70Close Combat
U.S. soldiers crammed into landing craft
“Everything was confusion. Units are mixed up, many of them leaderless, most of them not being where they were supposed to be. Shells were coming in all the time; boats burning; vehicles with nowhere to go bogging down, getting hit; supplies getting wet; boats trying to come in all the time, some hitting mines, exploding...everything jammed together like a junkyard.”
Sgt. Ralph G. Martin, in Yank
U.S. soldiers landing on Omaha Beach
The next morning, following a fierce air and naval bombardment, the first assault waves from five Allied divisions storm the five Normandy invasion beaches,
On the left flank of the invasion force, the British Second Army storms Gold and Sword beaches, then pushes southeast in an attempt to take the city of Caen and the airfield nearby at Carentan. At Juno beach, the Canadians come ashore. On the right flank of the invasion force, Utah, the westernmost of the Normandy beaches, is captured by the Fourth Infantry Division of the First Army’s VII Corps. Its plan is to head to the northwest to cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and capture Cherbourg, which will give the Allies a major port for bringing in additional supplies.
Because Hitler is asleep during the morning of the invasion and has given orders not to be awakened, he does not release the German Panzer reserves until the afternoon. By then it is too late to stem the invasion. German resistance on the four landing beaches is relatively light, and although the Allied troops do not push as far inland as they had planned, they suffer fewer casualties than they had expected. But it is a far different story for the Americans who land at the beach code- named Omaha.
