower or watch film footage shot by John Ford, but the only way to understand D-day, the largest invasion force ever assembled, is as a battle at its smallest: that is, one soldier and one reminiscence at a time.

The landing target of the D-day invaders was a 50-mile stretch of shoreline in the middle of the Cherbourg--Le Havre crescent in France. On the night of June 5, the operation began as Allied paratroopers boarded planes and gliders. "O.K., let's go" was Eisenhower's direct order. Just after midnight, June 6, they began landing behind enemy lines, with orders to attack and destroy German gun batteries. Meanwhile, an armada started making its way toward the designated beaches. Allied troops began landing at 6:30 a.m. Wading through the water onto French soil, they met vastly different fates. At Utah Beach, the farthest west, bombardments had decimated the German defenses. Moreover, an opportune navigational mistake had landed the troops at a practically unguarded stretch of the beach. The Americans who landed there sustained relatively few casualties. The British and Canadian forces who landed at Gold and Juno beaches fought their way ashore, according to plan, and were soon followed by tanks, the mere sight of which swept most of the German resistance away. The fighting was harder at Sword Beach, where German defenders stiffened against the specter of the Allies' capturing the nearby city of Caen. The hardest fighting of all raged throughout the day on the fifth beach, Omaha. It was a relatively narrow strand of shoreline overshadowed by 100-ft. cliffs. Troops trying to land there found themselves in a horrifying position, vulnerable to machine-gun and mortar fire from above. The only route out lay through four ravines carved by the wind and water through the cliffs. American soldiers were bewildered, their officers were confused, and their comrades were lying dead all around, in the water and on the beach. In the chaos, there were not even any boats to evacuate the wounded, many of whom died on Omaha of injuries that would have been treatable on any other beach. By late morning, amid the crushing noise, violence and justifiable fear racing through the air, some troops managed to drag themselves up the cliffs in small fighting forces. By the end of the day, at a cost too high to be measured in mere statistics, they took the beach and carved out a piece of Free France 2 miles wide and 6 miles long.

Operation Overlord was not over on D-day. With astonishing speed, the stage managers of the operation moved tons of materials onto the Allied beachhead, building floating docks to receive thousands of tons more. Even Omaha Beach was a vast and busy port by June 9. D-day had made an Allied victory inevitable. To be more precise, the men of the invading force had made an Allied victory inevitable. Here are their patriotic voices, recalling the day they--and world history--will never forget.

Douglas Brinkley is the co-author, with Ronald J. Drez, of the new book Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

"WE KNEW THAT SOMETHING ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING WAS GOING TO TAKE PLACE." --John Robinson A pilot with the 344th Bomb Group, Robinson, 24, flew two successful sorties over Normandy on June 6

We flew Martin B-26 Marauders, which were, without any doubt, the best bombers in the whole wide world. Several weeks prior to June 5, the squadron doctor had passed out a small pill to each crew member. He said the pills were intended to keep the crews awake in case we had to work around the clock. Everybody knew that this was in preparation for D-day. I don't know how they worked on anybody else, but they kept me awake for three nights and three days, completely unable to sleep.

It was our job to prepare the ground to enable the infantry to get ashore, to stay ashore and fight and win. We also hoped that they'd kill a whole bunch of those damned antiaircraft gunners for whom we had no love and no pity. A couple of hours after dinner on June 5, someone came into the hut and said quietly, "Get to bed early tonight, fellows." We'd all seen the loading list on the bulletin board. From the size of the list, it looked like a maximum effort. I climbed into bed and went right to sleep. It was probably 2 a.m. when some guy who had the duty that night shook my shoulder and told me to get up, have breakfast and report for briefing. We got dressed, and as I was walking past the bunk of Hank Avner, who wasn't going that day, he raised up on one elbow and said, and I quote exactly, "Bite them on the ass for me, Johnny."

We rode our bicycles down to the mess hall, had breakfast and rode the bikes to the briefing room. It was dark, and it was raining, and the cloud cover was complete. We just sort of felt our way around. Inside the briefing room, the crowd was quiet. The big map at the end of the room was covered as usual with its drawstring curtains. Pretty soon, in came the colonel, and he went to one end of the curtains. A captain went to the other end and held the drawstrings. They looked at their watches--looked at each other. The colonel nodded his head to the captain. The captain began to draw open the curtains, and Colonel Vance said in a quiet voice, "Gentlemen, this is it."

