Storming Normandy: One Soldier's Stroy

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Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

The splashing of the water on the side of the boat was loud. It was almost loud enough to drown out the sounds of the soldiers next to me, struggling with the fear at hand. Most of our squad was seasick by now, but I wasn't. I never really did get seasick, except for that one fishing trip I took with my family a while back. My family...God do I miss them. We all miss our families but we needed to do something for our country. And that something was to enlist in the military. Nobody thought that us, normal, everyday guys would be fighting on the front lines but when life throws you a surprise, you hold on for life and ride that surprise through. The splashes of water were few and far between. We all knew what was about to happen. Suddenly, the boat stopped. Our commander yelled something at us, but nobody could hear him over the sounds of bullets whizzing by. I think it might have been "Stay alive out there" but who knows. Suddenly, the doors of the boat opened...
Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

Just as the door that separated us from the safety inside and the hell of Normandy opened, they fired on our squad. Within a matter of seconds, half of our squad had been mowed down by German machine gunners. The other half of us quickly bolted into the water and tried to seek shelter behind the metal barriers in the water that prevented us from advancing any further onto the beach with the boats. One would have been insane to move from that position with the amount of bullets that were raining on us, but we were on a mission. That mission was to secure the beach and win this damn war. I looked at the rest of my squad, nodded my head, and we ran to the next barrier. I did a quick head count to see if all of us were there, but I only counted 5. I looked over and saw one of the new recruits floating in the water. I stated for a good 10 seconds and remembered we had a job to do and by all hell we were going to do it. We continued with our barrier to barrier process..
Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

After about 10 minutes of life or death moves, we reached the actual beach. We took refuge behind various sandbag barriers that were laid out by the German troops. I guess they were expecting that they would need ground troops to cover the machine gunners in the various bunkers. Guess that order was called off. Desperate for some kind of progress, we opened fire onto the bunker. Although our bullets were powerful, they didn't even put a dent into those rat holes of bunkers. Just as more forces arrived with explosives to blow the bunker to bits, a mortar exploded right next to them. For the next minute, I was almost deaf due to the explosion. All I could hear was the screams of wounded soldiers and the bullets being fired upon our position. I saw the explosives laying in the crater. I knew what I had to do. In an instant, I ran over to the explosives, picked them up, and moved to the nearest squad I could find. I grabbed some soldiers and we hoisted the launcher onto our shoulders..
Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

BOOM! The bang from the explosion shook our helmets. For a second, not a shot came from the bunker ahead of us. Just as we were going to cut the barbed wire, shots rained upon us. I was fortunate enough to get back behind the wall but some of the other soldiers weren't as lucky. Nobody knows how the Nazis in the bunker survived that blast from our launcher. Then again, this is war and war is a mystical, dark art where anything's possible. I talked with the other allied troops and we figured it was best to wait until they focus their attack on the incoming forces still in the water. Once they were occupied with them, we would run through the hole that the other soldiers made and advance up towards the bunker. It seemed like a perfect plan. Once they were occupied with the entering forces, we made our advance. For a second it seemed to be working until I heard one of the gunners yell something in German and then they were firing upon us once again. Most of us were against the cliff by now.
Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

The few of us that made it to the side of the cliff slowly edged along it until we reached the path up to the bunker. We heard footsteps from above and then saw German troops with long range rifles run to a nearby hill. We knew that they were after us. Quickly, we moved to a nearby hill that was tall enough to give us some cover. After some time, we peeked our heads out to see if the Germans were in their positions on the hill. Surely enough, they were. As we were about to put our heads down and load our rifles, one of the Germans opened fire on our location. I looked to my left only to see that the soldier next to me was bleeding out. In a panic, I ripped off part of my uniform to help stop the bleeding. It was a little to late for that. He looked me in the eye and pulled a letter out of his uniform. He said to me "Please send this to my family. That is all I ask of you." Before I could respond, his breaths shortened and death filled his eyes and he slowly faded away. The war had him.
Golden Dino Dec 24, 2012

I felt a new responsibility. That letter was my motivation for getting through the war alive. Our little squad of soldiers opened fire on that hill like no other squad had done before. The enemy slowly rolled down the hill. That was our cue to run to the bunker. This was our last offense on the beach. We knew that this is what we had to do to secure the beach. Slowly, our squad approached the bunker door. I saw the 4 Germans on the machine guns and one with a long range rifle. Me and the soldier who came with me pulled the pins of our grenades and rolled them into the bunker. First there were gun shots, next and explosion and the sound of concrete falling down onto the beach. All that followed was silence. We all took a deep breath and sat down behind the bunker. One of the soldiers had a flask of rum. He drank it all down in one swig. From that day on, I thought of it as the swig of victory. We looked on as the allied forces advanced onto the beach. Operation Overlord was successful.
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