D-DAY: The Men Who Fought

SAMUEL FULLER, 81

American

$ He hit Omaha Beach as a corporal with the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, which he later immortalized in his war film The Big Red One.

"We saw the dawn before we landed. At first, everything seemed to be going pretty well: we had good smoke and fog cover. We were told that the troops in front of us were just 150 young German kids with bicycles. But we did not expect the German 352nd Division. So as soon as we hit the beach, we came under heavy fire from a battle-hardened field division. Jesus! Had we known we were up against a crack unit like that, we'd have messed up our pants.

"We were in a very bad position, pinned down on the beach, with a German division in front of us and only water behind us. We had 7 yds. of beachhead with no cover; the highest thing around was a shale rock. The only way to get off the beach was to blow up a big tank trap that was blocking our way. Finally one of our guys took the trap out with a bangalore torpedo ((a metal tube packed with high explosives)). They sent me to find our commander, Colonel George Taylor, and tell him we'd opened a breach. I stood up and tried to run. When you run over unconscious men, or men lying on their bellies, it's tough to keep your balance. You go into the water, but the water is washing bodies in and out. Bodies, heads, flesh, intestines; that's what Omaha Beach was.

"When I found Taylor, he took the cigar out of his mouth, handed it to me and said, 'Want a smoke?' Then he got up and said these very famous words: 'There are two kinds of men on this beach: the dead, and those about to die. So let's get the hell out of here!' He began to run and led us through the breach under fire. There's a kind of -- not courage, but anger and balls that mix together on a charge. But whatever you do, keep away from words like heroism. We were in the U.S. Infantry, and we had a job."

GWENN-AEL BOLLORE,68

French

He was one of 178 Free French soldiers who landed on Sword Beach with the British 4th Commandos. He served as a combat nurse.

"As the day started to break we saw France -- this tiny little strip of land -- appear. It was the most moving moment for me. You're there, in the silence; you see the coast; you know that something terrible is going to happen. The British commander ordered that the French boats should beach, symbolically, a few yards ahead of the others. We appreciated that.

"We had 550 yds. of bare beach to cross, and nowhere to hide. There were people falling around us. I was carrying a good stock of morphine and bulky bandages powdered with sulfonamides. I had instructions not to stop for anybody until we made it to the casino, which the Germans had turned into a bunker. But I made an exception for Lieut. Commander Philippe Kieffer because I thought it was a good idea to hang on to our leader. He took some shrapnel, so I bandaged him quickly and gave him some morphine.

"When we were fighting around the casino, one of our guys stepped forward and got shot. I went to get him with our chief medic. Some snipers fired at us, and the doc was killed instantly. The man we went to help died during the night. His brains were running down his forehead, and we couldn't have saved him even if we had had an operating room.