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Perhaps the worst area on the beach was Dog
Green, directly in front of strongpoints guarding the Vierville draw and under
heavy flanking fire from emplacements to the west, near Pointe de la Percee. Company
A of the 116th [29th Division] was
due to land on this sector with Company C of the 2nd Rangers on its right
flank, and both units came in on their targets. One of the six LCA's carrying Company
A [116th Regiment,29th Division] foundered
about a thousand yards of shore, and passing Rangers saw men jumping overboard
and being dragged down by their loads. At H+6 minutes the remaining craft
grounded in water 4 to 6 feet deep, about 30 yards short of the outward band of obstacles. Starting off the craft in three files,
center file first and the flank files peeling right and left, the men were
enveloped in accurate and intense fire from automatic weapons. Order was
quickly lost as the troops attempted to dive under water or dropped over the
sides into surf over their heads. Mortar fire scored four direct hits on one
LCA, which "disintegrated." Casualties were suffered all the way to
the sand, but when the survivors got there, some found they could not hold and
came back into the water for cover, while others took refuge behind the nearest
obstacles. Remnants of one boat team on the right flank organized a small
firing line on the first yards of sand, in full exposure to the enemy. In short
order every officer of the company, including Captain Taylor N. Fellers, was a
casualty, and most of the sergeants were killed or wounded. The leaderless men
gave up any attempt to move forward and confined their efforts to saving the
wounded, many of whom drowned in the rising tide. Some troops were later able
to make the sea wall by staying in the edge of the water and going up the beach
with the tide. Fifteen minutes after landing, Company A was out of action for
the day. Estimates of its casualties range as high as twothirds…
…An unscheduled gap of more than a thousand
yards separated Company A from the next unit of the 116th Regiment [29th Division]. Instead of coming in on
Dog White, Company G [116th Regiment, 29th
Division] landed in scattered groups eastward from the edges of Dog Red.
The three or four boat sections nearest Dog Red, where smoke from grass fires
shrouded the bluff, had an easy passage across the tidal flat. Most of the men
were halfway up the flat before they became aware of sporadic and inaccurate
fire, and only a few losses were suffered. In 10 to 15 minutes after touchdown
this part of the company was behind the shingle bank, in good condition.
Officers, knowing they were left of their landing area, were uncertain as to
their course of action, and this hesitation prevented any chance of immediate
assault action. Further east on Easy Green, the other sections of Company G [116th Regiment, 29th Division] met much
heavier fire as they landed, one boat team losing 14 men before it reached the
embankment.
Company F [116th
Regiment, 29th Division] came into the beach almost on its scheduled
target, touching down in front of the strongly fortified les Moulins draw
(D-3). The 3 sections to the east, unprotected by the smoke, came under
concentrated fire and took 45 minutes to get across the exposed stretch of
sand. By this time half their numbers were casualties; the remnants reached
cover in no state for assault action. The other sections had better fortune,
but had lost their officers when they reached the shingle bank and were more or
less disorganized.
This completes the story of the first assault
wave on half of Omaha Beach, for the fourth
company of the 116th [29th Division],
supposed to land on Easy Green, veered a mile eastward from that sector. The
three companies in the 116th's one were in poor condition for carrying out
their assault missions. By 0700 Company A [116th
Regiment, 29th Division] had been cut to pieces at the water's edge,
Company F [116th Regiment, 29th Division]
was disorganized by heavy losses, and of the scattered sections of Company G [116th Regiment, 29th Division], those
in best shape were preparing to move west along the beach to find their
assigned sector…
… Four boat sections of Company E, 116th Regiment
[29th Division], came in on the same
beach sector [16th Regiment – Easy Red] and had much the same experience. From
3 of the sections, a total of 60 men reached the shingle bank. The company
commander, Captain Laurence A. Madill, already wounded crossing the beach, was
hit twice by machine-gun bullets as he returned to salvage mortar ammunition.
His last words were, "Senior non-com, take the men off the beach."
The company's sections were separated, and it was some time before any contact
was made between them…
…Beginning at 0700, the second group of assault
waves touched down in a series of landings that lasted for 40 minutes, ending
with the support battalions of the two regimental combat teams. The later waves
did not come in under the conditions planned for their arrival. The tide,
flowing into the obstacle belt by 0700, was through it an hour later, rising
eight feet in that period; but the obstacles were gapped at only a few places.
The enemy fire which had decimated the first waves was not neutralized when the
larger landings commenced. No advances had been made beyond the shingle, and
neither the tanks nor the scattered pockets of infantry already ashore were
able to give much covering fire. Consequently, much of the record of this
period is a repetition of what had happened earlier. Casualties continued to be
heavy on some sectors of the narrowing tidal flat, though unit experiences
differed widely and enemy fire, diverted or neutralized by the troops and tanks
already along the embankment, was not often as concentrated as earlier in the
assault. Mislandings continued to be a disrupting factor, not merely in
scattering the infantry units but also in preventing engineers from carrying
out special assignments and in separating headquarters elements from their
units, thus hindering reorganization.
Rifle companies in the later assault waves of
the 116th Infantry [29th Division] were
organized somewhat differently from those in the first landings. Two sections
in each company were designated as "assault" units and carried the
special weapons and equipment characteristic of the first wave. The assault
sections had the mission of mopping up enemy emplacements bypassed by the first
wave. The other four boat sections had the ordinary equipment of rifle units.
