The 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Division (the Big Red One) was the only first-wave assault unit on D-Day with combat experience. It didn’t help much. Nothing the 16th had seen in the North Africa (1942) and Sicily (1943) landings compared to what it encountered at Easy Red, Fox Green, and Fox Red on June 6, 1944.
Like the 116th, the 16th landed in a state of confusion, off-target, badly intermingled (except L Company, the only one of the eight assault companies that could be considered a unit as it hit the beach), under intense machine-gun, rifle, mortar, and artillery fire from both flanks and the front. Schedules were screwed up, paths through the obstacles were not cleared, most officers—the first men off the boats—were wounded or killed before they could take even one step on the beach.
The naval gunfire support lifted as the Higgins boats moved in and would not resume until the smoke and haze revealed definite targets or until Navy fire-control officers ashore radioed back specific coordinates (few of those officers made it and those that did had no working radios). Most of the DD tanks had gone down in the Channel; the few that made it were disabled.