What was omaha beach like

Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that fewer than 3 percent of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still living. For those who saw the fiercest combat, the numbers are even more sobering.

When D-Day finally arrived, after years of planning and mobilization, the Big Red One was at the point of the spear. Drenched, weary and seasick from the nighttime Channel crossing in rough seas, the GIs faced daunting odds. Pre-dawn aerial bombardments had landed uselessly far from their targets; naval gunfire support had ended; amphibious tanks were sinking before they reached land. Many of the landing craft were swamped by high waves, drowning most of their men.

Soldiers charged forward in chest-deep waters, weighed down by as much as 90 pounds of ammunition and equipment. As they came ashore, they faced withering machine gun, artillery and mortar fire.

In the opening minutes of battle, by one estimate, 90 percent of the frontline GIs in some companies were killed or wounded. Within hours, casualties mounted into the thousands.

Lambert was wounded twice that morning but was able to save well more than a dozen lives thanks to his bravery, skill and presence of mind. Impelled by instinct, training and a profound sense of responsibility for his men, he rescued many from drowning, bandaged many others, shielded wounded men behind the nearest steel barrier or lifeless body, and administered morphine shots—including one for himself to mask the pain of his own wounds.

Unconscious, his back broken, Lambert was tended to by medics and soon found himself on a vessel heading back to England. Photo Credit: Wikimedia. If the men got to the beach at all, they were soaked, half-drowned, and seriously weakened from seasickness. They were often without an officer to guide them, a functioning radio, or even a working weapon.

Many of them were so far from their landing zones they didn't recognize where they were. The vital support of amphibious tanks never made it to Omaha, because the vehicles had never been tested in such high seas. Those launched sank in minutes. Tanks that did make it to shore were quickly destroyed. With such catastrophic failure on Omaha, how is it that the landings succeeded?

Well, first, the Allies weren't the only ones finding failure that day. The German High Command was very slow to react to the invasion; the Allies had been successful in fooling them into thinking the real attack would be far to the north.

The German divisions held in reserve could have deployed in the first hours to devastating effect. But they weren't released until 3pm. Hitler'd stayed up late into the night, and slept in on D-Day; he had to authorize personally the release of those divisions.

How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea. Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives—Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way.

Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening.

Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand. By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone.

No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example. Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin.

Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water.

Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together.

But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably. By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day.

The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it. By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity.

D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems. By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day.

Two men. Two rifles. Baker Company which is scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and right on top of it, supporting and reinforcing, has had its full load of trouble on the way in. So rough is the sea during the journey that the men have to bail furiously with their helmets to keep the six boats from swamping. Thus preoccupied, they do not see the disaster which is overtaking Able until they are almost atop it. Then, what their eyes behold is either so limited or so staggering to the senses that control withers, the assault wave begins to dissolve, and disunity induced by fear virtually cancels the mission.

Outside the pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few heads bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough for the British coxswains. We must pull off. In the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt. The aid man, Thomas Kenser, sees him bleeding from hip and shoulder.

Kenser jumps toward him and is shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom Dallas of Charley Company, who has come along to make a reconnaissance, is the third man. He makes it to the edge of the sand. There a machine-gun burst blows his head apart before he can flatten. Private First Class Robert L. His boot heel catches on the edge of the ramp and he falls sprawling into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every man who tries to follow him is either killed or wounded before reaching dry land.

Sales alone gets to the beach unhit. To travel those few yards takes him two hours. First he crouches in the water, and waddling forward on his haunches just a few paces, collides with a floating log—driftwood. Laurent-sur-Mer, France. On the morning of D-day Pvt. Barrett, landing in the face of extremely heavy enemy fire, was forced to wade ashore through neck-deep water.

Disregarding the personal danger, he returned to the surf again and again to assist his floundering comrades and save them from drowning. Refusing to remain pinned down by the intense barrage of small-arms and mortar fire poured at the landing points, Pvt. Barrett, working with fierce determination, saved many lives by carrying casualties to an evacuation boat Iying offshore. In addition to his assigned mission as guide, he carried dispatches the length of the fire-swept beach; he assisted the wounded; he calmed the shocked; he arose as a leader in the stress of the occasion.

His coolness and his dauntless daring courage while constantly risking his life during a period of many hours had an inestimable effect on his comrades and is in keeping with the highest traditions of the U. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty on 6 June , near Colleville-sur-Mer, France. Monteith landed with the initial assault waves on the coast of France under heavy enemy fire.

Without regard to his own personal safety he continually moved up and down the beach reorganizing men for further assault. He then led the assault over a narrow protective ledge and across the flat, exposed terrain to the comparative safety of a cliff.

Retracing his steps across the field to the beach, he moved over to where 2 tanks were buttoned up and blind under violent enemy artillery and machinegun fire. Completely exposed to the intense fire, 1st Lt. Monteith led the tanks on foot through a minefield and into firing positions. Under his direction several enemy positions were destroyed.