NARRATOR: On D-Day, June 6,
1944, when every man's job must have looked like
a suicide mission, small teams of specially
trained soldiers and sailors were given secret
assignments that put them at even greater risk. The success of the invasion of
Normandy rested in their hands. Meet these Unsung Heroes next
on Suicide Missions of D-Day. It was an epic struggle. The largest amphibious
assault ever staged, codenamed Operation Overlord. The invasion of Europe
kicked off an offensive that wouldn't end until Hitler's
1,000-year Reich lay in ruins. [gunfire] The beach landings
of Normandy would involve more than a
quarter million soldiers, sailors, and airmen. But it all began with
just a handful of men, in particular, three small bands
of specially trained warriors with three critical missions. US army paratroopers
called "pathfinders" were to jump into France first,
ahead of the main Allied airborne force. They set up special equipment
to guide incoming aircraft to their drop zones. British paratroopers of the
Ninth Parachute Battalion were to knock out a German
artillery battery that defended the Normandy beaches. And US Navy Combat
Demolition Units were to come ashore and the
very first waves of assault troops to blow up
beach obstacles and clear the way for
the landing craft. All three proved to be
extraordinarily dangerous jobs. RICHARD COOMBS: How we ever
accomplished and got in there, I don't know. But we did it. ROBERT SECHRIST: I tried to do
the best of my ability the job that they presented to me. TERENCE OTWAY: We were
scared out of our wits. I get the willies now
if I think about it. My wife will tell you, I mean,
I used to wake up with dreams at night shutting my head off. NARRATOR: These men knew that
failure was not an option. To a large degree, the success
of D-Day depended on them. DAVID BERRY: I think that
is what each one of them fought for. Not necessarily mom,
apple pie, and baseball, but they fought
for their buddies. And in accomplishing tasks
that they did on D-Day makes them all heroes. NARRATOR: By 1944, the
war against Germany had entered its fifth year. The Russians were
pushing the Nazis back along the Eastern Front. But Joseph Stalin was
growing impatient. To the Soviet Premier, it seemed
the United States and Great Britain had matched neither
his army size nor its sacrifice in fighting the war. NORMAN POLMAR: Stalin had been
in the war since June of 1941. Stalin felt that Britain
and America had done damn little to help the Russians. We had to invade in
the summer of 1944 because there is a chance that
Hitler and Stalin might have negotiated a peace. Because the Soviets, who had
taken tremendous casualties, were getting frustrated,
fed up with us. NARRATOR: In 1944, the
Allies formulated secret plans to invade France. Hitler expected that
the Allies would strike. And he knew that
when they did, it would be from across
the English Channel. To stop them, he ordered the
construction of the Atlantic Wall, a system of
bunkers, gun emplacements, and trenches running the
length of the French coastline. He placed Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel, famous for commanding the
Panzers in North Africa, in charge of building
the defenses. Rommel's plan was
simple, stop the invaders at the water's edge. In the area between
what's called the surf line and deep water, he
placed underwater obstacles to rip the bottoms
out of landing craft. As you got onto the beach,
Rommel wanted every square inch of the beach covered
with machine gun fire. He wanted any troops that
managed to stagger ashore to be ripped apart by machine guns. Further back, he had artillery
to blast any landing craft or landing ships that
got through the barriers, and also to fire on people
trying to clear the barriers. NARRATOR: Allied leaders
had been working out the details of their
invasion plan for months. For military planners, the day
an amphibious operation would begin was called D-Day, and the
hour it would start was H-Hour. For this operation,
D-Day would need to correspond with a low
tide and a full moon. That meant the morning of
either June the 5th or 6th 1944. The night before the invasion,
paratroopers and glider infantry would drop inland
to seize critical roads and bridges and to disrupt
and confuse German defenders. As morning approached,
aircraft and warships would begin pummeling
the coastline. Then at 6:30 AM, H-Hour,
the landing troops would come ashore at five
separate beaches stretching over 50 miles along
the Normandy coast. British, Canadian,
and French forces would take three beaches to the
east, codenamed Sword, Juno, and Gold. The American army would come
ashore on the western beaches, codenamed Omaha and Utah. It was a complex plan that
stretched Allied capabilities to their limits. General Dwight D.
