Omaha Beach Quotes

“Bradley, as well as Generals Gerow and Huebner, was completely ignorant of the decidedly positive news that by 9:00, the GIs had penetrated the German coastal defenses in at least seven places and had neutralized five of the enemy’s twelve coastal strongpoints.”
― Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

“That the GIs on Omaha Beach did indeed possess the essential fighting skills to save the day has become an elemental moral of American history. No one realized it at the time, particularly the unfortunate men who were subjected to the enemy’s relentless barrage of bullets and shells, but Omaha Beach would become one of those exceptional moments in history when Americans defined themselves by their actions as a people worthy of the principles upon which the nation was founded.”
― Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

“And so the invasion had begun, but no one could say that it had begun well. The air force and navy seemed not to have affected the enemy at all. Most outfits had come ashore late and in the wrong place. With shocking ease, the enemy’s nearly invisible resistance nests were cutting down Americans all across the beach—men with names like Wilczek, Hoback, Sullivan, Di Paola, Schenk, and Stevens, who spun onto the sand to die. If fate spared them scant moments for final reflection, they surely thought of home: Canarsie, or Bedford, or Farmville, or Hell’s Kitchen, or anyplace where someone would grieve. They must have thought what a waste it was—they could have done anything, anything at all . . . if only . . . And then the surging tide enveloped their bodies in the frothy surf, and the relentless breakers lifted them and tumbled them forward, ever forward, to deposit them ultimately in neat lines at the high-water mark—a place they were not able to reach in life, but where they would soon answer final roll call.”
― Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

“With a little help from the 29th Division, only sixty-five Rangers, over half of whom the enemy had felled within minutes of the landing, had reduced a seemingly unassailable enemy resistance nest that at H-Hour had inflicted a large part of the carnage on American troops on Omaha’s western sector. Anyone who ever may have doubted the usefulness of the Rangers’ rigorous commando-style training needed only to learn of this action to be reassured that it all was worthwhile.”
― Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944