At 5:05 a.m., the German shore guns began firing at the Allied minesweepers, and at 5:25 p.m., the Allied naval guns returned fire 25 minutes earlier than planned, followed by about 300 B-26 bombers flying in and dropping about 1,000 tons of bombs on the German positions. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Then the "Spitfire" planes arrived to provide a calibration fire on the naval guns, and from 6:10 a.m. they released smoke to cover the landing craft to seize the beach.

Unexpectedly, one of the planes that were emitting smoke was shot down, causing a gap in the smoke to appear, which just exposed the destroyer "Corey" and immediately became the target of concentrated bombardment by German shore artillery.

The landing craft were affected by a strong southeasterly tide, which moved the beach to about 1,800 meters south of the expected landing point, an accident that brought unexpected good fortune to the Allies: there was a German regiment at the intended landing point, and two artillery batteries could suppress the beach with firepower.

The actual landing site of the Germans was only one company, and the defense was weak. General Roosevelt immediately ordered this place to be used as a landing point, and also erected a huge sign to mark the landing point, and the underwater demolition team quickly cleared the passage.

At 6:30 a.m., the landing force went ashore, at 8:30 a.m., the first echelon vanguard regiment broke through the German defense line and advanced inland, at 9:30 a.m., the regimental landing field was initially established, and at 10 a.m., the strength of two regiments had been landed, basically clearing the German defenders in this area, the 709th Division, plus the airborne troops had seized four roads, ensuring the rapid advance of the landing force.

By sunset, all three regiments of the 4th Division had landed, with a total of 21,328 men, 1,742 vehicles, and 1,695 tons of supplies, and a consolidated divisional landing field with a frontage of 4 kilometers wide and 9 kilometers deep, and the vanguard had reached the road from Carentin to Saint-Meyr and joined the Airborne Forces. On the whole day, the 4th Division suffered only 197 casualties, 10% of the projected casualties, and the losses were extremely small, the smoothest and smallest of the five Allied beachheads.

Omaha Beach is a world apart from Utah Beach, the heaviest of the five landing beaches, and is known as the "Bloody Omaha."

The son of an ordinary German peasant, Severo was a German soldier in 1941, at the age of 20, who was ordered to block the Allied landing on Omaha Beach and was a machine gunner at the WN62 bunker.

At dawn on 25 August, numerous Allied landing craft approached Omaha Beach, and Allied soldiers swarmed out in an attempt to wade onto the beach. 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 machine gun to fire bullets at the advancing American soldiers, barely stopping for nine hours.

The barrel of his machine gun eventually turned red and he had to replace it with another machine gun, and when the flaming red barrel was thrown aside, the hay next to the pillbox 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.

Severo said he used up 12,000 rounds of ammunition in nine hours, and the sea water was red with the blood of the corpses. When he ran out of machine gun ammunition, he continued to fire 400 rounds from his rifle

。 "I almost wiped out a regiment of the landing force, the surrounding sea was stained red, and I could hear the hysterical shouts of the American commanders over the horns," he said. 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 soldier 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. ”

World War II historian Helmut? Conrad believes that Severo may have caused about 3,000-4,200 U.S. casualties that day. Severo doesn't think the numbers are that big, though, but admits that "it's clear that at least 1,000, probably more than 2,000, but I don't know how many people I've killed, it's horrible, and it makes me gag just to think about it." ”

After the successful Allied landing, Severo's shelter was hit by an Allied grenade, and his commander was killed. Severo was captured by the U.S. Army and taken to the United States five days later, where he spent three years as a prisoner of war.

It was only after the end of the war that Rommel and Roosevelt had reached an agreement on the exchange of prisoners that Severo told his story.

When Severo's story began to be known to Americans, Americans gave him the nickname "The Beast of Omaha Beach."

This shows how heavy the casualties of the Anglo-American forces that landed on Omar Beach were that Omaha Beach was held in 1994 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Normandy landings.

The 20-minute shocking war scenes at the beginning of the classic war film "Saving Private Wren" shot by the famous Hollywood director Spielberg reflect the tragic battle that took place on the Omaha beachhead.

Omaha is located on the east side of Utah Beach, a 6.4-kilometer stretch of beach between the mouth of the Vail River at the southern tip of the Cotangan Peninsula and Basin Ekspres, with a coast of more than 30 meters of cliffs and four deep valleys washed out by the sea, which become a natural outlet to the interior.

The difference between high and low tide on the beach is about 270 meters, the beach is a hard sand with a high pebble embankment, behind which are sand dunes, meadows, woods, and the only road leading inland There are three small villages along the way, the cottages are made of thick stones, surrounded by a field with small trees, this is the characteristic hedge terrain of Normandy, easy to defend and difficult to attack.

The Germans made full use of the favorable natural terrain to construct fortifications, and set up three obstacles between the low tide line and the high tide line, mixed with a large number of mines, built a concrete fortress on the pebble embankment, in front of the fortress there were snake-bellied barbed wire and mines, and the four exits were sealed with mines and reinforced concrete obstacles.

There are 16 strong support points on the coast, equipped with machine guns and anti-tank guns, and there are also bunkers built on the cliffs with powerful 88mm guns, which can cover the entire beach, and there are also 6 155mm coastal guns on the cliffs of Cape Hawke, which pose a great threat to the activities of warships at sea.

…… (To be continued.) )