Eisenhower was in command of the whole operation. NORMAN POLMAR: Some
military staff at the time felt Normandy had a 50-50
chance of being successful. It was the single most complex
military operation of World War II. Eisenhower prepared
two radio messages to broadcast the following day. One told how the Allied forces
had placed thousands of troops ashore to begin the
liberation of Europe. His other message was, "I,
Dwight David Eisenhower, take full responsibility
for the failure of the assault at Normandy." NARRATOR: Among
the many concerns were three specific problems
that had to be solved. First, the night
before the attack, nearly 1,000 C-47
transport planes would drop 20,000
paratroopers into France. But the pilots of
these planes would be flying in darkness
over unfamiliar territory and in radio silence. To make sure the pilots flew
over the correct drop zone, airborne pathfinders would have
to go in first ahead of all the other aircraft. Dropping in groups
of a dozen or so, the pathfinders would set
up special lights and homing beacons to guide the aircrews
of the main airborne assault force. In 1944, Tom McCarthy was
one of just 174 pathfinders with the American 82nd Airborne. TOM MCCARTHY: It was a
distinction because you know-- after you've got
the training, you know what you was going to do. You was going to
be in there first. You had to get that drop zone
lit up so that the main parties would come in. My job was to engage
as quick as we could. So that if we were
getting any opposition, we had them occupied
because they're going to-- soon as
their march command, they're going to head for it. NARRATOR: The second problem
was on the western flank of the invasion area. Four large German
artillery guns, hidden in bunkers near
the village of Merville, had a clear shot of Sword
Beach and could decimate the British forces
as they came ashore. From reconnaissance
photos, the thick concrete and steel bunkers
looked impervious to aerial bombardment
or Naval shelling. The job of knocking out the guns
fell to the men of the British Ninth Parachute Battalion. Lieutenant Colonel Terence
Otway was their commander. With those four
guns going flat out, it probably would have
canceled out the left flank of the British landing. And I don't think
that's exaggerating. NARRATOR: Also of great concern
was the hundreds of obstacles protecting the landing beaches. Before any landing craft
could come ashore and dump the assault troops,
someone would have to clear a path through the
steel and concrete booby traps. It would be one of the assault's
most dangerous missions, done in broad daylight in the
open under enemy fire. The US Navy's Combat
Demolition Units, NCDU's, got the assignment. Jerry Markham was the
chief machinist mate assigned as one of the explosive
specialists in NCDU number 46. JERRY MARKHAM: We were given
an extremely hazardous duty to perform, and it turned out
to be a suicide mission because of the way the Germans were
armed and ready for us. NARRATOR: The
planners of Overlord knew that the objectives
of these three groups, the airborne pathfinders, the
Ninth Parachute Battalion, and the Navy Combat Demolition
Units had to be met. The first to do their job
would be the pathfinders. Their war would
begin seven hours before the beach landings. According to Operation
Overlord's master plan, the first Allied troops to
touch French soil on D-Day would be the pathfinders. 356 specially
trained paratroopers divided into small teams
would parachute into dozens of drop zones ahead
of the main body of the 82nd and 101st
Airborne divisions. They would have only
minutes to set up their top secret equipment to
guide the incoming transport pilots to their
correct drop zones. Pathfinders, by definition,
had to be paratroopers. But it wasn't easy finding
volunteers willing to take on the additional risk. Robert Sechrist was in the 501st
Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. ROBERT SECHRIST:
Volunteers in the service is sort of a bad word. So there was not too
many people volunteered. We decided, among three or
four of us, let's volunteer. If we don't like it, we can
screw up and get kicked out. NARRATOR: Once in
training in Nottingham, England, the pathfinders
took on a reputation as headstrong,
high-spirited individuals. DAVID BERRY: There are
legends and stories told that the pathfinders are
more akin to the dirty dozen, or the screw ups, or the bad
apples, or the eight balls. There may have
been some of those, but initially they
were weeded out because they had a
very important mission to accomplish. NARRATOR: Typically,
a pathfinder team consisted of just 20 men. They were lightly
armed but weighed down with specialized equipment. They carried battery-operated
Holophane lights and bright fabric panels that
would be used to mark a large T on the drop zone. But their main tool was the
top secret Eureka radar beacon. A sophisticated signaling
device, the Eureka was considered to be so
valuable by the Allies that they had equipped it
with a self-destruct button. The simplest way to
explain Eureka radar is to draw an analogy
to a garage door opener. Its set was turned on but
it did not put out a signal. The aircraft was carrying
a unit called Rebecca. So when the interrogator
in the aircraft, Rebecca, tripped the Eureka
set, the Eureka set sent a signal to the
airplane with a readable blip on a screen. And then the aircraft could
guide to the drop zone. NARRATOR: One of the