And, by George, there it was, all laid out with ribbons leading from our base to a point on the English coast. From there, the ribbons led to the French coast, then along the coast to the drop zone described as Utah Beach. Someone asked if we could expect much fighter opposition over the target. The colonel answered that one very simply by saying, "There will be approximately 3,500 Allied fighters over the beach this morning." That brought a big sigh of relief from the group.

We gave our personal things such as wallets and other identification to the guys in the security room, picked up our parachutes and steel helmets, got into the trucks and rode out to the planes. It was still raining and quite dark, and we knew there would be no delay on account of weather on this day. It had begun to sink in that we were involved in what was to be one of the greatest moments in history.

"THE PLANE IS BOUNCING LIKE SOMETHING GONE WILD." --Dwayne T. Burns A private with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Burns, 19, landed behind enemy lines, far from his drop zone

At 22:30, all over England, engines started. We were ready to go. Now here we sat, each man alone in the dark with his own thoughts and fears. "Lord," I prayed, "please let me do everything right. Don't let me get anybody killed, and don't let me get killed either. I really think I'm too young for this. I should be home having a good time. Who ever told me I was a fighter anyway?" We blacked our faces with burnt cork. Some of the guys cut their hair Mohawk style. Some shaved it all off. Each trooper was going into combat in whatever style that suited him best. I left mine in a crew cut.

Finally, the signal came down to us to get aboard. We shook hands and wished one another good luck, saying, "We'll see you on the ground." We chuted up and pulled the adjustment straps down good and tight because we knew we were so loaded that we were going to get one hell of an opening shock. The two chutes, rifle, two bandoliers, cartridge belt, first-aid kit, shovel, canteen kit, jump knife, trench knife, bayonet, gas mask, land mine, rations, billfold, clean socks and underwear, toothbrush, New Testament and message book, plus other odds and ends--I must have weighed well over 300 lbs. Once we were chuted up, we had to stay on our feet because it would be impossible to get back up without help. We pushed and pulled one another up the steps just to get up the plane.

In the air, we start picking up flak, light at first. I know we have just crossed the coastline. Flak is getting heavy as we stand waiting for the green light. Now the plane's being hit from all sides. The noise is awesome. The roar of the engines, the flak hitting the wings and fuselage--and everyone is yelling, "Let's go!," but still the green light does not come on. The plane is bouncing like something gone wild. I can hear a ticking sound as machine-gun rounds walk across the wings. It's hard to stand up, and troopers are falling down and getting up; some are getting sick. Of all the training we had, there was not anything that prepared us for this. Then the red light goes out, and the green snaps on. We shuffle out the door into the dark fresh air.

I'm amazed at how quiet it is outside. We were to jump at 600 ft., but it seems to be much higher than that. I hear the sound as the ship fades away. I seem to be far south of our drop zone. It looks like I'm on the outer edge of all the action. To the north, I see tracers arcing across the sky. And in spite of all of this going on, I think of how beautiful they appear.

I look down. I can just make out rows of trees. I think to myself, This is France, and now I'm in combat. This is for real. I landed in a long, narrow field with two antiglider poles in it, and I hit hard and roll over on my back, tangled in my shroud lines. I see one chute go down behind the trees on the other side of the field, so I know that I'm not completely alone. I've landed on good solid ground. I lie in the grass trying to get out of my harness. In my mind's eye, I can see Germans running with fixed bayonets to kill me, and I'm having trouble with the harness buckles. To say I'm scared is an understatement. I reach down to my right ankle and pull out my trench knife and stick it in the ground beside me. I think at least a knife is better than no weapon at all. Then I unsnap my harness, untangle myself, stand up and run to the hedgerow where I saw the chute go down.

"Flash" was our code word, and countersign was "Thunder." We also had been given a child's cricket snapper. One snap was to be answered by two snaps ... or was it the other way around? "Oh, hell," I mutter. "Just snap the damn thing a few times." In reply, I get, "Look out, I'm coming over." He sounds good to me, and I say, "Come on."

