Friday, June 5, 2020

The 5th of June, 1944

Bound for Normandy, U.S. Army troops on board a Coast Guard-manned LCI(L), during the night of 5 June 1944.
(Source)

After being aboard the SS Empire Javelin one night and most of the 5th of June, Private Jack Wilson and PFC Bill Brandt were more than ready to be off. Off the damned ship and back to camp, or off the ship and onto the beaches of France. They'd been briefed that morning on where they were going to land. Bill thought that the code name "Omaha" for their destination was a good omen, he had once had a girlfriend from that city, a sweet girl. She'd married some 4F not six months after he'd shipped out. Jack couldn't quite figure out how that was a "good" omen.

When the engines on SS Empire Javelin rumbled to life once more, and stayed on, Jack figured that this had to be it. When he felt the ship begin to move, he knew that they were on the way to France and whatever destiny awaited them there.

MG-42 Bunker at Omaha Beach
(Source)

Grenadier Horst Mellanthin could still see the bloodstains on the concrete floor of their machine gun bunker where Feldwebel Krause and Gefreiter¹ Dietrich had died. No amount of scrubbing would get the stain out, but the sand he and Obergrenadier² Jan Kołodziej had used to sop up the blood did cover the stain to a certain amount. He thought that he would see those two men for the rest of his days. He had never seen a dead person before. 

Horst was now the assistant gunner, his job was to feed the belt to the machine gun which was now Jan's job to fire. Instead of a sergeant, now their position was commanded by a corporal, a nasty little snot named Schmidt from Berlin who constantly reminded the others that he was a Party member. So now they had an actual Nazi in charge. The job which Horst had held the day before, which was to shuttle ammunition cans up from the lower reaches of the bunker to their position, was now held by, of all things, a Russian of some sort. He spoke a little German, understood more that he let on, and was not overly impressed with Schmidt.

When Schmidt had them line up their grenades next to the gun, along the vision slit, Jan had pointed out that they could be hit by incoming fire. Schmidt just looked at Jan and told him to "keep your filthy Polish opinions to yourself." Not a real popular guy was Schmidt.

Horst was hoping either the Amis or the Tommies would come soon and kill the arrogant little shite. Then again, they might kill him too! He wished now, more than ever, that he was back home on his father's little farm.


The stage is set, all that remains is for the participants to arrive. D-Day, the Sixth of June, 1944, the day the Western Allies returned to France. Liberation for the oppressed peoples of Western Europe is at hand.





¹ Gefreiter - corporal
² Obergrenadier - Basically a private first class.

26 comments:

  1. My impression, maybe wrong, that MG crew looks younger then the GIs. Course by that time the Third Reich lost how many?

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    1. They are awfully young looking. Germany had lost millions by then.

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    2. Either young or old or missing or in ill health. The more healthy, slightly more mature were, for the most part, on the Eastern Front.

      And the age disparity only got worse over the next 10 months.

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    3. I do believe the average age of the 12th SS Division was around 19. One thing Napoléon discovered in 1814 is that really young soldiers need a lot of time to buildup their stamina to survive the rigors of war. The Germans were, quite literally, running out of men, so yeah, the soldiers got younger.

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    4. Or very older. Lotsa 40-50yoa men 'recruited' in the last year of the war.

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    5. The Volksturm had men in their sixties as well.

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  2. I thought the exact same thing. Who in their right mind would line explosives up in the window like that? I've run into that mindset all through my career. It is maddening to be told to do something like that, bring it to the attention of the utterer, and be told, "you think too much." "Conscious thought separates me from bacteria or furniture you dolt."

    Whoa, FOG alert! Sorry, sorry everyone.... sorry....

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    1. Conscious thought separates me from bacteria or furniture...

      Love it!

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    2. Especially when the bunkers have/had perfectly good grenade ledges built into them, along with, if maintained correctly, a perfectly good grenade sump (deep hole in the bottom to push a live grenade into in order to contain some of the blast.)

      A good sergeant or corporal or private would know better. Schmidt is not a good soldier.

