by Tom Blair
It was early spring of ’44 when I saw my first dead soldier—well, two of ’em. Our brigade was trucked down to Slapton Sands for a landing exercise. The army had built up a section of coast just like what we could expect on the other side of the Channel. Everything from underwater obstacles to fake gun emplacements was there. Even had referees to score how well we did. A hundred boats, mostly Higgins, rushed the beach. Five hundred of us charged forward. We made a bunch of dumbass mistakes, but after a couple crappy dry runs, we started to get things right. Seemed kinda like a game, but nobody was shooting at us.
’Bout late afternoon, our exercise was over. Everybody was milling around, waiting for trucks to pick us up, but they didn’t show. Even the dumbest GI knew not to stand if you could sit, so we had GIs sitting around, waiting. A bunch of them leaning back against whatever. Two guys were plopped down in front of a tank that was stopped, with no crew. It was a Sherman with the chains that spun out in front. When the tank was stopped the chains hung straight down, sorta like a curtain of anchor chain, each link weighing five pounds. Anyway, the tank commander didn’t see the guys resting their feet, squeezes in, hits the starter, the engine catches, and the chains flail out as they spin. Both guys got whacked by the iron chains whipping around. That’s not the worst. The tank commander didn’t know anything was wrong and drove forward. Both guys were already dead, but one tank track went right over this private. Looked like somebody poured a hundred pounds of strawberry jam on the beach and shoved a uniform in the mess. Soon I’d be seeing a whole lotta beach covered with jam.
Everybody knew we’d be going across the Channel, we just didn’t know when. Thinking was that fifty thousand or so of us would go on the first day, and probably half a million within a month. Most guessed we’d be hitting the beaches around the middle of June. Guys who didn’t have corn mash for brains were looking at calendars and trying to figure out what days had the best tides and moon for an invasion. The big brains thought the smaller the moon and the higher the tide, the better the chance we’d be going.
Something else was expected in June, Hazel’s baby. Tom told me at Christmastime that Hazel was in the family way. I shouldn’t have, but I asked who the father was. ’Course, I was just funning him, but we weren’t getting much leave, so old Tom musta been making hay while the sun was shining.
Starting in May no one was let off the base, MPs walking around the whole perimeter. We couldn’t figure out whether they were keeping people out or keeping us in. Every piece of equipment we had got loaded up. On June 3 we were on our way, a convoy almost a quarter-mile long. I thought the roads were going to give way. Every few miles our convoy would snake through a village. Whole families of Brits stood out in front of their cottages, waving and smiling. Some offered a quick cup of tea, they knew where we were going. Couldn’t help but think of the story Cecil told us, how a poor bloke in a cart on the way to the Tower would be offered free drinks before he got his head chopped off.
By dark we were on the Channel coast, up from the Dover cliffs. Took us until midnight to get sorted out, then loaded up on an LSI. Think it stood for Landing Ship for the Infantry. The LSI was 150 feet or so long with most of the space open to the air, sorta like a real big Higgins boat. Stole some sleep. Then daybreak, the 4th of June. The weather was warm, the water calm. Sergeant got us formed up, then Lieutenant Johnson briefed us with big maps of the Normandy coast. ’Course, the army couldn’t keep things simple. Over maybe two miles of beach they had sections marked off with code names. We were going in on Fox Green at Omaha. The beach next to our target was called Easy Red. I remember thinking I’d rather be going to Easy Red than Fox Green.
Standing on a crate of mortar shells, the lieutenant told us the beaches would be beat to hell and the Germans would be shell-shocked when we poured off the boats. The Air Corps was sending over a thousand planes to bomb the crap out of the beaches and bunkers. Battleships would be shooting twelve-inch shells that weighed two thousand pounds into the beaches. Sounded good to me. Around midnight we would push off, cut across the Channel for four hours, then down the sides of the LSI and into Higgins boats. A quick two-mile run to the beach and we’d be in France.