The two of us went back across the field that I had landed in and found some troopers coming up the hedgerow. I didn't know who they were, but right now it didn't make any difference as long as I was with somebody. We moved north about 100 yds. and stopped. It was there I saw my first German. While we were stopped, I thought I'd have a look over the top of the hedgerow to see what was on the other side. I climbed up and slowly looked over, and as I did, a German on the other side raised up and looked over. I couldn't see his features, just a square silhouette of his helmet. We stood there looking at each other, then slowly each one of us went back down. I sat there wondering what to do about him. I could throw a grenade over, but I might kill more troopers than Germans. While I sat there thinking, we started to move again, so I left him sitting on his side of the hedgerow wondering what to do about me.

"MY UPPER JAW WAS SHATTERED; THE LEFT CHEEK WAS BLOWN OPEN." --Harold Baumgarten Baumgarten, 19, a rifleman with the 116th Infantry, was wounded five times during the battle for Omaha Beach

Having my college education and a good background in American history and wartime battles, I realized that it was not going to be easy, and I did not expect to come back alive. I wrote such to my sister in New York City--to get the mail before my parents and break the news gently to them when she received the telegram that I was no longer alive.

We left the marshaling area with full battle equipment, about 100 lbs. per man, and went in trucks to the huge seaport of Weymouth, England. That night we boarded a liberty ship, Empire Javelin, which was to carry us across the Channel to Normandy. The harbor of Weymouth was crowded with ships of every size, shape and description, most of them flying the Stars and Stripes. We had the old battleships Arkansas, Nevada and Texas with us. On the evening of June 5, the harbor came alive. I could see one ship signaling to the other that this was it.

At 3:30 a.m., we left the Javelin on British LCAs [landing craft assault]. It was pitch black, and the Channel was rough. The huge bluish-black waves rose high over the sides of our little craft and batted the boat with unimaginable fury. [The waves] broke our front ramp, and the boat began to fill with icy Channel water. The water reached my waist, and things looked black for us as our little boat began to sink. But the lieutenant rammed his body against the inner door of the ship and said, "Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Take off your helmets and start bailing the water out." All our equipment as well as ourselves were wet. Our TNT was floating around the boat. We were dead tired from pumping hand pumps and bailing out water with our helmets. Our feet were frozen blue.

At about 6:30 a.m., I saw the beach with its huge seawall at the foot of a massive bluff. An 88-mm shell landed right in the middle of the LCA [to] the side of us, and splinters of the boat, equipment and bodies were thrown into the air. Bullets were passing through the thin wooden sides of our vessel. The ramp was lowered, and the inner door was opened. A German machine gun trained on the opening took a heavy toll of lives. Many of my 30 buddies went down as they left the LCA.

I got a bullet through the top of my helmet first, and then as I waded through the deep water, a bullet aimed at my heart hit the receiver of my M-1 rifle. The water was being shot up all around me. Clarius Riggs, who left the assault boat in front of me, went under, shot to death. About 8 or 10 ft. to my right, as we reached the dry sand, I heard a hollow thud, and I saw Private Robert Dittmar 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 10 more yards. He tripped over a tank 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 seemed to be suffering from shock and was yelling, "Mother, Mom," as he kept rolling around on the sand.

There were three or four others wounded and dying right near him. Sergeant Clarence Roberson, from my boat team, had a gaping wound on the left side of his forehead. He was walking crazily in the water, without his helmet. 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 cross fire. I saw the reflection from the helmet of one of the snipers and took aim, and later on, I found out, I got a bull's-eye on him. It was my only time that rifle fired--due to the bullet that hit my rifle. It must have shattered the wood, and the rifle broke in half, and I had to throw it away.

Shells were continually landing all about me in a definite pattern, and when I raised my head up to curse the Germans in the pillbox on our right flank who were continually shooting up the sand in front of me, one of the fragments from an 88-mm shell hit 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 was blown open. My upper lip was cut in half. I washed my face out in the cold, dirty Channel water and managed somehow not to pass out. I got rid of most of my equipment. Here I was happy that I did not wear the invasion jacket. I wore a regular Army zippered field jacket, with a Star of David drawn on the back and THE BRONX, NEW YORK written on it. Had I worn the invasion jacket, I probably would have drowned.

The water was rising about an inch a minute as the tide was coming in, so I had to get moving or drown. I had to reach a 15-ft. seawall, which appeared to be 200 yds. in front of me. Finally, I came to dry sand, and there was only another 100 yds. or maybe less to go, and I started across the sand, crawling very fast. The Germans in the pillbox on the right flank were shooting up the sand all about me. I expected a bullet to rip through me at any moment. I reached the stone wall without further injury. I was now safe from the flat-trajectory weapons of the enemy. All I had to fear now were enemy mines and artillery shells.

