Then PC 565 took a hit. Six men were wounded. “Blood was gushing down the gunwales of that boat like a river.” Recalling the scene forty-five years later, Pike commented, “I have often told my two sons I have no fear of hell because I have already been there.”¹⁵

ENS. DON IRWIN was the skipper of LCT 614. His crew consisted of another ensign, the executive officer, and twelve Navy enlisted men. His cargo consisted of sixty-five GIs, two bulldozers, and four jeeps with ammunition-carrying trailers. He was scheduled to go in at 0730.

“As we headed toward the beach,” Irwin recalled, “the most ear-splitting, deafening, horrendous sound I have ever heard or ever will took place.” The Texas was firing over the top of LCT 614. Irwin looked back “and it seemed as if the Texas’s giant 14-inch guns were pointed right at us.” Of course they were not; they were aiming at the bluff. “You’ll never know how tremendously huge a battleship is,” Irwin commented, “until you look up at one from fairly close by from an LCT.”

Irwin was headed toward Easy Red. So far no Americans had landed on that section of the beach. To Irwin, it seemed “tranquil.” He allowed himself to think that the briefing officer had been right when he said, “There won’t be anything left to bother you guys when you hit the beach. We’re throwing everything at the Germans but the kitchen sink, and we’ll throw that in, too.”

But as Irwin ran LCT 614 onto a sandbar and dropped the ramp, “all hell tore loose. We came under intense fire, mainly rifle and machine gun.” When the first two men from the craft went down in water over their heads, Irwin realized the water was still too deep, so he used his rear anchor and winch to retract. He spent the next hour trying to find a gap in the obstacles where he could put his cargo ashore. Finally he dropped the ramp again; the bulldozers made it to the shore “only to be blasted by German gunners with phosphorus shells which started them burning.”

The GIs were trying to get off, but when the first two got shot as they jumped off the ramp, the others refused to leave. Irwin had orders to disembark them. The orders stressed that to fail to do so could result in a court-martial. He had been told that, if necessary, he should see to the execution of the order to disembark at gunpoint.

“But I could in no way force human beings to step off that ramp to almost certain wounding or death. The shellfire had grown even more intense. Pandemonium everywhere, with lots of smoke and explosions. Bodies in the water.

“The men in my crew, who were still at their battle stations and who had been standing erect on our way to the beach, were now flattened out against the craft as if they were a part of it. A couple of them were yelling, ‘Skipper, let’s get out of here!’

“After an hour of trying to get my load of troops and vehicles off, believe me I was ready.”¹⁶

IT WAS NOW 0830. Men and vehicles, almost none of them operating, were jammed up on the beach. Not a single vehicle and not more than a few platoons of men had made it up the bluff. At this point, the commander of the 7th Naval Beach Battalion made a decision: suspend all landing of vehicles and withdraw those craft on the beach.

ENSIGN IRWIN GOT the order to retract over his radio. He was told that the beach was too hot and that he should go out into the Channel, anchor, and await further orders. It was the most welcome order he ever received, but the one that he had the most difficulty in executing. As he began to retract, his LCT suddenly stopped. It was hung up on an obstacle. It could have been panic time, but Irwin kept his head. He eased forward, then back again and floated free. His crew began taking in the anchor cable. But just when the anchor should have been in sight, it stuck.

“Try as we might we couldn’t free that anchor. I gave the command ‘All engines ahead, full!’ This did cause the anchor to move, and soon coming to the surface was a Higgins boat that had been sunk with our anchor hooked into it.”

Irwin turned his LCT, gave it a couple of shakes, and freed the anchor. He got out to deep water and dropped the anchor.^I

THE 0830 GENERAL order to retract craft on the beach and postpone the landing of others until gaps in the obstacles had been blown added to the confusion. With nowhere to go, over fifty incoming LCTs and LCIs began to turn in circles.

For most of the skippers and crews, this was the first invasion. They were amateurs at war, even the old merchant mariners commanding the LSTs. The crews were as young as they were inexperienced.

Seaman James Fudge was on one of the two LSTs that had made it to the beach. When the order came to get off, “this is where our ship got in trouble, where our captain panicked. We had dropped our stern anchor. We had not unloaded a thing. The LST to our right got hit with an 88. And what our skipper needed to do was give the order ‘Haul in the stern anchor! All back full!’ But he said, ‘All back full!’ and forgot about the anchor. So he backed over his stern anchor cable and fouled the screws.”

The LST was helpless in the water, about 500 meters offshore. Eventually, it was offloaded by a Rhino. Fudge said, “It was quite difficult to unload tanks from the LST to the Rhino. You had to have a crane, it was a terrible time in a somewhat choppy sea to have a barge to unload trucks and tanks without dropping them in the water. But we didn’t lose any.”

Fudge recalled that “an admiral came by on an LCVP and in front of the whole crew he scolded our skipper for being so thoughtless as to back over his own cable. He had some very insulting things to say to our skipper. Directly. He was a very angry man.”¹⁷

While the LST was being unloaded, Fudge saw a sight that almost every man on Omaha Beach that morning mentioned in his oral history. The incident was later made famous by Cornelius Ryan in The Longest Day. At about 0900, zooming in from the British beaches, came two FW-190s. The pilots were Wing Cdr. Josef Priller and Sgt. Heinz Wodarczyk. Ryan recorded that when they saw the invasion fleet, Priller’s words were “What a show! What a show!” They flew at 150 feet, dodging between the barrage balloons.

Fudge commented, “I can remember standing sort of in awe of them and everyone was trying to fire at them. People were shouting, ‘Look, look, a couple of Jerries!’ ” Every 40mm and 20mm in the fleet blasted away.