Remember I told you that the Air Corps tried to teach us to tell the difference between Kraut planes and our planes, but us foot soldiers couldn’t figure out the difference? Some general got a smart idea. Lieutenant Johnson told us they’d painted the bottom of the wings of every American and British plane with zebra-like stripes. If we saw a plane with big black-and-white stripes, it was ours. No stripes, shoot the asshole out of the sky.
We spent the afternoon cleaning equipment and chatting. No big talk. Tom and I gabbed a lot about nothing, mostly joking, some serious stuff. We agreed that if either of us got killed and the other lived, the lucky one would visit the other fella’s family when they got back. I was thinking I wouldn’t want Tom to see my house in Renfroe. Then I thought if he did, I’d be dead, so’s I shouldn’t worry.
At 2400, midnight, we were off. The first half-hour wasn’t so bad, a couple guys got seasick. Then, we were in the open Channel with big I want to drown you waves spraying over the sides. LSIs weren’t built to cut through the water, they battled it, a constant rocking, forward, backward, left, right. Most everyone was heaving, slippery vomit all over the decks. Not one GI wasn’t soaked with salt water. With the wind and wet clothes we were shivering cold. Then the LSI halted, made a big circle, then moved in a straight line. I pulled out a compass, we were heading back to England.
Anchored in a harbor with fifty other LSIs, all around green pastures—English pastures. The invasion had been called off because of the choppy seas. Maybe we’d go tomorrow. No one was allowed off the boat, so we did what we always did, wait. Broke open some K rations and played some cards. There was some sleeping, probably some praying.
Finally, nightfall. We pushed off again at 2300. The waves were taking a rest. Close to four hours later we were there, the coast of Normandy, waiting for the sun. Then a noise rolled over us and liked to push our ears shut. For half an hour or more the drone of an army of bombers. We couldn’t see them through the overcast but for sure they were there. In the distance explosion after explosion, the bombers were doing their job.
At crack of day we could just make out a hint of the Normandy coast. Everything was black or gray, just a few whitecaps. Ordered down the side of the LSI, into the Higgins. No one was joking. We held next to the LSI till all the Higgins boats in our group were filled. Couple guys got tangled up in the boarding ropes, but nothing bad.
As soon as we pushed off from the LSI we had a big problem. Everybody had more gear than the generals had figured on, so our Higgins boat was scary low in the water. The wind picked up and the seas were high again, with waves four feet or more. Heading toward the beach, our boat was plowing through the waves while the green seawater was pouring in over the sides. The bilge pump wasn’t working, so we were all bailing like hell with our helmets. Hadn’t practiced this at Slapton.
A quick glance over my shoulder, Tom was bailing with a helmet in each hand, wondered where he got the extra one. The coxswain, the guy steering the Higgins boat, was at the stern. His mouth wide open and his eyes not blinking. After ten or fifteen minutes of bailing like hell less water was breaking over the sides, then almost nothing. I caught my breath and glanced around, we all looked like we’d already been in a battle and lost.
Off to our left, fifty yards or so, two of the Sherman tanks with their canvas skirts that made ’em boats, churning toward the shore. All of a sudden four guys came up from one of the tank’s turrets and jumped into the sea. Then the tank disappeared, it sunk. A few moments later the other tank made like a submarine. No one got outta that one.
Closer to the beach, it looked gray, not white. The color wasn’t important, all that mattered was that the beach was smooth. No bomb craters, no craters from naval guns. Smooth, just like Slapton, except here we had jacks. Y’all know the metal toy jacks
that kids play with? Just like those, except these were maybe eight feet or so tall, obstructions with Teller mines sticking up out of the water.
Up from the beach there was a rise to a bluff, over to the right, halfway down the bluff, a structure. Never seen anything like it before. It looked just like some concrete building had been buried in the bluff with only one side showing. No windows—just a long narrow opening from one side to the other. Out from this slit there was a long black shaft. Wondered for a moment what the hell it was. Then I knew.
I stood halfway up in the Higgins and looked back, saw maybe a couple hundred other Higgins, like a swarm of giant black beetles. Then splashes far to our right. Big splashes. Kraut shells from the beach. But just splashes, nothing hitting our boat.
