The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

destroyers, now directed by shore observers, pounded the pillbox and trenches around the D-1 draw.
    The explosions knocked several men in Cota’s patrol off their feet. “The concussion from the bursts of these guns seemed to make the pavement of the street in Vierville actually rise beneath our feet,” recalled Lieutenant Shea.
    “I hope to hell they cut out that firing,” said one of Cota’s men.
    The batteries of the Texas battleship fired four salvos of four rounds each. Fellow destroyer McCook then radioed shore that Germans were fleeing the pillbox at the base of the draw and other strong points.
    As Cota and his patrol entered the draw from Vierville, the naval barrage stopped. Smoke cleared, revealing a road frosted with concrete dust and shrouded in bitter-tasting cordite fumes. The road led down to Dog Beach.
    “That firing probably made them duck back into their holes,” warned Cota. “But keep a sharp eye on those cliffs to your right.”
    They moved down the draw. “There were a few scattered rounds of small arms fired at the patrol, but a dozen rounds of carbine and pistol fire sufficed to bring five Germans down from the caverns in the east wall of the draw,” recalled Shea. “They were stripped of their weapons as they reached the road, and herded before the patrol as it proceeded to the mouth of the draw.” 33
    The Germans led the way through a minefield at the entrance of the draw and then Cota and his patrol walked out onto Omaha Beach.
    Near the base of the draw, and at an aid station on Dog Beach, there were a cluster of Rangers and dozens of badly wounded and dog-tired Company A and B survivors. Among the wounded were Bedford boys Dickie Overstreet, Anthony Thurman, Lieutenant Ray Nance, and the 116 Yankee baseball player, Tony Marsico.
    Staff Sergeant Anthony Thurman had been hit in the arm and the shoulder; his nerves were also shot to pieces. He would never fully recover from the psychological trauma caused by D-Day. 34 Sergeant Mar-sico had been hit in the leg and shot through the arm by a rifle bullet as he crossed the sands. “I thought [the invasion] would be pretty hot but I didn’t know it was going to be like that,” recalled Marsico, who would soon be evacuated to a hospital in England along with his surviving comrades from Bedford. “I’m no hero. I know that. The heroes are the ones who didn’t make it.” 35
    There was one last obstacle blocking the road from the beach to Vierville—an antitank wall at the mouth of the draw. An engineer placed a TNT charge beside it and the wall was blown around 1:30 P.M. Then Rangers moved up the draw and started to mop up last pockets of German resistance along the bluffs.
    At enormous cost, the 116th Infantry and Rangers had secured the D-1 draw. The challenge would now be to keep it. Wanting to check on progress at the other end of the 29th Division’s section of assigned beach, Cota walked off along the promenade road leading to the next village to the east, Les Moulins. 36
    Later that afternoon, after securing Vierville, men began to return to the beach for medical aid. Twenty-seven-year-old Private Warner “Buster” Hamlett of F Company managed to hobble down to the sands. “Thousands of bodies were lying there. You could walk on the bodies, as far as you could see along the beach, without touching the ground. Parts of bodies—heads, legs, and arms—floated in the sea. Medics were walking up and down, tagging the wounded. As I stepped gently between my American comrades, I realized what being in the first wave was all about.” 37
    Lieutenant Ray Nance lay at an aid station on the beach. A sergeant had carried him that morning on his shoulder several hundred yards along the sea wall. “Late that afternoon,” recalled Nance, “Second Lieutenant Gearing landed by himself. . . . He came over to me and I got him up on what I knew. I said: ‘Hey, I think you’re it—company commander.’ I never felt so sorry for a person