FRANZ GOCKEL WAS crouched in his dug-out at the other end of Omaha Beach when the Allied bombardment struck.
‘Boys, this time it’s for real.’
Gockel swung his machine gun skywards and checked the ammunition belt. He tried to focus on aiming his weapon, but the bombers were flying too fast and he was forced to throw himself into the dirt as the first of the shells rammed home. ‘Dust and smoke enveloped us. The earth shook. Eyes and nose were filled with dust. Sand ground between teeth.’1 No sooner had the planes disappeared than the naval bombardment began. ‘A deafening torrent of smoke and dust rolled towards us, cracking, screaming, whistling and sizzling.’2
Six months in France had changed Gockel. He still looked like a boyish conscript, but he had trained hard and learned to operate his machine gun efficiently. He would never be a soldier, that much was clear, but he had the capacity to wreak carnage on any Allied troops landing on his sector of beach. This was just as well, for it was imperative to stop the invading troops as they waded ashore, when still seasick and disorientated. If they managed to reach the bluffs behind the strongpoints, they could knock out the defences of Omaha Beach from the rear.
The Allies were playing for high stakes that morning. If they failed to capture Omaha’s eastern end, as Taylor Fellers and his men had failed to capture the western end, then the entire invasion plan would be at risk. The Allied-controlled zone at Utah Beach would be left isolated and exposed, with the next nearest beachhead – at Gold – more than thirty-five miles to the east. Success on D-Day was dependent on Omaha Beach being seized by the Americans.
‘Now it’s starting!’ The cry came from Bernhard Frerking, the battery commander. ‘They’re landing! Are you all right?’
Gockel looked through his field glasses and realized that the troops would be landing directly into his line of fire. ‘The sea had come alive. Assault boats and landing craft rapidly approached the beach.’3
As the first American troops waded through the waist-high water towards the Easy Red section of Omaha Beach, they were unaware they were being watched by twenty-eight pairs of eyes. Franz Gockel moved his finger on to the trigger of the machine gun. He was ready for them.
‘Poor swine,’4 muttered Bernhard Frerking.
Jack Ellery was a sergeant with the 116th Infantry; his goal that morning was to land on the Easy Red section of Omaha and capture the track that led up the cliff to the village of Saint-Laurent. Ellery looked younger than his twenty-four years: a fresh-faced marine cadet whose pudgy cheeks and winsome smile were those of a teenager rather than a man. He had joined the army by default, having failed to get into the parachute regiment. Energetic and highly motivated, he described himself as ‘clean, bright and lightly oiled’,5 just like the M1 rifle he was carrying. He was confident that his men would take Easy Red beach.
Two thousand yards to his right, Warner Hamlett was to land on Easy Green, in the very centre of the beach. One of eight children from an impoverished family, Hamlett had joined the army as a means of escaping from the suburban dreariness of Danville, Virginia. Now, he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t have stayed at home. He was far less sanguine than Jack Ellery about pulling through the initial assault. His company commander, Captain Charles Callahan, had made another of those infelicitous addresses to his men as they crossed the Channel, warning them that ‘three out of four of us would not come back.’ He had added that only the toughest would survive and told them ‘to kill everything that stood in our way of our going home’.6 His words caused dismay and mental anguish. When Hamlett snatched a moment of sleep later that evening, he dreamed of clawing his way up the beach amid a terrifying barrage of flying logs.
The thirty men in his landing craft were under the command of Lieutenant Hillshure, who spent much of his time trying to undo the damage caused by Captain Callahan. He went ‘to each man and patted him on the back, trying to provide encouragement’. In an attempt to raise a smile, he spoke in folksy, old-time language. ‘Go get them rascals,’ he said. Few were in the mood for levity as they were extremely anxious about what lay ahead, ‘some cursing, some vomiting’.7
Each landing craft that morning was its own little world of thirty frightened men squatting in a knee-deep swill of seawater and vomit. The squall was whipping freezing spray across the bow of each boat, soaking them to their bones.
