"And as I can recall, I think the beach at Normandy was a very unusual beach in that it came down from a great height of over 250 yards in a sloped manner until it reached the beach water, but the whole defenses of the Germans were right on the crest of that overlooking the beach, except for the pillboxes that were encased within that whole area of the back of the beach.
I found this path….it seemed to generally go in the right direction toward the crest of the hill, and so I started up that way. And about half way there I encountered Lieutenant Spaulding with a remnant of his platoon. I think he had two squads and a person in a third squad, and they were the only survivors that I knew of at that time of E company. And he joined us at that time and became part of us. And my men were still on the beach. I was up there pretty much alone, so I told Baldridge to go back and bring the men up. I said, “They’ve got to get off the beach. Tell them to come up here with me.” Well they started up there, but I had gone on ahead. And just before you reach the crest of the ridge, it becomes almost vertical for about 10-foot drop. And there was a log there and I got behind the log to see if I could see my men coming up, and they were beginning to filter. I could see a single file beginning to develop off of the beach and coming on up when I heard a great deal of noise just above me and, sure enough, there was a machine gun nest up there and they were giving us a lot of trouble. And I was able to get within a few yards of them because they couldn’t see me. I was…in…because of the steep protection there of the crest of the ridge, and they were right on the crest in a trench. I lobbed a couple of grenades in there and silenced them and, sure enough, that opened the beach up. It was a miracle. It doesn’t mean anything on my part. It was just one of those wacky things that happen, that I was right on the spot between E1 and E2 or E3, I forget which it was. "But at 4:00 we were devastated with artillery barrage from the navy. It leveled the town, absolutely leveled it, and in doing so we suffered the worst casualties we had the whole day, not from the enemy but from our own navy. I was angered by it,
angered beyond all measure because I thought it was disgraceful. And I was quite bitter about it and the general was very bitter about it until we brought the matter to the attention of the authorities and, sure enough, the navy’s response was that the order called for the leveling of Colleville at H+60 minutes or as soon thereafter as visibility would permit. Well the pall of battle was over us. And there was no vision and we had no communication because my control officer, fire officer, had been destroyed on the beach and so I had…[not] been able to identify myself until the barrage leveled us. And by that time I was frantically throwing up smoke bombs to alert them to the fact that we were in the town, but it was too late to prevent the barrage from occurring. But their contention was that the pall of battle had obscured their vision until 4:00 that afternoon, which was H+8 hours or H+10 hours. And they said that was when visibility permitted it...." (D-Day 1Resource Packet 12) |
G Company on D-Day(Click on photos to enlarge them)
"Captain Joseph T. Dawson landed with G Company, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Divsion during the assault on Omaha Beach. Dawson’s group of men were among the first to find their way off the beach. Dawson was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor from the US Army, for his actions on D-Day. Below are excerpts from his 1991 oral history:
I landed, and I was the first man off of my boat, or off of all of our boats, followed by my communication sergeant and my company clerk. Unfortunately, my boat was hit with a direct hit, so the rest of my headquarters company was wiped out as well as the little flight control officer from the navy, which was our communication, to give us the support fire that was supposed to give us the cover and the neutralizing of the little village of Colleville, which was the objective that I was given, assigned as my objective for the day.... Now, I felt the obligation to lead my men off [the beach]…. There was a little minefield immediately behind the shingle or a shelf on a rock-coasted gravel. There’s really not any sand on the beaches there in Normandy. It’s an arkosic gravel of light, sharp-pointed material, but it washed up into a mound that gave them some little protection against the firing, but not a whole lot. But we dropped over that and got into this minefield. And there was a body of a boy who had found the minefield and unfortunately also found the mine and destroyed himself, but he pointed the way for us to go across him, which we did. And Sergeant Cleff and myself and Baldridge, another man in my company, started up the hill. "[E1 and] E3 were the two exits that we had anticipated would be the exits off the beach. We didn’t get them open until the next day. And the only place on which that whole beach was able to get off was through that point that we established. We had a firefight from there[the bluffs] on into the village of Colleville, but we were successful in being able to do it as a unit and my men did a superb job on getting there.
There was a calm over us. There was a calm and a mutual respect began to develop, and it was almost incredible. I felt it in every one of my men. We had casualties. We had lost men there on the beach. We had two or three suffered in this battle. And when we took our positions in the town, and we fought into it and I led my men in there, and the little village was dominated by a church with a steeple in it and from that steeple had been one of the forward observers of the Germans and they were directing artillery fire down on the beach. And I went in the church with two of my men, a sergeant and a private and we had a little encounter in there with the Germans. And I lost the private. The sergeant and I both were able to survive and we were able to neutralize the situation. And as I left the building and started across the street from the church, there was a farmhouse in the typical French manner, the farmhouse was enclosed with an open courtyard but with the farm buildings making somewhat of a square. And it was there that the bulk of my men had congregated after we had taken the village. And as I was going across the road, a sniper caught me with a bullet through my left knee and, it frightened me. And I was carrying a carbine, was the only time that I had a weapon other than my 45, but I had that and the bullet had gone through the stock, and the fragments, one of them lodged in my knee and the other came through the fleshy part of my right leg, which somewhat incapacitated me, but I didn’t think anything about it at the time. But then I debouched my men into a defensive position around the town, and after there had been a little firefight [that] develop[ed] from the Germans that had shot at me down at the end of the street, they had the town completely in control. And this was about 3:30 in the afternoon. |
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