On the beach, 150 rangers climbed up Cape Hawke with difficulty, and found that the so-called 155mm coastal guns were actually camouflaged by telephone poles, eliminating the threat of coastal guns.

Then the destroyer fired at every newly discovered target, and as soon as it saw the army firing tracer bullets, it took it as if it were indicating the target, and immediately bombarded it. It was the active assistance of the destroyers, which gradually suppressed the fire of the Germans and created the conditions for an American attack on the beach. American commanders on the beachhead also tried to motivate their subordinates, such as Brigadier General Kota, deputy commander of the 29th Division, who shouted on the beach with shrapnel:

"There are only two kinds of people left on the beach, those who are already dead and those who are about to die. Come on! Rush with me! Colonel Taylor, commander of the 16th Regiment of the 1st Division, also encouraged the soldiers: "If you stay here, you will only die, and if you die, you will rush out of the beach!" Under their leadership, although the US troops on the beach suffered heavy casualties, they were after all a battle-hardened ace division, especially the 1st Division, which had made great achievements since the First World War, and had the reputation of "Big Red First Division" in the US Army. When Bradley heard the news, he said with emotion: "Fortunately, the 1st Division is there!" ”

At noon, the fresh forces of the three regiments of the second echelon went ashore ahead of schedule, and with the support of naval guns and tanks, they gradually expanded the landing ground, and then, under the guidance of the "Spitfire" aircraft, the heavy guns on the US battleships and cruisers also joined in the shore firing. The bombing caused heavy casualties to the Germans, and the Allied firepower was too strong, which was also the reason why Li Mo was unwilling to fight with the Allied forces on the coast.

When it was dark, the 1st and 29th Divisions finally made a bloody way, occupying a landing field with a front of 6.4 kilometers and a depth of 2.4 kilometers, and by the time the front of the landing field was further expanded to 8 kilometers at night, with a total of 35,000 people on land. Throughout the day on D-Day, the price paid by the US 5th Army was also extremely heavy, with 2,500 casualties alone. Night. The headquarters of the 5th Army went ashore. Opening of the forward command post. The first telegram sent by Rear Admiral Roger, the commander of the Army, to Bradley was: "Thank God for building the U.S. Navy for us." ”

Severo was a corporal in the 352nd Division, and the fort where their squad was stationed was called Outpost 62.

On the day of the landing, the weather conditions were extremely bad, and the Allied forces lost 10 landing craft and more than 300 officers and men due to excessive winds and waves before the landing. Most of the officers and men on the landing craft suffered from seasickness and dampness and cold, and they were basically exhausted before they arrived at the combat site.

It was also very unsmooth after the start of the landing operation. Of the 32 amphibious tanks prepared in the western section of the beach, 27 sank as soon as they got off the sea due to excessive wind and waves. Of the 5 tanks that survived, 2 were quickly destroyed by German fire. Due to the influence of the tides and disorder. Many of the American soldiers who landed could not figure out the direction and assembly point, and a large number of soldiers crowded on the beachhead to allow German artillery to attack.

As soon as the sea water reached the knees of the Allied soldiers, Severo's superiors ordered the fire to be fired. Severo used his MG42 machine gun to fire non-stop bullets at the advancing American soldiers. There was hardly a moment of stopping for up to 9 hours, the only gap was the replacement of the spare barrel, and the red-eyed machine gun crew had forgotten the life of the barrel.

The barrel of his machine gun eventually became so hot that he had to replace it with another one, and when the flaming red barrel was tossed aside, the hay next to the bunker was immediately ignited by the heat. In that battle, Severo was red-eyed, and the American soldiers poured like a tide to the pillbox where Severo was located, and then fell to the ground like a tide, blood staining the entire sea and sand.

In nine hours, he used up all the 12,000 rounds of ammunition in the outpost, and the sea water was red with the blood of the corpses. When he ran out of ammunition from his machine gun, he continued to shoot 400 rounds with his Mauser rifle, and when he ran out of bullets, he had to pull out his P38 pistol for self-defense and continue firing "because there were so many enemy troops."

"I almost wiped out a regiment of landing troops, and the surrounding waters were stained red, and I could hear the hysterical shouts of the American commanders over the horns," he recalled. I saw machine gun bullets splashing on the beach, and when these little fountains approached the American soldiers, they began to fall, and soon the first body began to float on the high tide waves, and soon all the American soldiers lay down and started shooting. ”

Severo recalled that a young American GI escaped fire at sea and washed up on Omaha Beach. When Severo saw this, he immediately raised his gun to aim at him, and the bullet hit the soldier's forehead, knocking his helmet into a flying flight, and the soldier's head immediately blossomed and fell to the blood-stained sand.

Severo still remembers the soldier's twisted expression of pain before he died, recalling, "It wasn't until then that I realized I was killing someone." To this day, I often dream of that American soldier, and whenever I think of him, I feel so heartache and guilt. ”

The beach was full of blood and seawater, and the large-caliber artillery blew up the American troops on the beachhead in pieces, and the MG42's extremely high rate of fire was like a chainsaw sawing over the American troops one by one, and the American troops were huddled on the beachhead in groups, and all the tanks were sunk by the magnetic mines and coastal defense artillery and ships planted by the Germans.

The battle lasted until 9 hours later, and the U.S. Navy brought a turnaround to Omaha Beach. Since there was no communication from the beach landing force for a long time, the naval commander realized that the situation on Omaha Beach might have been extremely serious, so the 17 destroyers advanced to a distance of only 730 meters from the beach to provide fire support for the landing American troops at close range, despite the danger of being hit by mines, running aground, and being blown up by 155mm coastal guns.

And the death squads of the US army also climbed Cape Hawk at this time, and it turned out that all the 155mm coastal guns were actually camouflaged by telephone poles. The unscrupulous navy unscrupulously poured shells on the German strongholds, and the American troops, who had previously been blocked on the beach, began to charge under the leadership of the 1st Division of the elite troops. At noon, the second echelon of the landing force landed ahead of schedule. Under the guidance of the Air Force, the battleships and cruisers of the US Navy also began to shoot at the shore, and the German defenses basically collapsed.

When it was dark, the US troops officially landed successfully, and the headquarters of the Fifth Army went ashore and opened a command post. Rear Admiral Roger, the commander of the army, immediately sent a telegram to Bradley: "Thank God for creating the U.S. Navy. ”

Golden Beach is located east of Basing Port, from La Rivière to Aromench with a total length of 5.2 kilometers, this is a low flat beach, basically a sandy steep slope about 10 meters above sea level, the German army set up as many as 2,500 obstacles here, almost every 0.5 meters of density, and also built a lot of solid support points, deployed firepower can cover the entire beach longitudinally, but the distribution of support points is very unevenly balanced. Most of them are concentrated in La Rivière, Le Amir, and Aromench, and there are very few other places. (To be continued......)

PS: Acknowledgements:

suziyun cast 2 votes[2015-02-1300:29]

swat2011 cast 1 vote[2015-02-1223:45.]