‘Hurry up. Pass the bucket, I have to shit.’ Joe Pilck’s craft was heading for Easy Green. ‘Just do as I did. Shit in your pants.’8
The two coxswains on Warner Hamlett’s boat had noticed that many of the landing craft were stopping far short of the beach on account of the intense gunfire. Many were also coming in at the wrong place, due to the strong wind and current that was sweeping them off-course, just as it had done at Utah Beach. The coxswains on Jack Ellery’s craft did their best to rectify the problem and they also vowed to set the men down on dry land.
When the ramp went down, Ellery’s first view would be the massive stronghold of WN62.
Franz Gockel was peering through the embrasure of his concrete-lined bunker, watching the Americans as they leaped through the waves. Crouched next to him was his young comrade-in-arms, Josef Schröder, and between them was their weapon of destruction, an M42 machine gun that fired 1,200 rounds per minute over a distance of 1,000 metres. The men called it their Hitlersäge or Hitler’s bone-saw on account of the tearing sound that it made when fired. It was a fearsome weapon. ‘It eats up a lot of ammunition,’ said one soldier, ‘but it eats up a lot of people too.’9
The American invaders were getting closer, ‘some in knee-deep water, others up to their chest’. Gockel swung into position behind the water-cooled machine gun. He was trembling with fear and could hear his own voice repeating a doom-laden phrase inside his head. ‘I won’t survive this,’ it said, ‘I won’t survive this.’10
‘Franz, watch out! They’re coming!’11
The guns in the main part of the strongpoint were already firing and ‘the first assault wave troops collapsed after making only a few metres headway.’ Now, it was his turn to join the massacre, aiming the machine gun and ‘firing straight into the boats with ramps’. The tidal shallows were just 250 metres away and within easy reach of the machine gun. Gockel could scarcely comprehend the bloodshed he was causing. ‘So many bodies lay on the beach. And new men just kept coming. We couldn’t understand it.’
At one point his machine gun jammed as grit blew into the belt. It was the moment every gunner feared. ‘I tore the belt from the feed tray, shook it clean and slapped it back in.’ He then resumed gunning down the newly landed troops. ‘Soon the beach was covered in Americans caught by our firepower.’
Josef Schröder was also keeping up relentless fire. ‘It’s hell. It’s like hell.’ These words kept repeating themselves in his head. But he also knew that this was the law of the jungle: ‘It’s them or me.’ He continued to shoot, ‘constantly’.12
Very few Americans were making it to the sea wall. Most were splayed on the sand, horrifically injured or too shaken to move. Gockel now used his rifle to pick off individual soldiers, ‘getting about 300 hits and at a distance of 100–250 metres’. His comrades were hurling grenades into the densest groups of men. This proved no less deadly, creating ‘heavy, heavy losses amongst the Americans’.13
When word came through that a group of Americans had reached the sea wall, the team in WN62 unleashed another nasty surprise. ‘Our mortars had waited for this moment and now lay down a terrible shelling on them, showering the men with splinters and rocks, inflicting heavy casualties on the men who sought shelter there.’14
Some eighty metres inland from Gockel’s position, Hein Severloh was manning the observation post of WN62. The strongpoint’s commander, Bernhard Frerking, had given him clear instructions to ‘open fire when the enemy is knee-deep in the water and is still unable to run quickly’. Severloh had done just that, and he had a panoramic view of the carnage he was causing. ‘I saw how the water sprayed up where my machine gun bursts landed, and when the small fountains came closer to the GIs, they threw themselves down. Very soon the first bodies were drifting in the waves of the rising tide. In a short time, all the Americans down there were shot.’
Each burst of fire brought down another group of troops. ‘I do not know how many men I shot. I almost emptied an entire infantry landing craft. The sea was red around it and I could hear an American officer shouting hysterically in a loudspeaker.’15
The men in WN62 were causing mayhem. ‘The beach became strewn with dead, wounded and shelter-seeking soldiers.’16 It seemed inconceivable that the Americans would gain a foothold anywhere on Omaha Beach, for the bloodshed taking place below Franz Gockel’s stronghold was being replicated along every inch of sand.