Things looked pretty black and one-sided until Brigadier General Norman D. Cota rallied us by capturing some men himself and running around the beach with a hand grenade and a pistol in his hand. [He] ran down the beach under fire and sent a call for reinforcements. Every man who could walk and fire a weapon charged up the hill later on in the day toward the enemy. I got hit in the left foot while crawling by a mine.

At the end of June 6, we were only in about half a mile. As the evening progressed, I felt like I was getting very weak, and along the way, I got another bullet through the face again. I was starting to feel very weak from all that bleeding. As it got dark, I became very trigger happy, and anything that moved in front of me, I started to fire at.

About 3 a.m., I found myself lying near a road above the bluffs in the vicinity south of Vierville. I got an ambulance to stop by firing [in its direction], and it stopped, and two men came out and asked if I could sit up in the ambulance. [Later] they took me out and put me in a stretcher, and I saw a huge statue. I think later on, in retrospect, it was a church near the beach, silhouetted in the darkness. The next morning I saw the German prisoners marching by me. The 175th Infantry Regiment apparently landed around that time, and German snipers opened up on the beach, including the wounded. I got shot in my right knee in the stretcher. I had received five individual wounds that day in Normandy. The 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry was more or less sacrificed to achieve the landing and was completely wiped out. It was a total sacrifice.

"I SAW AN ARMADA LIKE A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS. THE NUMBER OF SHIPS WAS UNCOUNTABLE." --Anton Herr The German officer, 24, commanded a dozen tanks in a company stationed near Falaise

It was actually a relief for me when the invasion finally happened. I was having trouble keeping my crews in a state of readiness. I knew it was coming off when a young man from the chateau where we were staying brought me a tract to translate that had been dropped from an Allied plane. It ordered him and his family to get out of the chateau into the surrounding fields because they were going to start bombing it. I told him instead to take all the civilians to the deepest cellar, where they'd have a better chance of surviving. That was good advice, since I learned later that they all survived.

We left at around 5 a.m. for Caen. The whole way up, we were never fired at. But when we got to Caen, the Allies were bombing the bridge over the River Orne. I noticed the cadence of the bombs, and I sent my tanks over one by one between the bombs and didn't lose any of them. We were the first of the tanks over that bridge, and we continued north. The town seemed completely untouched by war at that time.

None of the German tank companies were communicating with the others. We'd been told to keep radio silence so the Allies couldn't pick us up. We were like an orchestra without a conductor, and there I was playing flute. I continued all the way up to the coast, and when I got there, I saw an armada like a plague of locusts. The number of ships was uncountable, and the Allies' superior firepower was obvious. But in war, what you lose first is reason. I wanted to attack. I wanted to vanquish them.

We were fired at, and one tank took a direct hit--I never knew whether from the enemy or our own tanks--and the whole crew was killed. After we took another hit, we found a little wood and dug in. The order to all tank units, maybe from the Fuhrer, was not to yield a single meter. Before I slept that night under my tank, I wrote an angry letter home. As a young officer, I thought we could have broken the invasion if we'd been better led.

"I PULLED MY LEGS UP AS FAR AS I COULD TO GET AWAY FROM A STREAM OF TRACERS." --Edward Jeziorski A paratrooper with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Jeziorski, 23, was dropped into the inferno over Normandy

Out the door we went. Just as I peeled out, it seemed that the whole world lit up right underneath me. A tremendous ball of fire. And a bunch of black smoke mixed in with the red fire, just a great fireball. And I said to myself, The bastards are waiting for us. I tried to slip away from the thing, and tracers were coming up and through the silk. They were coming up just in strings. I can remember them being so close that I actually pulled my legs up as far as I could, my knee into my stomach, to get away from a stream of tracers. I slammed into the ground, and I was immediately pinned down by machine-gun fire. There was no way to raise up. Every time I tried to turn, the machine gun would open up. Every time I tried to move, there would be a burst. Apparently the great big ball of fire was a C-47 that had been shot down, and I was silhouetted between this guy's gun and the ship, and I couldn't move. I finally was able to bring my right leg up close enough to where I could get my jump knife out of my boot. I cut the harness loose.