We were maybe three or four hundred yards offshore. Didn’t look like Fox Green Sector to me. Another hundred yards, then the spray. A spray of machine-gun bullets, then mortars. Everybody dropped down below the sides. Water sloshing over the front as we rammed the waves. Bullets were hitting the boat. One ricocheted off some equipment above the sides, hits a guy in his stomach. Fell on his side, screaming. Mortar shells all around.
A sudden jolt and we were stopped. We’d hit a sandbar. The front dropped, the sides and bottom of our boat framed the view forward. A frame for a picture of hell. The beach was a hundred yards away. Between us and the beach the water looked like a hailstorm of ripples in Harkins Creek. But it wasn’t ice pellets making the ripples. Both platoon leaders froze, then one folded face forward into the water.
Lieutenant Johnson was yelling and pushing. Everyone off! We shuffled and stumbled forward. Down the ramp, into the water. Moving forward, I saw guys falling. Then it was my turn. It was only a foot deep. A few steps forward, and then I was in water over my head. I’m underwater. I’m going to drown. Dropped my rifle, tore off my gear. Gagging, I came to the surface, gasping, swimming forward. Then sand under my feet. Fifty yards of wading forward. All around bullets slapping the water. Explosions, mortar shells, hitting with great whooshes, then concussions, then blankets of water.
Crawling forward to an obstacle on the beach. Steel girders welded together in an X shape. Laying behind it, bullets hitting the steel above me. I was in combat. I was heaving salt water. I’d lost all my equipment, and I was hiding behind Kraut girders, scared shitless. I looked back. Boats were burning, abandoned equipment everywhere on the beach, guys sprawled in the sand, most of them facedown. One poor soul was kneeling with a Bible in his hand, then he was gone in a red mist. Guys were wading out of the water and not falling, just slowly crumpling. Some GI comes walking forward, not crouched over, like he didn’t have a care in the world, then almost cut in two with the buzz of a machine gun.
More guys to the obstacles. Two other GIs next to me, squeezing together behind the girders. Then Lieutenant Johnson was with us, yelling. Our only hope was to get to the bluff. He pushed off, ran a dozen steps, then an explosion, he’d stepped on a mine. There was a thud as his boot hit the obstacle we were cowering behind, then fell in the sand in front of us. Part of his leg still in the boot.
The guy next to me started forward. A sharp clunk and he was down. A hole in his helmet as big as a fist. I looked at the guy lying next to me. He wasn’t moving. His eyes weren’t blinking, he wasn’t breathing. Someone behind me was crying for his mother.
That night I was at an aid station outside Colleville, about a mile up from the beach. We weren’t in the town, the Germans still had it. Fighting was going on a few hundred yards away—not with howitzers and tanks and stuff, just small-arms fire. Both sides were tired. Medics got the aid station squeezed tight to a hedgerow. I was lying on my stomach, thinking I’m alive. Most of the men in my platoon weren’t. Tom didn’t make it, the sergeant didn’t, the lieutenant didn’t.
For that first half-day on the beach I pretty much knew I was dead. Just waiting to die. By noon we had a foothold. Some infantry got through a ravine and circled behind the Kraut bunkers. By afternoon I was earning my pay, blowing up bunkers and pillboxes. Then some bad-luck GI down the beach stepped on a mine. A shrapnel splinter ripped into my ass. Burned like hell, but I kept going, kept doing my job.
By the time the sun was setting my boots were full of blood. Didn’t like to, but I went over to a medic. Felt guilty only being shot in the ass, but figured bleeding to death was going to make me as dead as getting my head blown off. Got shuffled around, then to the aid station by the hedgerow. Dropped my pants for the medic. He told me I’d get two Purple Hearts ’cause the piece of metal ripped through one of my ass cheeks, came out, then ripped into the other. He rubbed in sulfur, and then some guy put in stitches and told me to stay on my stomach for the night.
Me and a handful of tired-ass GIs laid ourselves down next to a stone wall for the night. There I laid, almost too tired to breathe. Fell asleep and didn’t move until some sergeant kicked me awake in the morning.
