The Sandbag Times Issue No: 21

The Historical Tommy Atkins
General Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the
Allied Expeditionary Forces (SCAEF) for Operation 'Overlord' in late
inland, suffering relatively few casualties in the process.
Omaha Beach was a different story. Surrounded by steep cliffs and
heavily defended, Omaha was the bloodiest of the D-Day beaches,
1943 and headed SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied
Expeditionary Force), which oversaw the entire liberation of Nazioccupied
north-west Europe. Eisenhower was in charge of making all
final decisions relating to the invasion and although he is sometimes
criticised for focusing too heavily on politics, he was a skilled
administrator known for his tact and diplomacy. He tried to ease
tensions between members of SHAEF and to place the needs of the
alliance above national interests. He also took his responsibility for the
lives of his men very seriously.
“We cannot afford to fail.”
General Eisenhower
The team assembled, reconnaisance done & the Allied forces at the
ready, a last minute change came. The westernmost of the D-Day
beaches, Utah was added to the invasion plans at the eleventh hour so
that the Allies would be within striking distance of the port city of
Cherbourg. In the predawn darkness of June 6, thousands of U.S
with roughly 2,400 U.S. troops turning up dead, wounded or missing.
The troubles for the Americans began early on, when Army
intelligence underestimated the number of German soldiers in the area.
To make matters worse, an aerial bombardment did little damage to the
strongly fortified German positions, rough surf wreaked havoc with the
Allied landing craft and only two of 29 amphibious tanks launched at
sea managed to reach the shore. U.S. infantrymen in the initial waves
of the attack were then gunned down in mass by German machine-gun
fire. The carnage became so severe that U.S. Lieutenant General Omar
Bradley considered abandoning the entire operation. Slowly but
surely, however, his men began making it across the beach to the
relative safety of the seawall at the foot of the bluffs and then up the
bluffs themselves. Assistance came from a group of Army Rangers
who scaled a massive promontory between Omaha and Utah to take
out artillery pieces stashed in an orchard, and from U.S. warships that
moved perilously close to shore to fire shells at the German
fortifications. By nightfall, the Americans had carved out a tenuous
toehold about 1.5 miles deep.
airborne infantrymen dropped inland behind enemy lines. Weighed
down by their heavy equipment, many drowned in the flooded
marshlands at the rear of the beach, and others were shot out of the sky
by enemy fire. One even hung from a church steeple for two hours
before being captured. Many lost their lives before they even
grounded. Those who did successfully land found themselves outside
of their designated drop zones. Some, left with no equipment, apart
from their knives, managed to gather with soldiers from different
companies and worked together to kill enemy soldiers and take guns
and ammo. They then found their bearings and continued to push
forward to the Nazi gunning posts completing their objective, in
perilous conditions. Although these men were forced to improvise,
they nonetheless succeeded in seizing the four causeways that served
as the beach’s only exit points. On Utah itself, U.S. forces landed more
than a mile away from their intended destination, due in part to strong
currents. Luckily for them, this area was actually less well protected.
“We’ll start the war from here!” U.S. Brigadier General Theodore
Roosevelt Jr., the son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, shouted
upon realizing the mistake. By noon, his men had linked up with some
of the airborne infantry, and by day’s end they had advanced four miles
Owing to the direction of the tides, British troops began storming
Gold, the middle of the five D-Day beaches, nearly an hour after
fighting got underway at Utah and Omaha. The Germans initially put
up robust
resistance, but in
sharp contrast to
Omaha, an earlier
a e r i a l
bombardment had
wiped out much of
their defenses.
British warships
also proved
effective. The
cruiser HMS Ajax, for example, displayed such pinpoint accuracy
from miles away that it apparently sent one shell through a small slot
in a German artillery battery’s concrete exterior, the military equivalent
of a hole-in-one. On shore, meanwhile, armored vehicles known as
“Funnies” cleared away minefields and other obstacles. Within an
hour, the British had secured a few beach exits, and from there they
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