In the meantime, this guy is still shooting. When I cut loose, I rolled over in a little depression; fortunately, it was deep enough. I had my hand on my rifle, and I was able to squeeze off a couple of rounds where the fire was coming from, and that eased it up real quick. He stopped. I'm sure I didn't hit him, but at any rate, by golly, it got his attention that I was now in a position to start working on him.

Just a little bit after that, there was a good deal of thrashing going on on the other side of the hedgerow. It [turned out to be] my assistant gunner, Grover Boyce. There were two of us together now. It seemed like a better world all of a sudden. [Soon] we located a parapack, and believe me, we were fortunate. One of the packs we opened had a machine gun. We really felt pretty good having that thing in our hands. We didn't know where we were, but we knew that we weren't anywhere near where we were supposed to be. We were getting ready to go ahead and set up some sort of a decent roadblock in both directions when somebody yelled, "Here come the Krauts!" A little stone fence or hedge was leading on into the end of the town. A squad of Germans was following the hedge toward us. Guys popped their rifles at them, and they fired back at us. By then I was ready with my light machine gun, and I turned loose a couple of bursts, and they gave it back with an MG42, and we just traded for a couple of bursts back and forth. I took the Jerry out of there. There wasn't any more noise from him. We moved on after that.

We backed off about 200 yds. and, son of a gun, here came another group of Germans. All of D-day, we just moved, moved, moved, and we never seemed to get away from activity by the Germans. It was one fire fight after another. Getting up into the afternoon, pretty late, we went back inland a couple of hundred yards. We picked out a pair of good and decent spots, and we were going to take a break. I remember lying down and lighting a cigarette, and that's all I recall until I felt something nudging me and a real soft voice, kind of a questioning voice, was saying, "De lait, de lait, de lait." It was an old man who had just finished milking his cow and was offering me some of the warm milk. I took it, against all regulations, by golly. By gosh, I drank it. Not since being a kid did anything taste so good as that did.

That's the way D-day went for us. I don't believe any group anywhere in Normandy tied up any more of the enemy, proportionately, than this little gang did. And not a scratch on anyone. But I lost my best buddy. We found him and cut him down where he had been shot in an apple tree where he had gotten entangled.

"AS OUR BOAT TOUCHED SAND AND THE RAMP WENT DOWN, I BECAME A VISITOR TO HELL." --Harry Parley Private Parley, 24, carried a flamethrower in the first wave on Omaha Beach with the 116th Infantry Regiment

There was some humor to being the flamethrower. While waiting to be loaded onto the ships at dockside, I would often light a cigarette using my weapon. Being experienced with it, I knew all the safety factors. I could, without triggering the propelling mechanism, light a cigarette by simply producing a small flame at the mouth of the gun. In doing so, it produced the same hissing sound as when the thrower was actually being fired. When my team would hear the terrifying sound, I would immediately be the only one on the dock.

The liquid used in the flamethrower [for training] had always been a pinkish-red in color and had a consistency similar to warm Jell-O. As we made ready for what we thought would be just another practice run, and as I filled my tanks, I saw that the liquid was not the usual Jell-O--like substance. What I was pumping was a mucus-like liquid both in color and consistency. I realized that morning that the invasion was on.

In the landing craft, I cowered with the others as we circled, waiting for our signal to approach. I remember looking back and seeing the Navy coxswain at the controls of our boat standing high above us completely exposed to enemy fire, doing his job as ordered. As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell. Some boats on either side of us had been hit by artillery and heavy weapons. I was aware that some were burning and some were sinking. I shut everything out and concentrated on following the men in front of me down the ramp and into the water. I stepped off the ramp into a deep pocket in the sand, and went under completely. With no footing whatsoever, and with the weight of the 80-lb. flamethrower on my back, I was unable to come up. I knew I was drowning, and made a futile attempt to unbuckle the flamethrower harness. Inadvertently, I had raised the firing arm, which is about 3 ft. long, above my head. One of my team saw it, grabbed hold, and pulled me up out of the hole to solid sand. Then slowly, half-drowned, coughing water and dragging my feet, I began walking toward the chaos ahead.

During that walk (I was unable to run), I got my first experience with enemy fire. Machine-gun fire was hitting the beach, and as it hit the wet sand, it made a "sip sip" sound like someone sucking on their teeth. Ahead of me in the distance, I could see survivors of the landing already using the base of the bluffs as shelter. Due to my near drowning and exhaustion, I had fallen behind the advance. To this day, I don't know why I didn't dump the flamethrower and run like hell for shelter. But I didn't.