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    3. Schmidt is definitely not a good soldier, he's not even a good person.

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  3. Years ago, our local collectors group had a request to give an old guy a ride to the gun show, as he could no longer drive. A bit out of the way for me, but why not. So I started picking this guy up once a month and had an hour each way to talk.
    He was a three war vet, combat infantry, 82nd AB in WW2. Pathfinder , dropped into St Mere Eglise. I have looked to find his name on the Pathfinders pre op photos, where the guys are all posed in front of the C47's, but some of them don't have many names listed- he said on his stick, most were killed. He broke his neck and hung in a tree till he was cut down and that ended his Normandy adventure. He said, "I learned to not make friends". A lot of stories of an interesting life.

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    1. Sounds like an interesting guy who had been through a lot!

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  4. Many a young man ended up barfing his guts out on June 5th, as the Channel was not especially calm that night, still rather 'stroppy' (as Steve Irwin would say) from the storms on June 3rd and 4th. Especially those sailing in the flat-bottomed landing ships.

    The Paratroops would be getting ready and loading. See the appropriate "Band of Brothers" episode for that. Though I like planes and plane travel, night jump over hostile territory is not my idea of fun. Especially as AAA-heavy as the Wall was.

    As to the Germans, could have been worse, someone could have decided to toss a couple Eastern Front veterans. But the Germans tended to keep units together and not shove replacements in like the US did. So our valiant Kraut and Pole did not get stuck with a couple hard-core vets.

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    1. Well, they did get one Eastern Front veteran, only he fought on the other side.

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  5. Oh, by the way...

    LCI - Landing Craft Infantry - flat-bottomed landing craft carrying about 200 men. From Wiki: The 3 major LCI(L) types are normally referred to as: a) Square Conning tower, Side Ramp (the original style) b) Round Conn, Side Ramp c) Round Conn, Bow Ramp. Capable of long distance travel. (did not know there were 3 versions of the LCI(L).)

    LCA - Landing Craft Personnel - carries about 36 men or equivalent supplies - kinda like a Higgins boat but Brit design. Carried to location and then hoisted off and used to ferry from ship to shore.

    LCVP - Landing Craft Vehicle or Personnel - carries about 36 men or equivalent - either THE Higgins boat or a Brit version thereof.

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    1. Glad you filled in all the technical stuff. If I ever do get around to writing a book, I'll have you put together the glossary.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...another odd looking craft was the LSM (Landing Ship Medium). It had an open central well deck with sidewalls on each side, and was asymmetric, with the round bridge on one sidewall (like on an aircraft carrier) looking like the tower of a medieval castle...

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    3. Odd-looking sure, but kinda cool looking as well.

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  6. Whilst attending boat coxwain school I learned the U. S. Army had many times more landing craft than the Navy, especially the LCM-6 which had twin 671 Jimmy diesels and a doghouse for the cox'n. I drove the LCVP in 1962 which had been upgraded (?) from the WWII version in that it was made of fibreglass and the machinegun mounts had been removed. We still had the air cooled .30 cal. in the ships armory for the ship's landing party. Old Guns.

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    1. That's pretty cool. Yes, the Army had a crap ton of boats!

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  7. While I was stationed in (the former) West Germany, I had the good fortune to go to the range with our sister unit in the Bundeswehr. I earned one of these in gold--

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Armed_Forces_Badge_of_Marksmanship

    --for qualifying with the MG3 and the P-38 pistol. My MOS was Small Arms Repair, so I was intimately familiar with our M-60. After my first burst on the MG3, my next thought was "We won the war. Why didn't we just bring all the MG-42's home?"

    Our troops that hit the beach on D-day? Yeah, I remember my time with the MG3, and then I just ain't got the words.

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  8. Regarding the picture, my questions are: were these particular soldaten in that position on D-Day? Did any of them live to see June 7 or 8? The end of the war? How many our our soldiers fell to those rounds of the 'buzz saw'? It also makes me think this is the unseen portion of the famous video taken on Omaha Beach showing the men running from the waterline and a couple of them being hit and going down. Sobering...

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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