PART TWO OMAHA BEACH , NORMANDY

JUNE 6 , 1944

Chapter 2 On the Landing Boat

A gray sea met the gray sky, but the 5,000 ships in shades of
darker gray moved forward. Nothing could stop the transport
ships as they moved across the English Channel in ten lines, thirty
kilometers across.
These ships, however, were not making the assault on the
beaches of Normandy. Fifteen hundred landing boats , which
would make the twenty-kilometer trip from the bigger ships to
the beach in three and a half endless hours, were making the
assault. The first group of landing boats consisted of 200 boats
larger ones carrying 200 men each , and smaller ones carrying
—
thirty men , or twelve men plus a jeep.
In one of the smaller boats Captain John H. Miller from —
—
Addley, Pennsylvania sat with his men, who had just finished
'

their training. At thirty-eight years old, he was the oldest man on

the boat . His hand was shaking , and he hoped his boys hadn’t
seen it. He stared at it, trying to stop the trembling, forcing the
—
fear back inside him :-and the hand obeyed .
None of his boys had noticed their captain’s trembling hand;
they were busy watching their boat push on through the waves.
The freezing water blew in, wetting all their clothes and filling
the boat. The boat , battling the waves, threw the soldiers around.
They wore life jackets and helmets and carried a variety of
weapons. Many used their helmets to throw the water out of the
boat .
A lot of the boys were seasick . Some stood bent over the side
—
of the boat. Private Anthony Caparzo twenty-two, Clucago,

J_
 —had
Illinois collected a lot of pills for seasickness on the
transport ship and had planned to sell them when they were
needed. But now, seeing his sick friends, he just gave them away.
— —
Stanley Mellish twenty-one, Yonkers , New York grabbed a
handful of pills.
“ Give me some of those!” he said .
“ That’s my entire wartime supply.”
“ What difference does it make?” Mellish responded. “Do you
really think we’re going to be taking anymore boat rides after
this?”
Caparzo had no answer. More huge waves came and lifted the
boat out of the water. The boys were either being sick or praying.
Miller stood at the side of the boat , watching his boys. Next to
—
him was Sergeant Michael Horvath thirty, Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Sarge gestured to the sick and praying soldiers.
“ I guess they don’t do much boating back home,” he said .
Miller loved these kids. One of the boys, Danny Delancey, was
a sweet kid who was a good singer. Right now he was looking
over the side of the boat.
“ Heads down!” Miller shouted. “ There’s nothing to see!”
But before Delancey could obey that order, the boat next to
theirs ran into a mine, causing a huge explosion. Delancey fell
back as everyone on the boat was hit with flaming oil, burned
body parts, and small pieces of metal . They used their helmets to
pour water on the flames.
They cursed and screamed in horror as they cleaned the boat .
Miller threw a foot in a boot overboard , and Sarge threw a
burned arm. The two men glanced at each other, and the youthful
faces around them turned toward their leaders for guidance.
“ Injuries ?” Miller called out.
All shook their heads , no, which was amazing. Faces were
—
turning toward the water, where bodies and body parts
floated .
—

4
 “ Heads down, I said!”
—
“ Captain ” Delancey’s eyes were open wid < -“are we all
going to die?”
—
Miller was trying to think of the right words he didn’t want
to be dishonest with these boys , but they needed something
hopeful to take with them into battli -when Lieutenant Frank
Briggs responded for him.
“ No, Delancey! ” Briggs said, trying to sound cheerful . “ Two-
thirds, at the most!”
Those weren’t the kind of words that Miller had hoped for.
“ Oh, God,” Delancey said. The line between curses and
prayers was unclear in the war.
— —
Briggs thirty, Dallas , Texas put his hands around his mouth
and shouted loudly, “ Look at the man on your left! All of you.
Now look at the man on your right!”
All around the boat, the boys obeyed .
Briggs grinned . “Say a prayer for those two boys, because
they’re not coming back . You , on the other hand , aren’t going to
get a scratch!”
Delancey smiled weakly. Briggs’s words had clearly made the
men more uncomfortable than ever.
The sky filled with orange-white light, and all eyes looked up.
Thousands of rockets flashed overhead, followed by thunderous
explosions.
“See that ?” Miller shouted. “ Hear that ? That’s the sight and
sound of Germans dying!”
“ Go, Americans!” Lieutenant Briggs called out.
“ Now, get those heads back down,” Miller said, as he looked at
the mist-covered shoreline. He could see rows of steel crosses and
wooden logs with mines on top of them, all angled toward the sea .
The Germans had put them on the beach to tear apart landing
boats at high tide when the water made them invisible. At low tide
they provided cover for foot soldiers moving across the beach.

