"When we got within a thousand yards of the beach, you could hear the machine-gun bullets hitting off the front ramp of the boat, it sounded like hail.
The ramp went down, and we were in water over our heads. Some of the men drowned, some got hit by the bullets, none were ever seen again. Bodies of dead and wounded floating in the water, boats burning...I saw guys on fire, even their shoes were on fire. The sounds were just unbearable, like continuous thunder and lightening in the worst way.
When we got to the beach, I said to one of my men, Cpl. Meyers, `If there's a hell, this has got to be it.' And it was about a minute later that he got a bullet in his head.
I crawled onto the sand and that's when I was in hit in the right elbow, and then my left thigh. I put a tourniquet on my thigh and dosed myself with morphine. I was weak from blood loss but never thought about dying..I had a job to do!
I then managed to pull 3 guys off the barbed wire. One of them couldn’t swim so I helped him take off his pack. I got all 3 of them to the sand and gave them a shot of morphine for the pain. I was then hit a 3rd time.
I passed out on the beach. I don’t know how long I lay there.
When I woke up, medics were collecting the dead and wounded. The dead bodies on the beach were blocking all movements, so they brought in bulldozers, punched out a ditch, put the dead soldiers in it and covered them up. That was the first World War II cemetery in France.” - Staff Sergeant Ray Lambert, Medic, 2nd BN, 16th Inf. Reg., 1st ID, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6th, 1944. #reality #omaha #stayzero #zerofoxtrot