On the assumption that the first penetrations
would already be made, support units were under orders to proceed as quickly as
possible inland, by boat sections, toward battalion assembly areas. In the 16th
Infantry, the support battalion (1st) was organized in assault sections exactly
like those of the first wave; this arrangement may have reflected the
experience of that regiment in its previous landings in Africa and Sicily, where plans had
never worked out according to schedule.
In the 116th Regiment zone three companies of
the 1st Battalion were scheduled to land in reinforcement of Company A [116th Regiment, 29th Division] on Dog
Green, facing the Vierville exit. In all, only two or three boat sections from
these units landed on Dog Green.
Company B [116th
Regiment, 29th Division] was due in at 0700. Its craft failed to pick up
landmarks, scattered badly, and beached on a front of nearly a mile to both
sides of the target area. Only three scattered sections on the flanks were to
play much part in the later battle. The craft which touched down on or near Dog
Green came under the same destructive fire which had wrecked Company A [116th Regiment, 29th Division], and the
remnants of the boat sections mingled with those of Company A [116th Regiment, 29th Division] in an
effort for survival at the water's edge.
Company C [116th
Regiment, 29th Division] came in at 0710 a thousand yards east
of the Vierville exit, on Dog White, in a mislanding that was to work out to
ultimate advantage. One of its 6 craft ran into a mined obstacle, and was
delayed 20 minutes in maneuvers to get free without setting off the mines. The
others came in fairly close together, suffering only one mishap when a craft
thrown by the surf against a ramp turned over on its side, spilling men and
equipment into water four to five feet deep. This boat section had been
equipped for mopping-up work at the Vierville draw, and all its flamethrowers,
demolition charges, bangalores, and mortars were lost. Enemy fire was
surprisingly light, possibly because Company C [116th Regiment, 29th Division] was near the western end of the
belt of smoke coming from grass fires on the bluff slopes. Only five or six
casualties were suffered in disembarking and getting across the open sand. No
other troops were near them; only four or five tanks were in sight. Bunched
together on a front of about a hundred yards, Company C's men took shelter
behind the four-foot timber sea wall and reorganized. Most of their equipment
was intact, their sections were well together, and they were in relatively
better shape for action than any unit so far landed in the 116th's zone.
Company D [116th Regiment, 29th Division] was not so fortunate. Three of its
craft were in serious trouble as a result of shipping water; one of these was
abandoned far out, and the section got in after noon. Another craft was sunk by
a mine or an artillery hit 400
yards from shore, forcing the men to swim in under a
barrage of mortar shells and machine-gun bullets. Half the personnel reached
the sands. A third section was debarked 150 yards from the
water's edge, saw riflemen ahead of them staying in the water, and followed
their example, hiding behind obstacles. It was nearly two hours before the
scattered survivors got to shore, with one mortar and no ammunition. The second
platoon arrived on the beach with only two machine guns, one mortar and a small
amount of ammunition. The first platoon got one machine gun and one mortar
ashore during the morning. The heavy weapons of the 1st Battalion [116th Regiment, 29th Division] were to
take little part in the beach assault.
To complete the picture of misfortune for the
1st Battalion [116th Regiment, 29th
Division], the three craft carrying the Headquarters Company, the command
group, and the Beachmaster's party for Dog Green were brought in several
hundred yards west of that sector and under the cliffs. Headquarters Company
lost heavily among officers and non-commissioned officers, including the
commanding officer of the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion. The crossing
of the tidal flat to the cliff against concentrated small-arms fire cost
one-half to two-thirds of the group. The survivors, reaching the base of the
cliffs, took refuge in niches in the rock. Not only was the command group
separated from all other battalion units, but the members of the group were so
scattered that they had to use radio for inter-communication. Sniper fire from
the cliffs was to pin the group here for most of the day.
Three companies of the 2nd Battalion [116th Regiment, 29th Division] had
landed in the first wave. Completing the Battalion, Company H got in at 0700,
but in condition to furnish very little supporting fire for the rifle units.
The 1st Machine Gun Platoon and two mortar sections beached on Easy Red, where
they helped the 18th Regiment [1st
Division] later in the morning. Other elements, landing on Dog Red and Easy
Green, suffered heavy losses, one boat section getting only six men to the
shingle. Battalion Headquarters and Headquarters Company [116th Regiment, 29th Division] came in on Dog Red at 0700. When
the ramps went down, fire was so heavy that many men took refuge behind some
tanks at the water's edge, only to find them favorite targets for artillery
fire. Major Sidney V. Bingham, Jr., Battalion Commander, was among the first to
reach the shingle, where he set to work trying to revive leaderless sections of
Company F [116th Regiment, 29th Division].
For nearly an hour he had no radio working to contact the widely scattered
elements of his battalion. During this period, the only part of the 2nd
Battalion [116th Regiment, 29th Division]
which had arrived at the embankment in good condition, four sections of Company
G [116th Regiment, 29th Division],
set out to reach their planned assault sector on Dog White. To do so meant a
lateral movement of several hundred yards behind the now crowded shingle bank
and under small-arms fire. Starting out together and working slowly west, the
four sections gradually lost all cohesion. One after another, individuals or
small groups stopped to take cover, and sections became mixed or separated.
Only remnants were to reach Dog White, about 0830, after the main action on that
sector was over.
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