L
 Miller was surprised to see these still in place. He had been
told that they would be removed before dawn. But there they
—
were steel crosses, like grave markers in a cemetery that was
waiting to be filled. The American bombing, it seemed to Miller,
was failing. He had hoped the beach would be full of shell holes,
—
as promised. That was how he had trained his men moving in
and out and around shell holes . . .
“ It’s going to be a big show!” one kid shouted.
—
Nearby, Daniel Boone Jackson twenty-three, Hickory Valley,
Tennesset -held his sharpshooters rifle tightly and bowed his
head.
“ It’s time to make your peace with God,” Jackson advised his
friends .
Suddenly the waves grew calmer and the waters became quiet.
The bombing had stopped, leaving only the sound of the boat
engines—a sound so familiar to these passengers that they no
longer noticed it. It seemed the war had halted to give these boys
the moment of silence that they needed .
Miller knew this minute of accidental quiet was the only
break his kids were likely to have on this cold, gray morning. He
glanced at the boatman, who held up three fingers. His boys were
looking at him. They knew this was the signal to leave the boat;
they needed only their final orders.
Miller seldom made speeches, so he glanced at the sergeant,
—
and they smiled at each other tiny smiles that might be a final
goodbye- Then the captain moved among his boys, keeping his
manner and his voice conversational and calm.
“Keep it simple,” he said softly, “move fast, stay apart . . . Good
luck.”
Occasionally he gave a small smile or a pat on a shoulder.
“Don’t get any sand in your rifles ,” he said. “Good luck, men.”
The Navy’s big guns started shooting again , but at the same
time enemy shooting and mortar fire rained down on the

6
 approaching landing boats. The sound of machine guns came
from both sides , and Miller saw bullets hitting the water and the
sides of the boat just a little ahead of them . He knew that for
every bullet you saw, there were four more bullets that you didn’t.
Then the boat moved forward, ran onto the sand, and stopped.
“It looks like there’s a little opposition,” Mellish said.
As the men stared straight ahead, another shower of bullets
began. Miller realized that he had two choices: he could send his
men directly into the machine-gun fire, or they could stay in the
boat until mortar fire or an artillery shell killed them all.
The machine-gun fire stopped occasionally. Miller decided to
move during one of the [Link] he was thinking, the boys who
were his men backed away from the bullets as well as they could
in the crowded boat.
“ I’m so seasick,” said one kid. “I wish I was off this boat.”
Miller shouted to his boys : “ When I say ‘Now,’ I want you to
get off fast! Understood? . . . See you on the beach! Good luck!”
Every boy on the boat was saying to himself: “ It can’t happen to
me . . . can it?"
Then the machine-gun fire stopped. The gate in the side of
the boat opened, and Miller shouted, “ Now!” The men ran
through the opening and jumped off the hoat.
And the machine-gun fire started again.
Miller heard the sounds of machine-gun fire and of his boys
screaming as they died. He could only see their backs, as the
heavy bullets blew them apart .
Although Miller had been in many battles, he was not
prepared for this . In less than twenty seconds, two-thirds of his
men were killed. The water was full of dead and dying soldiers,
and the survivors were splashing around among them with fear
in their eyes.
“ Go! Go!” Miller shouted loudly enough to be heard above
the machine-gun storm.

i
 Still on the boat, Private Delancey was screaming. It was a
scream of horror; he was caught under a pile of dead bodies.
Miller, staying low, pulled the boy from the pile just a moment
before the machine-gun fire reached it. Then he dragged
Delancey to the open gate and , still holding onto him, jumped
into the deep water.

Chapter 3 Landing

Miller’s three kilo backpack, full of equipment, sank him like a

rock, and he went down through the drowning soldiers. Men
were dropping their equipment to survive, and filling the
underwater world with helmets, rifles, and mortar. Seeing this,
Miller was determined to hold onto his rifle while he took off
his backpack.
When his backpack was off, Miller realized that the soldier
floating nearest him was Private Delancey, who couldn’t remove
his own heavy pack. Miller assisted, releasing the pack to join the
rest of the abandoned equipment falling to the sandy floor.
But the kid was scared now. Air bubbles were coming out of
his open , silently screaming mouth , and his eyes were wide with
fear. The captain put an arm tightly around the private and swam
with him, underwater, staying below the shooting.
Soon the captain and private were above the surface again.
They breathed in air as their ears filled with the sounds of
Omaha Beach: shells exploding, men screaming, gunfire,
machine-gun bullets hitting the sand .
Delancey held onto Miller tighdy. The captain carried him
through the shallow water, bullets splashing around them. Other
—
soldiers walked the same path many without helmets or
weapons. These exhausted survivors arrived on the beach.
Miller carried Delancey around the steel crosses, and then