#War of beach skin#

Watson continued up the beach until he met an Army captain who ordered him to the firing line. Navy Beachmaster Bob Watson spent 28 days on Omaha Beach and received a battlefield promotion to coxswain. Almost all the officers in F Company were either killed or wounded.

Those who survived struggled up the beach, exhausted and weighted down by equipment and soaking wet uniforms. Many American soldiers were killed as they charged out of their landing craft. On his right, WN 62 stood atop a hill dominating the area with its 75mm cannon.Īlthough some heavy guns had been knocked out before Watson arrived, enemy artillery, mortars, machine guns, and sniper fire rained onto the beach. On Watson’s left, WN 61 stood low to the beach firing an 88mm cannon from a concrete bunker. The Germans defended either side of the draw with two major defensive positions, Widerstandsnests (WN) 61 and 62.

Companies E and F of Colonel George Taylor’s 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division had landed on Fox Green and Easy Red Beaches opposite the Colleville Draw and encountered a slaughter. Watson had arrived an hour into the battle. Watson climbed farther up the beach, over dead and wounded Americans, and removed all the first aid kits he could find, throwing them back to the medic. He gave Watson one and, shouting over the din of battle, told him, “Just give it to a medic.” Watson, in return, fished some sulfa powder and pressure bandages from his first aid kit and handed them to the medic. Watson then crawled up to an Army medic who had lost everything but the strings of morphine syrettes he wore around his neck. “Bob, get your head together,” he told himself and kept repeating, “I don’t want to die here, I don’t want to die here.” Once out of the water, he pulled his bolt-action Springfield rifle from its protective plastic bag. Watson crawled on his hands and knees up the beach, his uniform in tatters but his helmet still on. “Everyone’s screaming for help, everyone’s wounded.” The dead and body parts littered the beach. Sherman tanks burned on the water line and half-sunk landing craft bobbed in the water, red with blood. German artillery shells exploded on the beach while machine-gun fire stitched the sand. Watson let go of the rope about 40 yards from the beach in shallow water.

#War of beach skin#

His new ride dragged him all the way to the beach, tearing the skin off his hands in the process. He clung to the side of the craft with one hand, gagging as salt water splashed his face. He screamed at the coxswain, “Hey! Stop! Hey! I’m over here!” The craft slowed long enough for him to grab a rope drooping from the side. Watson soon spotted a Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVP) headed straight for him. “I thought I was the last man in hell,” he recalled. Worse, he knew that other landing craft were not allowed to stop and pick up survivors. “I’m in shock,” recalled Watson, “and I’m scared to death.” It was early morning on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and he could not tell which of the other men bobbing in the water was alive or dead. The 60 pounds of equipment on his back pulled him into the depths, but he quickly inflated the lifebelt around his chest and popped to the surface. Watson flew backward into the air, cutting his left leg on the LCM’s bulwark before plunging into the freezing water. The explosion rocked the craft, killing the men in the front and tossing others into the water.

The Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM) carrying Army engineers and Navy beachmasters hit a mine on its way into Omaha Beach.