3/24/2024 0 Comments Omaha beach world war 2Reynolds was on USS Samuel Chase with the rest of B Company, 16th Infantry. We had practiced going down the nets, but the sea was calm. That was something we hadn’t practiced before. “It was critical that you tried to get into the landing craft when it was on the rise because there was a gap-the nets didn’t quite reach and you had to jump down. “The nets were flapping against the side of the vessel, and the little landing craft were bouncing up and down,” said Kellman. Then, at about 3 or 3:30 that morning, an officer gave the order and Kellman and Lanaghan and the nearly 200 men in L Company began to climb awkwardly over the gunwales of their transport and descend the unsteady “scramble nets,” just as they had done in training so many times before. Although carefully planned, the landings were a confused affair strong currents and navigational errors created problems for the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions, but the men of the Big Red One managed to push inland by early afternoon. In the predawn darkness aboard HMS Empire Anvil, 21-year-old Private Steve Kellman, a rifleman in L Company, 16th Infantry, felt the crushing weight of the moment: “In the hours before the invasion, while we were below decks, a buddy of mine, Bill Lanaghan-he was as young as I was-said to me, ‘Steve, I’m scared.’ And I said, ‘I’m scared, too.’” The Omaha Beach sectors. That was the precisely timed, well-rehearsed plan but, as anyone who has ever been in combat will testify, the battle rarely sticks to the script. Seitz’s 26th Infantry Regiment would come ashore at Easy Red and Fox Green. In the early afternoon, Colonel John F.R. Smith, Jr.’s 18th Infantry Regiment and the attached 115th RCT from the 29th. Next would come Force B, Colonel George A. Driscoll’s 1st Battalion and the guns of Lt. Hicks, Jr.’s2 2nd Battalion would hit the shore, followed by the four companies of Lt. The troops on Easy Red would be reinforced a half-hour later by the arrival of Companies G and H, while Fox Green would be backed up by Companies K and M. At the same moment, on Fox Green, the easternmost sector of Omaha Beach, Companies I and L would swarm ashore. Companies E and F of the 16th Regiment’s 2nd Battalion were scheduled to hit Easy Red Beach a minute after the 32 amphibious Sherman tanks from A Company, 741st Tank Battalion reached shore at H-hour, 0630 hours. From there the assault troops transferred into smaller landing craft for the long run into shore. Dix, and HMS Empire Anvil-had carried the 1st Infantry Division to a rendezvous point (dubbed “Piccadilly Circus”) in the middle of the English Channel. Taylor, was scheduled to land on “Easy Red” and “Fox Green” beaches, two sections of a five-mile-long beachhead code-named “Omaha” the 116th’s assigned sectors, just to the west of the 16th’s, were designated “Dog Green,” “Dog White,” and “Dog Red.”įour attack transports-the USS Samuel Chase, USS Henrico, USS Dorothea M. Charles Gerhardt’s 29th Infantry Division-a well-trained division that had not yet experienced combat. Attached to the 1st for most of the first day of this operation, known as “Overlord,” was the 116th Infantry Regimental Combat Team of Maj. Huebner’s 1st Infantry Division-the Big Red One-which had already seen plenty of combat in North Africa and on Sicily. The troops in this first wave, known as Force O, were the 16th Infantry Regimental Combat Team of Maj. It was June 6, 1944, and it was payback time. Nazi Germany had held a tight grip on the Continent ever since France fell in June 1940, and the British Expeditionary Force subsequently was pushed into the English Channel at the French port of Dunkirk. They were riding into hell, their mission to crack Hitler’s vaunted “Atlantic Wall,” reputed to be impenetrable, along the northern coast of France. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.”Ī pitiful, ragged line of tiny landing craft, each crammed to the gunwales with some 30 to 40 seasick, shivering, soaking-wet soldiers, was heading toward one of the most heavily defended coastlines on earth. In addition to his weapon, ammunition, grenades, rations, and 50 pounds of equipment, each man carried a small flyer signed by the Supreme Commander reiterating the importance of his mission: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. It seemed almost too much to ask of a mortal man. On D-day, the men proved that, when everything began to go terribly wrong, there was no substitute for the courage of the individual combat soldier. 1st Infantry Division’s 16th Infantry Regiment. Forming the very tip of the Allied spearhead that thrust onto the heavily fortified Omaha beachhead at Normandy was the U.S.
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