A Soldier Remembers Utah Beach
By John C. Ausland
PARIS - As the time for the attack on Hitler's Europe approached, General Omar Bradley
gathered in Exeter in southern England, the officers of the U.S. divisions that were
to make the assault landings in Normandy.
Bradley's purpose, no doubt, was to let us meet the man who would command the American
ground forces. In the course of his talk, he sought to rouse us to the occasion by
pointing out that we would have a front-row seat for the greatest military operation
in history. For a few seconds there was silence. Then a roar of laughter swept across
the room.
Bradley looked about, clearly puzzled. A professional soldier, he was approaching the
greatest moment in his career. Most of us, however, were civilians in uniform. We were
well aware that we were about to participate in a historic event. We were all concious,
however, that a number of us would not witness the end of the first act of the drama
that was to unfold, let alone the final curtain.
When the 4th Division, which I had joined two years earlier, went ashore at Utah Beach,
on June 6, 1944, I doubt that it ever occurred to me that we could fail. After several
years of intensive training in the United States, the division went to England in early
1944. There, we made a number of practice landings on the south coast at a place called
Slapton Sands. This area was chosen because of its similarity to Utah Beach and its
hinterland.
As the level of training intensified, so did the level of tension. Finally, the 29th Field
Artillery Battalion in which I was a 24-year-old assistant intelligence officer, moved to
its assembly area near Dartmouth. Those of us who had already been informed of the plans
for the landing briefed the rest of the battalion.
At last the day arrived when we went to our embarkation point in the river Dart. By this
time, our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Joel F. Thomason, decided that several
of us would go on the same landing craft as Colonel James Van Fleet. He commanded the
8th Infantry Regiment which made the initial assault on Utah Beach.
Van Fleet's headquarters for the crossing of the English Channel was an LCT (landing craft
tank), a flat-bottomed boat just large enough to hold 4 tanks. In addition to the boat's
crew, the only person who got a cabin was Van Fleet. The rest of us made out as best we
could on the upper deck.
As we sailed from Dartmouth on June 4, we all assumed that the next morning would find us
in France. We had not counted, however, on the weather, which, when we were at sea, turned
foul. As a result of General Eisenhower's decision to delay the landing a day to allow the
weather to improve, we found ourselves bobbing around in the wind and rain for an entire
night. Slowly but surely seasickness took its toll. Even though I was on of the happy few
who did not succumb, I was as relieved as the others to see the French coast in the gray
morning light of June 6.
All around us were thousands of ships and landing craft that had made their way across the
Channel undetected. The reason for that, as we later learned was that the Germans had not
sent out their patrol boats in the belief that no one would attempt a landing in such
terrible weather.
Although we were too far out to make out what was happening on shore, the sound of loud
explosions from aircraft bombs and naval shells left no doubt that the beach was an inferno.
As soon as Colonel Van Fleet got word by radio that the first waves had secured the beach and
were driving inland, he announced that he was going ashore.
The run into the beach in a smaller landing craft, to which some of us transferred, was a bizarre
experience. Most of us were happy to cower behind the little protection provided by the metal
sides of the landing craft. One officer from regimental headquarters, however, insisted on sitting
in a chair above us, where he was exposed to enemy fire. Arms folded, he announced that he did not
want to miss a moment of this spectacular show. (A few weeks later, under similar circumstances,
he collapsed with a bullet through his head.)
When the landing craft hit the beach and the front ramp went down, I waded through some shallow water
and ran to the shelter of the seawall that ran along the beach - barely glancing at several soldiers
who were lying on the sand as though asleep. I could hear rifle and machine-gun fire beyond the dunes,
and some mortar shells fell not too far away.
My task, once ashore, was to guide our three artillery batteries to firing positions that we had
selected in England from a detailed foam rubber relief map of the beach. After crossing the sand dunes
that lay just beyond the seawall, I was unable to figure out where I was. When I asked an infantry
officer to help me, he laughed and said that the Navy had landed the first wave several thousand yards
south of where we were supposed to land.
Fortunately, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr, who had joined the 4th Division shortly before
the landing, had volunteered to go in with the first wave. He later told some of us that he had gone
forward to reconnoiter the beach: Finding that Major General Maxwell Taylor's 101st Airborne Division,
which had dropped during the night, had captured the causeways over the inundated area behind the beach.
Roosevelt decided that to try to move the landing northward would only cause confusion.
As it turned out, the Navy's error was forunate. The beach on which we landed was much more lightly
defended than where we were supposed to have landed and the German resistance was relatively easily
overcome.
When I went back to the beach, I told Colonel Thomason that I could find only two firing positions, not
three in the limited area between the sand dunes and the inundated area. As calmly as if we were on a
practice landing, he said, "It's alright. We'll only need two.
Before I could think too long about the 60 men on the boat, Thomason told me to get moving and guide the
other batteries to their firing positions.
After the batteries were in position, Thomason suggested we go inland to find the infantry. After crossing
a causeway over the inundated area, we found ourselves in the middle of a field. We froze when we heard a
soldier on the other side of the field shout, "Don't you fools know that you are in the middle of a minefield."
After discussing our predicament, we agreed to separate, so that if one of us stepped on a mine we would not both
be blown up. It was along way to the other side of that field. Discussing this incident not long ago, Thomason
and I agreed that the soldier was right. We were fools. We should have had someone clear a path out to us with
a minesweeper.
Late in the afternoon, after our batteries had moved inland to support the infantry, the clear blue sky was filled
with colored parachutes. From these were suspended boxes of supplies for the paratroopers. Colorful sight turned
to horror, however, when the gliders, loaded with soldiers and equipment, started to circle and land. Unnerved
perhaps by the German anti-aircraft fire, some of the pilots crashed their gliders into the headgerows that
surround the samll field of Normandy.
Whenever I recall that scene, I can still hear the screams of pain that filled the air around me.
My last memory of that day is watching multicolored tracer bullets arch through the sky over St. Mere Eglise which
had been captured by our paratroopers but was still surrounded by German forces.
I fell to sleep well after midnight in a ditch by the road - a road that would lead us first north to St. Lo. After
that, we participated in the liberation of Paris, the nightmare of the Hurtgen Forest, and the crushing of the
German mid-winter offensive.
After crossing the Rhine, we fought sporadic engagements until we found ourselves south of Munich. There we stopped
simply because there were no more German units left to fight.
B Battery hit a mine on the way in and the
landing craft sank."
