Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

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Ray
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Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Ray »

300px-Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpg
Blessed Be the Lord, My Rock

1{A Psalm of David.} Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight:

2My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Ray »

From an Atlantic magazine 1960 article.....

Able company, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Omaha beach approx. 0636......

Able Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand yards from the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six men drown before help arrives. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty others paddle around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the fight at the shore line. It's their lucky day. The other six boats ride unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, where a shell into Boat No. 3 kills two men. Another dozen drown, taking to the water as the boat sinks. That leaves five boats.

Lieutenant Edward Tidrick in Boat No. 2 cries out: "My God, we're coming in at the right spot, but look at it! No shingle, no wall, no shell holes, no cover. Nothing!"

His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man's head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.

Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot.

Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire.

Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: "Advance with the wire cutters!" It's futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.

Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfoot never make it. They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.

Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives—Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival.

To the right of where Tidrick's boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand.

By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example.

Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin's example, the strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably.

By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.

By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems.

By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company's contribution to the D Day fire fight is a cipher.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ch/303365/
Last edited by Ray on Thu Jun 06, 2019 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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magyars4
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by magyars4 »

God bless them, one and all!
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by AJMD429 »

....and most of them were just kids - 'teenagers with guns'. . . kids willing to risk violent death to protect the freedom of others.

What I pray for now is that current and future generations are as courageous. I hope I'm not praying in vain.... :|
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Pitchy »

God Bless them, another sad time in this old world.
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Bill in Oregon
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Bill in Oregon »

I wonder if Eisenhower ever had nightmares about this profligate waste of young mens' lives. I wonder what lessons were drawn from the after-action reports.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by gamekeeper »

I have always felt that it was a sacrifice that was so great it can never be repaid......lest we forget.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Nath »

Awful just awful.

Man's inhumanity to man is awful.

N.
Psalm ch8.

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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by AJMD429 »

Every single individual who has EVER endorsed ANY 'gun control' law is spitting in the face of these young men, for it all began with 'gun registration' emphasizing 'military' style firearms and handguns, for the alleged purpose of 'reducing crime, violence, and gangs', and the legislation was crafted so as to not interfere with 'sporting use' of firearms. Without a disarmed populace, you start pushing them to the point of hauling people away in the middle of the night to never be seen again, and your troops will start getting shot. The hoplophobes who say the Second Amendment is obsolete because government has guns and tanks and atomic weapons doesn't get the concept that the federal government is simply NOT going to drop an atomic weapon on Memphis, and even ordinary firearms like AR-15's would be a significant deterrent against the likes of another Hitler.

So whenever I hear politicians advocate gun bans, or citizens willing to go along with them, I think our saying "never again" may sound tough, but the mere fact that people push for gun control means we HAVE forgotten.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Pitchy »

Yepper.
My meaning of gun control is a steady hold. :wink: :)
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Grizz »

YES AND AMEN . . .

is it even possible to comprehend what they did that day? not for me it isn't. I watch the historical movies and videos and I still cannot relate. But I am grateful for the blood and treasure sacrificed by those men, those,
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by BrianSH »

And today, they bow down to their eu overloads for mediocre healthcare.

My uncle was part of the group that swung around to met up with Patton. He didn't talk about this stuff.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by claybob86 »

Bill in Oregon wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:42 am I wonder if Eisenhower ever had nightmares about this profligate waste of young mens' lives. I wonder what lessons were drawn from the after-action reports.
It was not a waste. It HAD to be done. Eisenhower knew exactly what he was doing and what the cost would be. He hated having to send those men into that situation, but understood the necessity to do so. I would not want to have been in his shoes.
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Re: Time to pray Psalm 144: 1,2.......

Post by Blaine »

claybob86 wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2019 12:19 am
Bill in Oregon wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:42 am I wonder if Eisenhower ever had nightmares about this profligate waste of young mens' lives. I wonder what lessons were drawn from the after-action reports.
It was not a waste. It HAD to be done. Eisenhower knew exactly what he was doing and what the cost would be. He hated having to send those men into that situation, but understood the necessity to do so. I would not want to have been in his shoes.
Exactly. "Profligate" is so insulting to the 500,000 or so Men and Women who died securing freedom. :roll:
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