‘Get off the beach!’17
The same urgent cry could be heard up and down the shoreline, over the roar of exploding mortars.
Jack Ellery was desperate to do just that, for he had landed in hell. ‘Direct fire, plunging and grazing and flanking fire.’ He was half aware ‘of men falling around me’ but his entire focus was on forcing himself through the choking haze ‘of sweat, smoke, dust and mist’.18
His comrade, Roger Brugger, had landed shortly after him, wading into a maelstrom of lethal fire. WN62’s bullets were ‘tearing up the sand on either side of me’ and shells were slamming into the beach and exploding into fountains of sand. One of his comrades received a direct hit and all Brugger could see were ‘three hunks of his body flying through the air’.19 When he looked around, bodies were sprawled on the sand in various states of mutilation.
‘Get off the beach!’
Warner Hamlett could hear his pal, Mervin Matze, yelling to the men as he led a half-crazed dash up the sand. He saw Lieutenant Hillshure crumple to his knees as another shell ruptured the shoreline. He fell ‘headlong into the hole caused by the explosion’.
Hamlett hurled himself into a nearby crater. As he did so, a petrified teenager named Gillingham tumbled in after him. His face was ‘white with fear’ and he seemed ‘to be begging for help with his eyes’. Hamlett heard the sickening screech of another incoming shell. He shoved his face deep into the sand as shrapnel burst all around him. When he raised his head, he saw that flying shards had taken off Gillingham’s chin, ‘including the bone, except for a small piece of flesh’. It was terrible to behold. As Gillingham ran towards the sea wall, he was desperately trying ‘to hold his chin in place’.
Hamlett himself was struck by shrapnel. A sharp pain jolted through his spine ‘from my neck down to my lower back’. He dragged himself back to a shell-hole where he was joined by O.T. Grimes, ‘with blood covering his face where shrapnel had cut and torn his skin’.
Hamlett tested his legs. They still worked. He crawled from his hole and lurched forward, only to be caught by another wave of bullets. None hit him. He ran and he jumped, ‘falling down each time’ the machine-gun fire came close. In this way, yard by agonizing yard, he made it to the sea wall. The injured Gillingham had also made it, but he was suffering from catastrophic wounds. Hamlett and Bill Hawkes gave him a shot of morphine. He groaned in pain but was unable to speak. ‘The entire time he remained conscious and aware he was dying.’ It would take thirty minutes for him to expire, with the roar of shells as his final requiem.
Hamlett was joined by a small clutch of men from F Company, who had drifted ashore far from their intended landing. Their leader, Lieutenant Wise, was trying to form them into some sort of coherent unit when a bullet smacked him in the centre of his forehead. Hamlett watched in appalled fascination. ‘He continued to instruct his men’ – just for a second – ‘until he sat down and held his head in the palm of his hand before falling dead.’20 The bullet had ploughed through his brain before breaking out through the back of his skull.
‘Get the men off this fucking boat!’
Just a few yards from the shoreline, Sergeant William Otlowski was yelling at the coxswain as two 88 mortars landed on each side of their craft. Otlowski knew the next one would land exactly on target.
‘Sergeant, stay where you are.’
‘To hell with you, Lieutenant.’21
Otlowski plunged into the water and swam for the shore. As he did so, a third 88 smacked into the craft, shredding everyone.
Back on shore, Hamlett’s desperate little group were still being targeted by Gockel’s men, who were now using firebombs containing a yellowish powder that ignited everything it touched. They were also firing mortars at the sea wall, causing ‘shrapnel to rivet the air’. One of Hamlett’s buddies, Private Tway, was severely wounded in the back and leg.
As Hamlett looked back across the beach, he thought he could see his brother, Lee, lying face-down in the sand. ‘The back of his head looked just like Lee, but I chose not to know. The soldier’s clothes had been blown from his body.’22 It would be several weeks before he learned that his brother had also survived the first wave.
