John C. McManus - The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach

To the soldiers of the Big Red One, no matter the generation

To my family:
Big Mama, Pops, Mike, and Nancy

In grateful appreciation for the substantial support provided by the First Division Museum at Cantigny.

FOREWORD

D esperate. Hellish. Disastrous. Catastrophic. Traumatic. Shocking. Bloody.

Anyone who was at Omaha beach on June 6, 1944especially in the morning or early afternoon of that momentous dayis likely to have used one or more of those powerful words to describe it. At Omaha beach, the stakes were so high, and the fighting so bitter, that the very name evokes something legendary, even iconic. Originally dubbed Beach 46 by Allied planners in the spring of 1944, this four-and-a-half-mile strip of rocky Norman coastline is now hallowed ground, as is the sprawling cliffside military cemetery that broods over it like a melancholy sentinel. The battle fought at Omaha beach is among the most famous in American history, occupying a solid niche in the cultural memory alongside such iconic bloodlettings as Bunker Hill, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Bulge, and Iwo Jima. Omaha beach is a symbol, a powerful tale of extreme adversity and ultimate victory.

Amid the sand and stone of this troubled, fire-swept beach, a drama played out that helped decide the future of humanity. Indeed there is something so compelling, so significant, about Omaha beach that all my life I have been irresistibly drawn to it, like the proverbial moth to a flame. I have spent a quarter century studying it intently, first as a young tourist, later as a Normandy scholar, eventually as a battlefield historian and author of a book on the Normandy invasion. And I have come to believe that Omaha beach is better known than it is understood; that in spite of several outstanding works by excellent historians, and at least one brilliant film portraying the fighting, there is actually more to the story. The battle for Omahanot to mention the Normandy invasion of which it was just one partwas such a vast, complicated, multilayered saga that it is still possible to gain new insights about it. I think the key to these new insights centers around the 1st Infantry Division and the ferocious battle it fought to secure the eastern section of the beach. By the spring of 1944, the Big Red One was arguably the most combat-experienced, and certainly the most cocksure, division in the Army. Only the equally accomplished 3rd Infantry Division could matchor exceed, in the view of that divisions self-proclaimed dogface soldiersthe combat record of the 1st Infantry Division. Though the Big Red One had suffered heavy casualties in North Africa and Sicily, plenty of veterans remained to lead the way at Omaha, along with a vast array of combat-tested leaders, staff officers, and specialists. As a result, the division carried with it a distinct identity as rebellious and resentful (even mischievous in garrison) but extremely reliable and effective in combat. The division could fight and it could produce results. It was perceived by the American high command as the first string, tempestuous perhaps, but talented and dedicated, a go-to outfit. Twenty years after D-Day, General Omar Bradley, in retirement, would write, Thank God for the First Division. Any inexperienced division might not have made it that day.

Yet, curiously, the 1st Divisions critical role at Omaha beach has tended to be overshadowedat least in historical memoryby the equally serious fight of the 29th Infantry Division and U.S. Army Rangers elsewhere at Omaha. The most famous example is Steven Spielbergs masterful, searing portrayal of the fighting at Dog Green beach, located in the heart of the 29th Division sector, in his enormously influential film