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 The Invasion
Interactive feature of the most complex attack ever conceived
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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Robert Williams in his dress uniform 1944 |
IN HIS OWN WORDS: BOB WILLIAMS
Posted Sunday, May 23, 2004
Williams, 21, a sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, landed in 3 ft. of water in a flooded field behind Utah Beach
Our pilot had to take evasive action and fly very low, about 650 ft., so our paratroops ended up being widely scattered. I joined up with three other paratroopers, and we started walking north, directly toward a German machine-gun nest, as it turned out. There was a burst of gunfire, and I realized something had gone through my left pant-leg pocket. I crouched in shallow water, with just my nose and mouth exposed. I was unhurt, but two of the men I was with were killed. I kept moving, crouched in the water, until it was only a foot deep, and it started to get light.
At dawn that morning, I saw formations of B-26 bombers making their run along the beach, less than a mile away. I was exhausted, and the weight of my wet clothes and equipment was too much. I lay down across a big rosebush growing out of the water—I didn't care about the thorns. A few minutes later, I saw three men moving toward me with their rifles pointed in my direction. Luckily they were our guys. We could see a barn in the distance. We headed for it, but then we got pinned down by rifle fire. I was tired of the water and continued to head for the barn and dry ground. Fortunately the sniper was a lousy shot.
The next morning, we caught up with a group that consisted mostly of my own company. For the first time I was with my very close buddies. That was a good feeling. Midmorning we moved toward the village of Vierville and were ambushed in the center of town. The Germans had a machine gun in a church tower and a line of infantry entrenched parallel to the road. Sergeant Benjamin Stoney took a burst of machine-gun fire in the face as he peered around a stone wall to return fire, and was killed. He had jumped just ahead of me from plane No. 48. He was fourth; I was fifth. The battle lasted most of the afternoon around his body. We began to run low on ammunition.
We heard a tank approaching. It was one of ours. We pointed to the church tower, and with one shot the tank blew a big hole in the tower. Our platoon leader, Lieut. Baranowski, climbed on the tank and got the crew to mount the big .50-cal. machine gun on top. He manned that gun like a madman, killing Germans left and right as fast as he could shoot. We captured more Germans than we knew what to do with—125 prisoners, 125 dead. We had six wounded, one dead.
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