What I found when I finally reached the seawall at the foot of the bluffs is difficult to describe. Men were trying to dig or scrape trenches or foxholes for protection against incoming fire. Others were carrying or helping the wounded to areas of shelter. We had to crouch or crawl on all fours when moving about. Most of us were in no condition to carry on. All were trying to stay alive for the moment. Behind us, other landing craft were attempting to unload their equipment and personnel in the incoming tide and were coming under enemy fire as well. I realized that we had landed in the wrong beach sector and that many of the people around me were from other units and were strangers to me. What's more, the terrain before us was not what I had been trained to encounter. We could see nothing above us to return fire to. We were the targets.

By now we were being urged by braver and more sensible noncoms and one or two surviving officers to get off the beach and up to higher ground. But it would be some time before enough courage returned for us to attempt it. One or two times I was able to control my fear enough to race across the sand to drag a helpless G.I. from drowning in the incoming tide. That was the extent of my bravery that morning.

By now, clear thinking was replacing some of our fear, and many of us accepted the fact that we had to get off the beach. Word was passed that a small draw providing access up the bluff had been found and that attempts were being made to blow up the barbed wire with bangalore torpedoes and find a way up through the mines. As I started up, I saw the white tape marking a safe path through the mines, and I also saw the price paid to mark that path for us. Several G.I.s had been blown to death, and another, still alive, was being attended to. As I passed, I could see that both his legs were gone, and tourniquets were being applied by a medic.

The rest of the day is a jumbled memory of running, fighting and hiding. We moved like a small band of outlaws, much of the time not knowing where we were, often meeting other groups like ours, joining and separating as situations arose. I remember one time, while moving along a road, suddenly coming under fire from some sort of artillery piece around the bend. I could also hear the clank of a track vehicle and realized that it was a tank or half-track of some kind. Terrified, I turned, ran like hell, and dove into a deep covered roadside ditch. Already there was a tough old sergeant from the 1st Division lying on his side as one would relax on a sofa. Knowing that the 1st Division was combat experienced, I screamed at him, "I think it's a tank--what the hell can we do now?" He stared calmly at me for a few seconds, poker-faced, and said, "Relax, kid, maybe it will go away." And sure enough, it did go away.

"IN A FIELD OPPOSITE, WE SAW THE MOST TERRIBLE CARNAGE. THERE WERE GLIDERS UPENDED ON THE POSTS AND DEAD MEN EVERYWHERE." --John Kite Kite, 23, a special-forces sergeant in the British army, took part in the assault on Juno Beach

Our destination five or six miles inland was Douvres-la-Delivrande; our primary objective was the radar station, then the school, which had to be cleared for an HQ. The night before, I handed the men cards to write out their last will and testament, and a little note that could be sent to their parents without being censored (we would be away by the time they got them). I also gave the men 40 francs each. We studied everything thoroughly, over and over again. I told them that if anyone was hit, you don't pick him up, there were others detailed to do that; the assault could not be held up. All told we carried a load of 78 lbs. on our backs. And we had a silly rubber ring--it was supposed to keep us afloat. We used it afterward as a pillow.

When we were due to land, we were told to get down in the hull of the ship. I had my last words with the men and said, "Make peace with your Maker; good luck." I was so scared, all the bones in my body were shaking. I said to myself, Pull yourself together, you're in charge and supposed to show an example. When the ramp went down dead on 0600 [hours], I looked around, and there were pools of water by my men. It wasn't seawater. The Canadians revved the tanks up before we left the ship; the noise was huge, and it helped.

We went into the water and luckily were able to touch bottom. We could see an 8 ft. wall on which the engineers had put up wire mesh for us to climb. We waded through the water, avoiding mines, and my platoon eventually got to the beach. Jim, my other sergeant, took the men up the sand dunes and over the wall, whilst I reported to the beach master the number of troops I had brought ashore and my code number. He said thank you, get off this beach ... quickly.

In a field opposite, we saw the most terrible carnage. There were gliders upended on the posts and tree stumps left for that purpose by the Germans. There were dead men, and dead cattle and horses everywhere. The men [in our unit] had shot a couple of Germans, and we rolled them off the road into a ditch so that they wouldn't be run over. We walked single file up the road, as the verges could have been mined. There was sniping. I gave instructions that the section leader should give a burst of fire at any thick foliage or any windows that were open. The windows soon shut. We stopped to have a cup of tea; we stayed in the ditch, and one of the men who could speak fluent French brought back a pail of boiling water.

