| Original caption: “American assault troops, with equipment from landing craft, wade ashore on Omaha Beach, in northern France.” Heavily loaded reinforcements splash ashore on OMAHA Beach from LCT-538 about 1130 Hours on D-Day. The white, crescent-shaped symbol painted on their helmets indicate that these soldiers belong to either the 5th or 6th Engineer Special Brigade. Although their job was to construct roads and supply dumps inland, the beachhead had to be 1st won and secured. All are heavily armed, and some can be seen carrying boxes of .30 caliber (7.62 millimeter) machine gun ammunition. 1 soldier carries the long tube and conical mesh flash deflector of a bazooka rocket launcher, for use against German tanks and bunkers. The soldier at left is probably the bazooka’s loader and is carrying half of the 2-man team’s supply of 20 armor-piercing rockets. Short red crescents signify membership in the 6th and 7th United States Navy Beach Battalions. Engineers from the 5th Engineers Special Brigade come ashore from LCT-538 on Easy Red around 1130 Hours. The Engineers had the distinctive crescent marking on their M1 helmets, as seen here. The photographer who took this photo, Captain Herman Wall of the 165th Signal Photo Company was wounded shortly alter this picture was taken. Elements of 3 companies shared in the assault on the bluffs between E-1 and E-3 draws. At this part of Easy Red, the beach shelf above the shingle embankment is more than a 100 yards wide, with areas of swamp along the inland edge of the flat. 130 feet high on this sector, the bluff is reached by 200 yards of moderate slope, patched with heavy bush. 500 yards west of E-3, a small draw led up at a slight angle to the west, forming a possible corridor for advance to the bluff crest. Below the draw on the flat was a ruined house. The 1st Section of Company E, 16th Infantry, and 2 of the other scattered sections of the 116th, had come to shore here in the 1st wave. The 16th’s unit, led by United States Army 2nd Lieutenant John M. Spalding (December 17, 1914 – November 6, 1959), blew a gap in the wire above the shingle, made its way past the house, and then was held up by minefields in the marshy ground at the foot of the slopes. Intense small-arms fire came from an emplacement to the left, in the E-3 strongpoint. Spalding’s men found a way past the mines and were beginning to work up the slope, using the defilade afforded by the small draw. To the west, and out of contact, the 2 sections from the 116th had cut the wire and dashed across the flat, but mines stopped them near the start of the hillside, and they took shelter in a ditch. A soldier who went ahead to clear a path by use of a bangalore was killed by an antipersonnel mine. Meanwhile, Company G, 16th Regimental Combat Team, had landed at 0700 Hours and had reached the embankment in good order. The company’s machine guns, set up behind the shingle, found no targets until LCVP’s of the 1st Battalion, coming toward the beach (about 0730), drew enemy fire from 8 to 10 small emplacements along the half mile of bluff. While the heavy weapons built up a volume of supporting fire, a few men from each section blew gaps in the extensive double-apron and concertina wire beyond the shingle. Their work was made more difficult by anti-personnel mines set to detonate by trip wires. 4 bangalores were required to cut 1 lane. Engineers of Company A, 1st Engineer Combat Battalion and Company C, 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, helped in gapping and marking the lanes. When Company G’s men reached the slopes they came in contact with Lieutenant Spalding’s section of Company E and the 2 sections of the 116th. In an effort to coordinate the advance, an arrangement was made with these units to operate on Company G’s right. The mined areas, in which a part of the mines were faked, slowed up every unit that crossed the beach, then and for some time. Company G found 1 route through the mines by going over the dead bodies of 2 soldiers who had been caught there earlier. While the company was making its way across the flat, bothered more by the minefields than enemy fire, United States Army Captain Joseph T. Dawson (March 20, 1914 – November 28, 1998) and 1 man went on ahead. When they were halfway up the hill, an enemy machine gun at the head of the small draw forced Dawson into cover. He sent his companion back to bring up the company and crawled on from 1 patch of brush to another. By the time he was 75 yards from the gun, the enemy lost sight of him. Circling to his left, he came to the military crest a little beyond the machine gun, and got within 30 feet before the Germans spotted him and swung their weapon around. Dawson threw a fragmentation grenade which killed the crew. This action opened the way up the little draw, but it took some time to get the company up as a result of disorganization suffered in crossing the beach flat. The 5th Section, 1st to arrive, knocked out 2 more machine guns and took a prisoner. On the whole, enemy opposition had not been heavy, and cover on the slopes allowed Company G to make the crest with few casualties. Their movement forward, from embankment to the bluff top, had taken place between 0730 and 0830 Hours. Enemy fire died away as the troops emerged on the fields of the upland, reorganized, and started south in column of sections. Their principal concern was with the frequent indications of mined areas just beyond the bluff top. To their right Lieutenant Spalding’s section of Company E, 16th Regimental Combat Team, was getting up about the same time, helped by covering fire from Company G, and effecting a useful extension of the front of penetration. The section now numbered 3 men, having lost 3 at the beach and 3 more getting past an enemy machine gun on the bluff side. The gun was operated by a lone soldier who was captured and found to be Polish. He informed Spalding that there were 16 enemy in trenches to his rear. The Company E section got to the trenches, sprayed them with fire and found the Germans had withdrawn. Spalding turned west along the bluff crest, losing contact with Company G as that unit headed south. Moving through hedgerowed fields and wooded areas, the Company E group came up on the rear of the strongpoint guarding E-1 draw. The Germans were manning trenches overlooking the beach, and attack from the high ground caught them by surprise. In 2 hours of confused fighting, Spalding’s men got through the outworks of this strongpoint and overcame opposition by close-in work with grenades and rifles. Naval fire hitting in the parts of the strong-point below the bluff top, helped to demoralize the resistance. 