"I was 10 minutes behind the first wave. My officer, Captain Zapacosta, told me to stick my head up over the side of our landing craft. All I could see was bodies, smoke and fire. All the men of the first wave were either dead or wounded.
The beach was supposed to have been bombed out, giving us craters to hide in, but there wasn't a hole there. We would be sitting ducks for the German heavy machine guns.
The ramp went down and we ran out. I tripped and fell sideways off the ramp and went under the water. I was carrying our radio and I struggled to get it off before it dragged me down.
When I surfaced, Zapacosta was shouting that he was shot. He sank down in water that was just full of blood. There was nothing I could do for him. People were dropping in the water like you wouldn't believe. I was the only man not hit.
My sergeant was wounded. He raised himself up off up to talk to me and he was immediately hit full in the head by German machine gun fire. I began to make my way from body to body up the beach. The Germans stopped shooting at me – I guess an incoming landing craft must have been a better target.
There were bodies, body parts, men blown apart and still alive, hollering. I was amazed how bad a man can be hit and not die straight away. I was scared all the time, but I kept going. I had no rifle and even my shirt had been ripped off.
I reached the shelter of the seawall and from there I'd run back out on to the beach to get bodies. Some of them were still alive when I dragged them back and a medic would try to help them."
As the sixtieth
anniversary of D-Day approaches, those who took part in that epic invasion
are rapidly dwindling in number. Now their gripping eyewitness accounts —
many previously unpublished — are woven into an authoritative new look at
that unforgettable “longest day" by distinguished military historian Dan van
der Vat. D-DAY: The Greatest Invasion — A People's History captures
and preserves for a new generation all the human drama and heroism that
marked June 6, 1944. Richly illustrated with hundreds of historical
photographs — many from private photo albums — as well as with personal
artifacts, dramatic paintings by the many war artists on the scene and
modern color photographs, this is the definitive history of one of the most
important dates of the twentieth century.