Thursday, June 5, 2014

D-Day Quotes 1st Infantry Division- OMAHA Beach, June 6, 1944

Anonymous Pfc, US 1st Infantry Division
16th Inf. Regiment, 1st Inf. Division, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944
There were men crying with fear, men defecating themselves.  I lay there with some others, too petrified to move.  No one was doing anything except lay there.  It was like a mass paralysis.  I couldn't see an officer.  At one point something hit on the arm.  I thought I'd taken a bullet.  It was somebody's hand, taken clean off by something.  It was too much.


Captain Joseph T. Dawson, 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division, aged 30
Captain Joseph T. Dawson landed with G Company, 16th Infantry,
1st Infantry Divsion during the assault on Omaha Beach.
Dawson being awarded the Distinguished Service
Cross, the second highest award for valor from the US Army,
for his actions on D-Day. 
The beach was a total chaos, with men's bodies everywhere, with wounded men crying, both in the water and on the shingle.  We landed at high tide, when the water was right up to the shoreline, which was marked by a sharp-edged crystalline sand, like a small gravel, but very, very sharp.  That was the only defilade which was present on the beach to give any protection from the fire above.  That was where all the men who had landed earlier were present, except for a handful who had made their was forward, most of them being killed
...The beach sounded like a beehive with the bullets flying around.  You could hear them hit and you could hear them pass through the air.  

16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Inf. Division, Omaha Beach

Capt. Edward W. McGregor, US 1st Infantry Division
My impression of the beach when I landed was, 'This is a rough place to be.'




From the book "D-DAY The Normandy landings in the words of those who took part"
Foreward by Field Marshall Lord Carver, Edited by Jon E Lewis
Pages 103 and 104
Purchase "D-DAY..." here: Amazon
Top and bottom photos by Army photographer Robert Capa

D-Day Minus 1

Do yourself a favor today June 5, 2014, and watch this 16:53 minute clip titled "D DAY MINUS 1"

"Yes, their mission had been successful. But, this down payment on freedom ran very high."