At Douvres-la-Delivrande we checked out a school and ensured it was free of booby traps so it could be used as a brigade HQ. My next job was to go to the radar station--a concrete blockhouse, a huge hexagon with apertures all round. The Germans were inside, but the Royal Marine Commandos were outside. We went on to Hermanville, which was on the main road to Caen. When we arrived it was 5 p.m. We had been up since 3 a.m. We dug a trench at the corner of a field and slept.

"THE ENEMY WAS LEANING OVER AND THROWING DOWN HAND GRENADES BY THE BUSHEL BASKETFUL." --James Eikner Eikner, 30, was a communications officer with the 2nd Rangers Battalion, which scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to eliminate fortified German gun emplacements

Pointe Du Hoc was equidistant between Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. The six 155-mm guns had a 25,000-yd. range, and they could rain destruction down on either of the beaches and reach far out into the sea and cause tremendous damage to naval craft. So this installation was [considered] the most dangerous within the invasion area. Toward the sea the cliffs dropped off about 100 ft. on the average, from vertical to near vertical to actually overhanging.

We put the landing craft into the water, and of course it was pitch black and nothing could be seen. The waves were headed right into us, and water began to leak in through the front ramp. Just as there was enough daylight to make out the headlands, things didn't look right. Our little three-company flotilla was two or three miles east of Pointe du Hoc. Colonel Rudder, who was leading the attack, convinced the British officer who was in charge of that craft that he was in error and made him flank left, and then we had to parallel the coastline for a couple of miles. We landed at Pointe du Hoc some 40 minutes late.

We were on our own then. Some of the rockets we carried had grappling hooks that trailed ladders made of ropes, and we got into position a certain distance from shore so that the angle was proper. We would fire two at a time. Some of the ropes didn't make it to the cliff top because the ropes had become wet and heavy. Some of the others pulled out, and the enemy cut some, but we did have enough in order to get the job done.

Most of us had something in the way of equipment to take off the boat, and my responsibility was to take off a cloverleaf of 60-mm mortar shells. So I ran down the ramp and in the water up to my knees, and headed on across what I thought was the beach. But I stepped into a shell hole that was covered with water and went down over my head. Some of our people were getting hit, and I remember one young man who was hit three times on the landing craft and twice more on the beach. Believe it or not, that young man survived.

I laid my mortar shells down under the cliff, and there was a rope right in front of me. So I started up that cliff--there were two or three guys ahead of me--and the enemy was leaning over and shooting at us and throwing down hand grenades by the bushel basketful. Before we got to the top, about two-thirds of the way up, a tremendous explosion occurred just above us. It brought down tons of rock and dirt, and of course we all went back down the cliff. I caught on a little ledge; I was covered up to my knees.

The enemy was still up there shooting and throwing down grenades. I got my tommy gun out, took aim at one of the characters up there, and--my gun wouldn't fire. So there I was in the grandest invasion in history with no weapon. I looked around and spied a youngster with a radio on his back down in a cave beneath Pointe du Hoc at water level. I scrambled down the cliff, went to him and asked if he had sent any messages yet, but he said that he hadn't. I had a number of priority messages to get out, and I sent the message, "Praise the Lord." This was a code phrase that meant all the men were up the cliff.

As some of you may have read, the big guns were not in place. One patrol led by a sergeant from D Company ran upon the big guns about a mile inland. The enemy had moved them up there for better protection. So while a buddy of his was standing guard, the sergeant sneaked into the area where the guns were being camouflaged and put thermite grenades in the breech blocks to make them inoperable. There was a large stockpile of shells there all ready to go, and had we not been there, we felt quite sure that those guns would have been put into operation and it would have brought much death and destruction down on our men.

"WE CAUGHT UP WITH MY OWN COMPANY. I WAS WITH MY VERY CLOSE BUDDIES. THAT WAS A GOOD FEELING." --Robert L. Williams Williams, 21, a sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, landed in 3 ft. of water in a flooded field behind Utah Beach

Our pilot had to take evasive action and fly very low, about 650 ft., so our paratroops ended up being widely scattered. I joined up with three other paratroopers, and we started walking north, directly toward a German machine-gun nest, as it turned out. There was a burst of gunfire, and I realized something had gone through my left pant-leg pocket. I crouched in shallow water, with just my nose and mouth exposed. I was unhurt, but two of the men I was with were killed. I kept moving, crouched in the water, until it was only a foot deep, and it started to get light.

