D-Day: Every Man Was a Hero A Military Gamble that Shaped History

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men was providing covering fire as Summers burst into the third and fourth buildings, killed twelve Germans and chased out the rest. A private crept up and said to Summers, "Why are you doing it?" Said Summers: "I can't tell you." Said the private: "O.K., I'm with you." At the next building, the Americans killed 30 more Germans. Then they found 15 Germans inexplicably eating breakfast and shot them all. At the last building, the support gunner's tracers set the roof on fire, and an additional 30 Germans stumbled out to be shot down.

To the east, the British 6th Airborne had a somewhat easier time of it. Landing close to their targets just after midnight, the glider troops and parachutists caught the Germans by surprise. By dawn they had captured their main objectives, the bridges across the Orne and Dives rivers, securing the eastern flank of the British landing site.

The American assault from the Channel was set for 6:30 a.m. In the first gray and misty light, the sea suddenly appeared full of ships, some 5,000 vessels of every variety, and from the giant battleships came a deafening barrage. The Texas and Arkansas trained their 14-in. guns on German artillery batteries atop the cliffs towering over Omaha Beach; the Nevada and three cruisers pounded nearby Utah Beach. Twelve miles offshore, thousands of infantrymen scrambled down sheets of netting into the boxlike landing craft that began chugging toward the heavily mined and barricaded shore. Aboard the flagship Augusta, General Bradley stood with ears plugged by cotton and watched through binoculars as the vanguard of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions waded slowly into German machine-gun fire on Omaha Beach. "The commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan," Churchill was to announce proudly in the House of Commons at noon that day. "And what a plan!"

To the top commanders, everything is always part of a plan, but to the ordinary soldiers in the landing craft, the invasion seemed more like a series of fragments that added up to chaos. The storm that was supposed to have died down still churned up waves four and five feet high, and the landing craft wallowed through them. White-capped waves slurped over the sides. Seasickness became epidemic. Drenched, shivering, scared and loaded down with almost 70 Ibs. of wet battle gear, they had to keep bailing.

At least ten of the 1,500 small landing craft foundered. One lost 30 men out of 32 aboard. Others took shellbursts and a steady pinging of bullets against the steel sides. Still others collided with the jagged obstacles and barbed wire that the Germans had embedded along the beach. The heavily burdened invaders had to scramble out into neck-deep water, or worse. A number of amphibious craft loaded with artillery turned back. Armored units had an even harder time. Their Sherman DD tanks were outfitted with devices that were supposed to keep them afloat while they lurched ashore, but of the first 32 launched, 27 sank in the choppy waves and plunged to the bottom, taking most of their helpless five-man crews with them.

"Bullets tore holes in the water around me and I made for the nearest steel obstacle ..." said Robert Capa, the only photographer to go ashore with the first troops. "Fifty yards ahead of me, one of our half-burnt amphibious