D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

‘stretching in front of our coast as far as the eye could see’. During the thunder of the naval bombardment, he found himself praying desperately out loud. But as soon as the landing craft could be sighted approaching the beach, he heard cries of ‘ Sie kommen! ’ from comrades in nearby positions and knew that they too had survived the shelling. He loaded his MG 42, the rapid-fire German machine gun, and waited.
    The German ability to recover rapidly was impressive. At 06.26 hours, the 352nd Infanterie-Division’s headquarters heard that, although the ‘heavy bombardment’ had buried some of the 716th Infanterie-Division’s guns under rubble, ‘three of them have been set free again and re-emplaced’. One of the myths of Omaha is that the German defenders were equipped with the formidable 88 mm gun. The 716th may have had two somewhere along the coast, but even this is uncertain. Most of the German artillery at Omaha consisted of far less accurate Czech 100 mm guns.
    Another misunderstanding arose in post-war years over the forces that the Americans faced at Omaha. Allied intelligence had underestimated German strength in the sector, but not to the degree which many historians have since implied. SHAEF intelligence had long known of the low-quality 716th Infanterie-Division, which included three Ost battalions made up from Red Army prisoners. This static defence formation was responsible for the forty miles of coast from the Vire estuary to the River Orne. It is true that SHAEF headquarters had assumed unwisely that the more powerful 352nd Infanterie-Division would still be in the area of Saint-Lô, half a day’s march to the south. Yet only two of its integral infantry battalions and a light-artillery battalion were positioned close to Omaha, certainly not the whole division, as many historical works have stated.
    The rest of Generalmajor Dietrich Kraiss’s division was spread in depth over 250 square miles between the mouth of the River Vire and Arromanches. If Oberstleutnant Meyer’s battlegroup, representing nearly half of Kraiss’s infantry strength, had not been sent off in the night to investigate the ‘exploding puppets’ dropped south of Carentan during Operation Titanic, then the German defence at Omaha might indeed have been formidable. 8 That diversion and Kraiss’s ill-chosen deployment of his forces truly saved the Allies from disaster in this central sector of the whole invasion. None of this, of course, diminishes the still-formidable defensive positions which the 1st and 29th Divisions at Omaha were about to face.
     
    The first wave of troops in their landing craft had been deeply impressed by the heavy guns of the battleships. Many compared the huge shells roaring over their heads to ‘freight cars’. At a given moment, the landing craft, which had been circling offshore to await H-Hour, then headed in towards the beach. The absence of fire at that stage aroused hopes that the navy and air force had done their work as planned. The infantrymen were so tightly wedged that few could see much over the helmets in front of them and the tall landing ramp at the front. One or two, however, noticed dead fish floating on the water, killed by the rocket fire which had fallen short. The assault craft were still ‘bucking like an unbroken horse’, so many just shut their eyes against the queasy sensation of motion sickness. By then the landing craft ‘reeked of vomit’.
    Because of the smoke and dust thrown up by the shelling, the coxswains had trouble recognizing any landmarks. One landing craft with men of the 1st Division beached near Port-en-Bessin, over ten miles down the coast. Many of the landing craft were manned by Royal Navy crews. Several misleading accounts have suggested that they were young, inexperienced and frightened, and in a couple of cases were ordered at gunpoint to take the craft in closer. More reliable sources from eye-witnesses have in fact testified to their skill and courage. A number of them had worked with the Americans in amphibious operations in the Mediterranean.
    ‘Soon we became conscious of pinking noises near us,’ wrote a US Navy lieutenant, ‘and when a couple of men toppled to the deck, we became conscious of the fact that we were being fired at with real bullets, by a very much alive enemy.’ Some officers still hoped to inspire their soldiers. ‘Make it look good, men,’ one shouted as their landing craft jammed on a sandbar just short of