:05:00
other than just terrible fear.
:05:03
I was never more afraid of
anything than at that moment.
:05:12
The sizes of the forces involved
were gargantuan.
:05:17
This was the biggest amphibious
operation in human history.
:05:21
Guys thought
this would be pretty easy.
:05:23
Maybe the Air Force
has killed them already.
:05:27
Actually, they hadn't hit anything.
:05:33
Most of the young men that landed
:05:36
on Utah and Omaha had never
landed on a beach before.
:05:41
It was their first time at war.
:05:43
When those ramps
went down on those boats,
:05:47
and those Germans had been
waiting and holding their fire,
:05:51
thousands and thousands of them,
:05:53
rifles, machine guns,
mortars, big cannon.
:05:57
I swear, in some of those boats
:06:00
everybody got killed
before anybody got out.
:06:02
Just a wall of steel hit them.
:06:05
First of all it was chaos.
:06:08
That's the only word to describe
what was going on.
:06:13
"Why are we doing this?"
I said to myself.
:06:19
I'd dig a hole and try
to get below the firing squad.
:06:24
Closer you get to the ground,
the longer you'll live.
:06:28
That was my motto.
:06:30
How afraid they must have been.
:06:32
And they were so tired and wet
:06:34
with all their wool and gear
and ammunition and weapons
:06:39
that stepping off those boats,
their pals dying around them,
:06:44
they were so exhausted and seasick
:06:47
they could only crawl
up those beaches.
:06:49
But they kept coming,
:06:51
working their way
up that beach to that seawall.
:06:54
The tendency was overwhelming,
every instinct in them said,
:06:59
"Get down low and just stay there.