A few hundred yards to Hamlett’s right, Harry Bare was one of the few survivors of F Company who had made it to the sea wall. Now, glancing back towards the sea, he saw a massacre. He would remember it for ever, a tableau of death. ‘My radioman had his head blown off three yards from me. The beach was covered with bodies, men with no legs, no arms – God, it was awful.’23
Barton Davis was a twenty-three-year-old army engineer who had been due to land with the first wave at the centre of Omaha Beach. But his landing craft was swept eastwards by the strong current and he landed on Fox Green, well within range of Gockel’s machine gun. His men came under a blitz of fire and Davis was witness to one young infantryman being hit in the jugular vein. ‘He was propped up by his buddies who were frantically trying to stop the bleeding. They were stuffing towels in his neck’ – all done while under fire – ‘and trying pressure points, to no avail.’ The lad himself knew it was no use. He ‘smiled at his buddies, waved his hand in a gesture of “so long” and died so fast it was as though a hand passed over his face’.
Barton Davis was to witness a world of bloodshed that morning, but nothing came close to seeing a landing craft strike one of the beach obstacles. There was a violent explosion ‘and the boat seemed to disintegrate. Bodies – parts of bodies – debris – rifles – everything seemed to mushroom upward and outward like some large flower of indescribable beauty, yet terrible! It was terrible! We were horror-struck watching it.’
There had been forty men in the craft when it struck the mine and it was also laden with fuel and ammunition. ‘The water became a cauldron of burning gasoline and oil with black dots of the men trying to swim through it.’ Davis watched as ‘a headless torso flew a good fifty feet through the air and landed with a sickening thud near us.’ It was deeply shocking. ‘Some men vomited. All were heartsick.’
Most of those on board were killed instantly, but one, Nick Fina, sank straight to the bottom of the sea, gulping water as he choked to death. ‘The next thing he knew, he was being pulled from the water by his 1st Sergeant, full of water – hair, eyebrows, lashes, all burned off, but alive.’24 He eventually made it to the sea wall, where he slumped into the sand, stunned and traumatized by everything he had experienced.
The first landings on Omaha Beach were an ongoing catastrophe, with wave after wave of men being mown down as they landed. But a few troops had managed to reach the sea wall and they represented the first glimmer of hope that not everything was lost. If they could only scale the bluffs and attack the strongholds from behind, they had a chance of silencing the guns of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
Jack Ellery was one of those sheltering under the sea wall: he was within a stone’s throw of WN62. Now, in a display of extraordinary courage, he gathered four or five men and started to lead them up the bluff.
‘About half to two-thirds of the way up, a machine gun opened upon us from the right front.’ His little band scraped themselves into the dirt while Ellery himself ‘scurried and scratched’ his way forward until he was just ten metres from the gun position.
‘Then I unloaded all four of my fragmentation grenades’ and hurled them into the machine-gun nest. All four exploded, devastatingly, enabling Ellery to continue his dash up the bluff. ‘Those other kids were right behind me.’
Ellery knew that if others acted like him, then the catastrophe of Omaha might yet be turned to victory. But he also knew that any advance up the bluffs would have to be led by young officers like himself, for none of the senior ranks had landed in the first waves. He saw one young lad with a broken arm leading seven men up the bluff. He saw another carrying a wounded comrade up the cliffs.
As he clambered ever higher, and saw a handful of others doing the same, he was struck by a thought that would remain with him for years to come. That morning’s fighting owed nothing to the much decorated generals and chiefs of staff, but everything to the heroic individuals in the lesser ranks. ‘True courage is found in those who believe that there are things in life that are worth fighting for and worth dying for. You can’t buy valour and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.’
Of the generals and colonels who would later claim to have stormed up the beach, Jack Ellery saw not a single one. ‘When you talk about combat leadership under fire on the beach at Normandy, I don’t see how the credit can go to anyone other than the company grade officers and senior non-commissioned officers’ – men like Ellery himself – ‘who led the way.’25
Now, the fate of Omaha lay in their hands.