4th Marine Division Lands on the Beach

Marines of the 4th Marine Division pour ashore from their landing craft on Yellow and Blue Beaches on D-day. Note ammunition and supply trailers pulled by the infantry. They would soon sink in the fine-grain black sand. Enemy fire had not hit this assault wave yet as it landed. The infantry, heavily laden, found its own "foot-mobility" severely restricted. In the words of Corporal Edward Hartman, a rifleman with the 4th Division: "the sand was so soft it was like trying to run in loose coffee grounds." From the 28th Marines came this early, laconic report: "Resistance moderate, terrain awful." At 1000 Hours the Japanese began firing along presighted registers all along the landing beach.