“He was very surprised because he relied on the expert view of the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) that nobody could land under such weather conditions. It was a very courageous decision of General Eisenhower and very successful. My father was away from the theatre and some others (were) as well.
He said this is very painful that they are landing while I am not there.
The British and Americans were more courageous than the Germans concerning the weather.
In the morning around 8 o’clock there was still no clear picture of the situation in my father’s and (General) Von Rundstedt’s headquarters. They were still doubtful that if this really had been the landing.
But this changed in one-hour and my father began …when he heard it… he began to call his driver and prepare himself for departing for France.”
“I just volunteered that’s all.
Our job was to blow up these obstacles. Then had what they call Hedgehogs, and then they had these telephone poles with a ramp and on top of the telephone pole was a mine. That was for when the tide came in, the boats would just slide up there and the mine would explode. Our job was to blow a 50 yard gaps so the infantry could land.
I carried a rifle and a wet belt with canteen, ammunition and a rifle and I forgot how many pounds of explosives I had on my back. I believe they called it tetra tol. As I got to the ramp of the small boat that I was in to land us, just as I jumped into the water, there was this explosion.
While I was in the water, maybe a couple of seconds, someone pulled me out and I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find any of the crew I was attached to. The number of the small boat we were on was 13.
I found out later that they were all killed. I was the only one left.
I managed to crawl up the beach. I looked back and could see these tanks that were supposed to float.
They just sank. They went right to the bottom. As I was laying there, I couldn’t find any navy men.
You could tell the navy men because on our helmets we had a blue stripe that went around the helmet.
There was some army men 10 or 15 feet from me, laying down with a medic and an 88, they called them 88’s-the shells-hit them and they were gone.”
Janine Gazengel Lot
“We had the feeling we were going to die..the next shell is going to hit us and we’re going to die…We would have stayed in the house but it was crumbling all around us, all the plaster, all the windows crumbling and smashing. We couldn’t stay in the house anymore so we decided to move outside to a trench that belonged to another family and to be together there.”
Yves Osmont
“Of course the Germans were firing back and the duel was starting up between them and the American ships..We were right in the cross-fire and could hear everything.”
Cecile Pasquette Osmont
“We prayed all night.” It was shocking. Everything was moving in the house. The earth was shaking from all the shelling. We were right in the middle of the battle. We could hear the bullets passing everywhere.”
Henri Coepel
“They were doing some firing to support the troops inland..One could imagine the battle going on behind Utah Beach and on the Cotentin peninsula. The ships were aiming at different places because the paratroopers were asking for support.”
“I wasn’t as scared as I thought I’d be but I had a funny feeling in my stomach. At that time I didn’t know what it was, but later on I found out they call them Butterflies. I did have Butterflies in my stomach.”
“I honestly never thought of oh God ya know? No. I was. Like as numb as I was but I never witnessed or felt any fear of going into battle or anything like that.”
“Everybody was scared. Hey, we were only a bunch of kids, 20, 21, 19..Nobody knew what the hell war was at that time, but now I know.”
“We went to see Saving Private Ryan. I think that was the last war picture I saw. I mean that picture was, the landing on the beach that day was almost like they were there filming, exactly like that, even worse.”
“Something big was coming, that we knew. When we were told that we would be leaving and to go to Southhampton, I said Southampton, that’s right on the coast to go to France . So we knew we were gonna go to France.”
“The whole sky was filled with airplanes just about everywhere you could look and the whole sea as far as you could look was incoming ships and boats and what-not.”
“I said to myself there isn’t that many ships in the world, there’s that many of them there. There isn’t that mnay ships in the world. I saw so many planes. I actually felt sorry for the Germans because I didn’t see any German planes.”
