File:Group Critique notes by seven members of A Company, 116th Regiment 6 June 1944.pdf

/2-114 ① Copy2
116-A ON D DAY
These notes were prepared by GC with seven survivors of the company.
There were no disagreements over facts. The places of landing, as marked
on the overlays, were readily pointed out by the men. There was no dis-
agreement. ---HQ

When the company was still 5000 yards out, the men saw the barrage from the rocket
boats striking the water about 1000 yards to their right front. They saw nothing
hit on their beach or anywhere near it. “A” came on in 6 assault boats. As they
drew to within 700-800 yards of the beach, arty and mortar fire began to fall among
the boats. There had already been loss ; one boat foundered 1000 yards out from
shipping too much water ; one man had drowned and the others had been picked up by
naval craft. At first the enemy shell fire was ineffective but as the first boats
drew to within 50 yards of the sand, one was struck by an arty shell and two men
were mortally hit, the others taking to the water.

The men recognized that they were coming straight into the designated landing point.
They were at the sides looking toward the enemy shore. What they saw was an abso-
lutely unblemished beach, unpacked by arty or bomb fire and wholly barren of shingle
or any other cover. The first ramps were dropped at 0636 in water that was waist-
deep to over a man’s head. As if this had been the signal for which the enemy
waited, the ramps were instantly enveloped in a crossing of automatic Fire which
was accurate and in a great volume. It came at the boats from both ends of the beach.
“A” had planned to move in three files from each boat, center file going first,
then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men tried it. They
crumpled as they sprang from the ship, forward into the water. Then order was lost.
It seemed to the men then that the only way to get ashore with a chance for safety
was to dive head-first into the water. (Pvt Howard L. Grosser) A few had jumped
off, trying to follow the SOP, and had gone down in water over their heads. They
were around the boat now, struggling with their equipment and trying to keep afloat.
In one of the boats, a third of the men had become engaged in this struggle to save
themselves from a quick drowning. (Pfc Gilbert G. Murdock) That many were lost
before they had a chance to face the enemy. Some of them were hit in the water and
wounded. Some drowned then. Others, wounded, dragged themselves ashore and upon
finding the sands, lay quiet and gave themselves shots, only to be caught and
drowned within a few minutes by the on-racing tide. (Murdock) But some men moved
safely through the bullet fire to the sands, then found that they could not hold
there; they went back into the water and used it as cover, only their heads stick-
ing out above it. Others sought the under-water obstacles. Many were
shot while so doing. Those who survived kept moving shoreward with the tide and in
this way finally made their landing. (Murdock and Pfc Leo J. Nash) They were
still in this tide-borne movement when “B” came in behind them. (Pvt Grosser)
Others who had gotten into the sands and had burrowed in, remained in their holes
until the tide caught up to them, then they, too, joined the men in the water.
(Grosser)

Within 7-10 minutes after the ramps had dropped, “A” had become inert, leaderless
and almost incapable of action. The company was entirely bereft of officers.
^Lieut ^Clyde N. Garing was back where the first boat had undered. All of the
others were dead, except Lieutenant Elijah Nance who had been hit in the heel as he left
the boat, and then in the body as he reached the sands. ^Lieut Edward Tidrick was
hit in the throat as he jumped from the ramp into the water. He went on to the
sands and flopped down 15 feet from Private Leo J. Nash (Pfc). He raised up to

- 1 -

Copy
give Nash an order. Nash saw him bleeding from the throat and heard his words:
“Advance with the wire cutters !” It was futile. Nash had no wire cutters, and in
giving the order, Tidrick had made himself a target for just and instant, and Nash
saw mg bullets cleave him from head to pelvis. German machine gunners along the
cliff directly ahead were now firing straight down into the party. Captain Taylor
N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott had come in with 30 men from “A” aboard
LCA 1015, but what happened to that boat team in detail will never be know. Every
man was killed; most of the bodies were found along the beach.

In those fist 5-10 confused minutes when the men were fighting the water, dropping
their arms and even their helmets to save themselves from drowning, and learning by
what they saw that they landing had deteriorated into a struggle for personal sur-
vival, every sergeant was either killed or wounded. It seemed to the others that
enemy snipers had spotted their leaders and had directed their fire so as to exter-
minate them. A medical boat team came in on the right of Tidrick’s boat. The Ger-
mans machine-gunned every man in the section. (Nash) Their bodies floated with
the tide. By this time the leader-less infantrymen had foregone any attempt to get
forward against the enemy and where men moved at all, their efforts were directed
toward trying to save any of their comrades they could reach. The men in the water
pushed wounded men ahead of them so as to get them ashore. (Grosser and Murdock)
Those who had reached the sands crawled back and forth into the water, pulling men
to the land to save them from drowing, in many cases, only to have them shot out of
their hands or to be hit themselves while in these exertions. The weight of the
infantry equipment handicapped all this rescue work. If left unhelped, the
wounded drowned because of it. The able-bodied who pulled them in stripped them-
selves of equipment so that they could move more freely in the water, then cut away
the assault jackets and the equipment of the wounded, and dropped them in the water.
Grosser, Murdock and Cpl Edward M. Gurry.) Within 20 minutes of striking the
beach, “A” had ceased to be an assault company and had become a forlorn little res-
cue party bent on survival and the saving of lives. Orders were no longer being
given by anyone; each man who remained sound moved or not as he saw fit. The lead-
ing hand in the rescue work, by the account of all survivors, was a first-aid man,
T/5 Tom Breedin.

It is estimated by the men that one-third of “A” remained by the time “B” hit the
beach. One hour and 40 minutes after the landing, six men from the boat which had
landed on the far right flank (Boat N° 23) six men men from “A” had worked up to the
edge of the cliff. They saw no others from the company who had advanced as far.
(Nash) Two of the men, Pvts Shefer and Lovejoy, joined a group from the Second
Rangers, who were assaulting over the cliff to the right of “A”, and fought with
them through the day. Otherwise, “A”’s contribution to the attack appears to have
been a cipher. The few survivors stayed at the cliff bottom during the afternoon
and joined the Battalion that night.

- 2 -