The first week after the invasion was confusion, good confusion. Our job was sorting out all the equipment and men that were coming ashore. No question, the generals really had day one of the invasion screwed up. The only reason we didn’t get our butts kicked back to England was that a lotta GIs were willing to die. No fancy equipment got us past the bluffs.
But the generals had things planned pretty smart after the first day. Navy came in and sank these big concrete boxes offshore. Linked together, they made a harbor. Then engineers bulldozed a roadway from the beach right to these blocks, so ships could dock and unload. I’d never seen so much equipment—more than I thought the army had.
By the second week we were building ammo dumps a mile or so back from the beach. Know what our big problem was? I’ll tell ya. Craters, damn craters from a few thousand bombs the Air Corps had dropped the morning of the invasion. I’d met some Air Corps guys in pubs. They had it as rough as anybody. Climbing into their B-17s and B-24s and flying in 30-degree-below temperatures, sucking oxygen through a mask for six hours while Krauts were shooting the hell out of their planes. But the day before the invasion some Air Corps general figured he wanted to play it safe and not be blamed for sinking one of our ships. So this chickenshit general had the bombers target their drops one or two miles behind the beach. For all the Air Corps did for us on June 6, they should have just slept in and enjoyed a real nice breakfast. Same with the battleships. I’m not sure where their shells went, but it sure the hell wasn’t on the beaches.
By the end of June I could sit on my ass again and things on the Normandy coast were wrapped up. Nothing more for us engineers to do. My unit was real thin, only one out of four guys left, so we all got reassigned to the 326th Engineer Battalion. They were supporting the 28th Division that was pushing through France. Took me two days to find them, and guess who was there? Emory. Hadn’t seen him since late ’43. I asked him if he had found his suitcase yet. He was looking good. Emory came ashore the afternoon of June 6. His guys all made it okay at Normandy, except for one young kid. This dumbass GI went into a Kraut bunker looking for souvenirs. Picked up a German helmet, put it on, and came out with his hands up, pretending to be a Kraut. Right off a GI shot him in the face. Guys that came ashore that morning weren’t taking no prisoners.
Anyway, Emory was acting sergeant and got me into his platoon. His sergeant had bought the farm when a Kraut sniper nailed him. We just kept doing what we’d been trained for, laying down bridges and blowing things up. Mostly we built bridges, following right behind the 110th Infantry, about a thousand foot soldiers. They were tough. Real tough. I saw them do some things I shouldn’t tell you about.
About half the bridges we built were ’cause the Krauts blew ’em up as they pulled back. The other half were ’cause we blew ’em up. The Air Corps was blowing up any bridge they could find on the Kraut side of the front. Wanted to keep supplies from getting to them, and wanted to keep the Krauts from retreating with their equipment.
By the time July 4th rolled around, I was thinking I might just see Renfroe again
. Most times we weren’t real close to the killing. And life was easier. ’Course, then easier meant less hard. Once every few days we got a hot meal. Not hot like cooked on a stove, but hot like a trash can sitting on a fire with ten gallons of stew being stirred with a broom handle by a GI that hadn’t washed since he’d set foot in France. And if we were lucky, we got a shower. They would have a big can, probably the same one they cooked the stew in, lashed way up in a tree. It was filled with water, and a hose with a clamp came out the side. We could give ourselves a real quick cold shower and then put on the same stiff, filthy clothes we had been sleeping in for weeks.
Every so often we’d get a batch of fresh-faced, bug-eyed replacements. They stood out ’cause their uniforms were clean and they had all the right equipment. Emory would fun them, asking if anyone was a college graduate or had any college schooling. If a hand went up he told them he had a real important job for someone really smart. Told the kid he was the senior private in charge of latrines. Should check them each day, and if one was more than half full of shit, he should fill it and real quick dig another. Sounded funny then. Five months later I would have kissed ass to have been able to jump into a latrine full of shit. Anything to get away from the Kraut 88s.
Sure felt bad about the French. Always coming out of their homes, smiling at us GIs and giving us something to eat or drink. ’Course, you know who grabbed the wine—Emory. Anyway, these French couldn’t have been nicer. But I couldn’t push it out of my mind that Cecil had called them frogs. Couldn’t see why he did.