21 prisoners were taken, and several enemy killed, without loss to the attackers. Although the fortified area was too extensive to be thoroughly cleaned out by Spalding’s small force, the strongpoint east of E-1 had been effectively neutralized by midmorning, just when important reinforcements for the assault were beginning to land in front of the draw. About 1100 Hours, Spalding’s section was joined by some other elements of Company E, which had come up from further east. They brought word from battalion to head south for Colleville. The area opened up by Company G became a funnel for movement off the beach during the rest of the morning. The command group of the 16th Regimental Combat Team had landed in 2 sections; the 1st, coming in at 0720 Hours, lost the executive officer and 35 men on the tidal flat. Colonel George A. Taylor February 14, 1899 – December 3, 1969) arrived in the 2nd section at 0815 Hours and found plenty to do on the beach. Men were still hugging the embankment, disorganized, and suffering casualties from mortar and artillery fire. Colonel Taylor summed up the situation in terse phrase: “Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die – now let’s get the hell out of here.” Small groups of men were collected without regard to units, put under charge of the nearest noncommissioned officer, and sent on through the wire and across the flat, while engineers worked hard to widen gaps in the wire and to mark lanes through the minefields. Confusion prevailed all the way along the route to the bluff top, with enough scattered enemy fire from the flanks and mortar fire falling on the bluff slope to cause more delay and to give latecomers the impression that they were leading the assault. A traffic jam threatened to clog the trail through the little draw, as leaderless groups stopped to rest just below the shelter of the crest; 1 such group was picked up by an engineer platoon going inland as a security patrol and went on with them. Colonel Taylor’s command post was set up just below the bluff crest, and regimental and battalion officers concentrated on getting men forward. Despite all difficulties, troops were brought up from both flanks of the penetration area and sent inland. During the morning a few scattered sections of Companies E, F, and H moved laterally along the beach from the east and took Company G’s route; the 1st Battalion, 16th Regimental Combat Team, came over from the west. The 1st Battalion Landing Team of the 16th landed between 0730-0800 Hours, with Company A just east of E-1, and B and C near the area where 2nd Battalion Landing Team troops were then starting up the bluff. Company A moved across the flat and had serious difficulties after passing the antitank ditch below the E-1 strongpoint; mines and small-arms fire inflicted 48 casualties, including 3 officers. Reaching the bluff slope, Company A found more mines and to avoid them took a path that led eastward along the lower slope. Movement was slow, as the men went along the path in single file and had to cross areas exposed to enemy fire, and further difficulty was caused by meeting a party of 116th men going in the opposite direction. The other units of the 1st Battalion Landing Team got to the bluff crest about 0930 Hours, in the area where Company G had already passed inland. The assault had gone forward, but not according to plan (Maps Nos. VII and VIII). Penetrations had been made where enemy defenses were thin and lightly held, on the long stretches of bluff between the draws scheduled for use as exits. The F-1 strong-point was knocked out, but the exit route here was so steep that no plans had been made for its early use, and there were no engineer parties at hand. In the case of the main draws, only at E-1 was a strongpoint (on the east side) being reduced by flanking action of a force which turned aside for this purpose after getting up the bluff; elsewhere, the small and often scattered assault groups were fighting inland toward their assembly areas. As a result, nearly all the enemy strongpoints defending the vital draws were still in action, especially at E-3 and D-3 which were scheduled for use by the 1st movement of traffic off the beach. On large stretches of the beach there was still enough fire to make landings costly and to stop all movement in front of the draws. The engineers, hampered by landing on wrong beaches and by loss of equipment, were unable to start on their main job of opening the beach for traffic. At 0800, there were no gaps anywhere in the shingle embankment to permit movement onto the beach flat. As a result, the penetrations made in the next 2 hours could not be followed up properly. Vehicles were beginning to arrive, but they found only a narrow strip of sand to occupy and nowhere to move even for shelter from enemy fire. This fire and the difficulties with obstacles in the higher water led many craft to come in on Easy Green and Easy Red instead of other sectors, thereby threatening to clog that beach with vehicles under destructive artillery fire from the flanks. Consequently, the commander of the 7th Naval Beach Battalion radioed an order (about 0830 Hours) suspending all landings of vehicles. During the next few hours scores of craft, including DUKW amphibious trucks and rhino-ferries, were milling about off the Easy Green and Easy Red sectors, waiting for a chance to come in. The DUKWs had particular difficulty in the rough seas, in which they had to run at least at half throttle to maintain steerage way. The consumption this entailed would exhaust a fuel tank in 10 to 12 hours, leaving the craft in danger of foundering. The tie-up affected the heavier weapons scheduled to support the attack off the beach and inland. The Antitank Company of the 116th Regimental Combat Team landed 1 gun platoon of 3 M1 57 millimeter (2.24 inch) antitank guns, but they had to remain under fire for hours before they could move off the sand. Only 2 antiaircraft guns of the 16th Regimental Combat Team were landed out of 2 batteries, the others being sunk in the effort to unload. The Cannon Company of the 16th Regimental Combat Team got its halftracks ashore at 0830 Hours after 2 attempts, but they could not move more than 50 yards through the litter of disabled vehicles. Its 6 howitzers were loaded on DUKWs, which were swamped 1 by 1 in the heavy seas with a loss of 20 personnel. Artillery units of the regimental combat teams were having a hard time getting toward shore, where they were scheduled to land between 0800 and 0900 hours. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0465.jpg |
| Image Size | 2.96 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 5000 x 4020 |
| Photographer | Herman Wall |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | June 7, 1944 |
| Location | Easy Red |
| City | Omaha Beach |
| State or Province | Normandy |
| Country | France |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | 111-SC-189900-S |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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