At dawn that morning, I saw formations of B-26 bombers making their run along the beach, less than a mile away. I was exhausted, and the weight of my wet clothes and equipment was too much. I lay down across a big rosebush growing out of the water--I didn't care about the thorns. A few minutes later, I saw three men moving toward me with their rifles pointed in my direction. Luckily they were our guys. We could see a barn in the distance. We headed for it, but then we got pinned down by rifle fire. I was tired of the water and continued to head for the barn and dry ground. Fortunately the sniper was a lousy shot.

The next morning, we caught up with a group that consisted mostly of my own company. For the first time I was with my very close buddies. That was a good feeling. Midmorning we moved toward the village of Vierville and were ambushed in the center of town. The Germans had a machine gun in a church tower and a line of infantry entrenched parallel to the road. Sergeant Benjamin Stoney took a burst of machine-gun fire in the face as he peered around a stone wall to return fire, and was killed. He had jumped just ahead of me from plane No. 48. He was fourth; I was fifth. The battle lasted most of the afternoon around his body. We began to run low on ammunition.

We heard a tank approaching. It was one of ours. We pointed to the church tower, and with one shot the tank blew a big hole in the tower. Our platoon leader, Lieut. Baranowski, climbed on the tank and got the crew to mount the big .50-cal. machine gun on top. He manned that gun like a madman, killing Germans left and right as fast as he could shoot. We captured more Germans than we knew what to do with--125 prisoners, 125 dead. We had six wounded, one dead.

"FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I TOUCHED A DEAD MAN." --Elbert Legg Legg, 19, a sergeant with the 603rd Quartermaster Graves Registration Company, flew into Normandy on a glider

Our glider came in over a hedgerow of trees about 80 ft. high and nosed down into a level pasture. It was a hard, pancake-type landing. The front strut came through the wooden floor of the glider and ripped toward the rear, barely missing the legs of some of the troops. We had landed a hundred yards from the personnel-assembly point at the crossroads of Les Forges. It was early evening, and we had about four hours before dark. After a quick check of the surrounding area, I selected a large field adjacent to the Les Forges crossroads as the first work site. Four dead paratroopers already lay in the corner by the crossroads. As I examined the site, two jeeps with trailers loaded with bodies drove in and were directed to the corner of the field where the other bodies lay. The drivers made it clear they were delivering but not unloading. I sized up the situation and decided the time had come for me to act like the graves-registration representative that I was. For the first time in my life, I touched a dead man. I grabbed the leg of one of the bodies and rolled it off onto the ground. As I struggled, the drivers gave in and assisted me with the remainder of the bodies. There were now 14 dead lying in a row, and more loaded vehicles were driving into the field.

After studying the surrounding terrain, I went to one corner of the field and stuck my heel in the ground. This would be the upper left corner of the first grave. I found an empty K-ration carton and split it into wooden stakes. I paced off the graves in rows of 20 and marked them with the stakes. I had no transit, tape measure, shovels, picks or any other equipment needed to establish a properly laid-out cemetery.

Lieut. Fraim returned and said he had arranged for about 35 Frenchmen to start digging graves. The next morning, I could see them coming my way, carrying a mixture of picks, shovels and lunch pails. All the men were very old or crippled in some way. There was little conversation, since I spoke no French and they spoke no English. The long row of bodies and marking stakes made it apparent what was to be done.

I began the job of processing bodies. There were plenty of parachutes in the field, so nylon panels served as personal-effects bags and body bags. Each body was searched and all personal effects were secured, but no inventory was taken. A ruled tablet served as Graves Registration Form No. 1. Both identification tags were left with the body until it was ready to be placed into a grave. One tag stayed with the body after burial, and the other was attached to the stake that served as a grave marker. Today a small monument at the Les Forges crossroads marks the cemetery location and records that 6,000 Allied troops from the Normandy invasion were buried there. Later, the bodies were moved to permanent cemeteries in Normandy or sent back to the U.S. for burial.

Interviews for this story were drawn from the oral-history project at the Eisenhower Center for American Studies in New Orleans as well as reporting by Helen Gibson/London, James Graff/Paris and Barbara Maddux/New York