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.

"Right after that they called me over to a little house, where they told me there was somebody down. It is perhaps the worst thing I saw. His name was Emile Renault, and he had taken a mortar shell in his shoulder. He had a gaping hole from his collarbone to his belt. He wasn't dead -- he was looking around -- but you could see his heart beating and his lungs breathing in and out. "

DAN DARLING, 73

Canadian

He landed at Juno Beach with Canada's Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders. Their mission was to race 10 miles to Caen's airport on fold-up bicycles. Darling caught three bullets in the abdomen before the Canadians reached their objective.

"Going over, the officers read a message from Ike. One of the guys prayed and then joked that this time he really meant it. I don't think I was ever afraid. You were betting on coming back.

"The first sight of France was the smoke, then the fires on the beach. There was so much happening: shells whistling in, buildings burning, aircraft overhead, Jerry letting go with 88-mm guns. We all grabbed our bicycles, and I remember the water under my chin. I had 78 lbs. of gear, not counting the bike and steel helmet. There were bodies in the water, and bodies lined up under blankets on the shore.

"On the beach, there was no standing around. We tried using the fold-up bikes we'd trained on for two years. But the rubble on the roads made the whole thing impractical. After about three miles, we were ordered to stack them up in a heap. We dug slit trenches the first night in a churchyard; Jerry was maybe 1,000 yds. away. When we tried to negotiate with a local farmer to buy some eggs, he was mystified by our Quebec French and finally asked in English, 'What do you want?' He had been a steward on the French liner Normandie and lived for years in New York. He gave us 15 eggs and green onions; so we made an omelet.

"Once we got inland, Jerry turned out to be mostly fanatical Hitler Youth and conscripts from Italy, Poland and Austria. The one who shot me was so young he'd never needed to shave. You couldn't think about getting killed: either you got them, or they got you."

HANS VON LUCK, 81

German

He was a major, commanding a battalion of the 21st Panzer Division in Normandy on D-day that fought in vain for six weeks to contain the British beachhead north of Caen.

"Ours was the only armored division anywhere near the coast that day. On the night of the attack, I had one company out on an exercise, but they were carrying only dummy ammunition. Around midnight the commander of the company reported paratroopers 'dropping right on my head.' We thought it must be only a commando mission. I rushed over to my headquarters to get more information. We had some prisoners, including a British doctor and a few enlisted men. I chatted with the doctor about old friends of mine in the Grenadier Guards and reminisced about England, which I knew well. He warmed up a bit, and I asked if he was on a commando raid. At that, one of the enlisted men spoke up: 'Ha ha, it's no bloody raid, it's an invasion, and we're going all the way to Berlin!'

"The doctor tried to shut him up, but it was too late. Too late for us too. When I tried to reach our division commander, I found he was in Paris. Hitler's headquarters refused to believe me and decided it was only a dummy raid. We were not permitted to counterattack. I believe to this day that if we had counterattacked by 2 a.m., we could have got to the coast and held the bridges on the Caen canal.

"When we finally got the order to counterattack at 2 p.m., we took lots of casualties from their air force and their naval guns offshore. We remained in that position for six weeks, keeping the enemy contained in the beachhead by attacking every day and every night. Once, near the end, we took the high ground overlooking the beachhead, but the Canadian infantry counterattacked. We were driven away, and that was the end of the operation."