SOLD D-Day Was All Confusion, Crowding, and Dodging Obstacles and Bullets

On June 6, 1944, American, British and Canadian armed forces launched the most important invasion of Europe since the barbarians destroyed Rome. This time the task was to free the continent from a new kind of barbarian, the Nazis. With this noble and dangerous task before them, U.S. troops landed on the Normandy beaches of Omaha and Utah, and through courage and persistance succeeded in gaining a foothold. This was quickly widened and the invasion progressed, leading eventually to victory.

Today there are 10,000 Americans buried on a cliff above Omaha Beach who paid the price for this success. Partly because censorship limited what the men could say, and partly as a result of being too busy to do much writing, soldier’s letters describing D-Day are extremely rare. What follows is the first contemporary eyewitness account of the D-Day invasion by a participant we have seen, written by American sailor Meyer Silverman, whose landing craft brought the men to the beaches.

A 4 separate page letter, Cherbourg area, U.S.S. LCI (L) 490, July 18, 1944 to a sailor friend, describing his actions on D-Day. “…So you want to know about the invasion. Well, I’ll tell you as much as I am allowed to without disclosing any confidential information. As you no doubt know, the invasion was June 6, it was originally scheduled for June 5 but due to the rough weather on the English Channel it was postponed for one day. Before the invasion we were told that we were going to make a beachhead on the shores of France, so you see there was no secret about it. We were ready and anxious for the invasion to start. I don’t think any of us wanted any more delay. Our trip across the Channel was uneventful except for some very bright flares the enemy dropped about 0330, three hours before H-Hour. We were supposed to hit the beach at 1030 in the morning, but due to the confusion and crowding of so many ships we were told not to beach for a while. At about 1330 our wave made another attempt to go in. Not all the ships in our wave could hit the beach at the same time because of the obstacles the Germans had placed in the water. All this time machine gun bullets were flying, also mortar shells were whistling over our heads. We finally saw a hole where we could go in, but another ship slid in front of us. Boom, bang, she hit three mines. That was one of the many narrow escapes we had. At last it was decided to unload our troops on LCM’s [landing craft]. Later on we left the action area and went out to the transport area where we picked up another load of troops. This time we hit the beach and the troops were unloaded the usual way, via our two ramps. The first 13 nights we had air raids every night except two…One night we were told to tie up to an ammunition barge and tow her into the beach…which was about five miles distant. All of a sudden…an air raid broke out. It wouldn’t have taken much for something to have set off that ammunition and then we would have been blown into eternity… Finally though we beached the ammo barge and high tailed it away from the beach. As we started to pull away the beachmaster told us to come back and take the barge to a beach further east. We sent him a blinker message of our regrets…Since then we have helped two ships that were hit by mines- one of those ships sunk so we took on the survivors…Would you have liked to have been on an LCI during the invasion?…It was no picnic, I assure you.”

A historic memento of D-Day. It is interesting to note that in a later letter Silverman says the friend is welcome to quote part of this letter to other friends, indicating how little was written about the invasion at the time. Included is another letter of Silverman to the same friend dated March 31, 1944, describing some of a serviceman’s life in England while awaiting the invasion.