most famous pathfinders was Captain Frank
Lillyman of Syracuse, New York, the senior pathfinder of
the 101st Airborne Division. Lillyman had a
flamboyant personality with a keen eye for publicity. He was determined that his
pathfinders would be recognized as the first pathfinders
on the ground on D-Day. He was also determined that
he'd be the first of the first and assigned himself the number
one spot in the number one plane. ROBERT SECHRIST:
Frank Lillyman, he should have been an astronaut. This guy was ready
to go to the moon. He want to be the first guy
to put his boots in France. There was no
question about that. He told everyone. See those boots? They're going on
that continent first. DAVID BERRY: Captain Lillyman
was known for every time he made a parachute jump, he had
a cigar clenched in his teeth. And indeed there
is archival footage that shows Captain Lillyman
with a camera strapped to his reserve parachute
with a cigar clenched in his teeth and his
canopy opening above him. NARRATOR: On June
5 at about 8:00 PM, the pathfinders began loading
into their C-47 transport planes. ROBERT SECHRIST: We had
camouflage, grease and all that to get smeared on us. And everybody laid out their
own equipment and put it on. And they had a lot
of brass there, and camera people,
photographers. They took pictures
of all the sticks in front of their planes. NARRATOR: At 10
minutes to 11:00, the C-47s began
taking off for France. Tom McCarthy was a pathfinder
with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. On D-Day, he was 23 years old. TOM MCCARTHY: I looked down
and I see the armadas down in the channel. I mean, there were ships,
and ships, and ships. The reality is
beginning to come you. This is the biggest thing
that ever happened, you know. And now what? What really are we getting into? NARRATOR: The pathfinders knew
the odds they were facing. They would have just 30
minutes to set up their beacons before hundreds of pilots would
arrive, under fire, looking to them for guidance
to the drop zone. They also knew if the
invasion were called off, they would be left behind
with no hope of escape. And I was very concerned about
that seaborne invasion making it. That was on my mind. I said, God, I hope these
guys can get on that beach and get into shore. NARRATOR: Even
months of training had not prepared the pathfinders
for what was about to happen. The pathfinders
planes were supposed to come in at 600 feet. But because of enemy fire
and a thick layer of clouds, they were flying lower
and faster than expected. Some of the pilots became
disoriented as they search for the
proper drops zones. At 15 minutes past midnight,
the first pathfinders received their signal to jump. Tom McCarthy came
out of his plane at just 300 feet directly
above enemy soldiers. TOM MCCARTHY: That full
moon lit up everything. Come out of those chutes,
I looked right down at them, guys down
there shooting at me. I said, oh, mother
of god, you know. The duck would
have been welcomed. NARRATOR: The Germans
spotted McCarty as soon as he left his plane. Survival became
his top priority. TOM MCCARTHY: There were two
guys that were banging away at me coming in. Fairly accurate too,
because one of them put a crease around
my left temple. I don't know whether he
scared me more or made me mad. I didn't like that because
I was bleeding already and I wasn't in the ground. NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
Robert Sechrist, with the 101st Airborne, also
dropped in under fire landing next to a hedgerow
just off his drop zone. ROBERT SECHRIST: About 40
or 50 yards up the road, there was a machine
gun firing at us. I had my two lights but I
had to get on the other side of the hedgerow, because I am
on the wrong side of the drop-- for the drop zone. NARRATOR: But Sechrist,
like most of his team, was pinned down, unable to work. McCarthy landed in a field
near a German barracks. He had been separated from his
group and was on the ground alone. The Germans came to find him. TOM MCCARTHY: I got
out of the chute, moved into the high
grass, and watched them. They came searching for me. And I let them search
and I let them go by. And I fed them a grenade
and I took them out. NARRATOR: The pathfinders, mere
handfuls of soldiers surrounded by the vast German army, were
scrambling in the darkness with no idea what lay
behind the next hedgerow. As the pathfinders went to
work, setting up their lights and beacons, they risked
discovery and death from the German troops
searching the countryside. Pathfinder is under immediate
danger because his plane has just skimmed them over
an enemy-held area. He has to hump this big box
or this big package of lights around and get it
to a specific area. The danger aspect is that
you are, in fact, lighting up a light and telling
everyone you are here. You've got 30 minutes to
accomplish your pathfinder mission. If you haven't accomplished
that mission by the time the main serial comes, then
they have no mark to aim for. NARRATOR: Many, like
Roberts Sechrist, never got the chance to
set up their equipment. ROBERT SECHRIST: I can remember
saying to myself, what the hell are those guys sitting
out here in the dark for, shooting at me? They should have been home in
bed or back in the barracks. These guys were serious. They were trying to kill me. The fact that I was alone,
that was pretty scary. NARRATOR: Fortunately,
enough beacons and lights did go up to guide in most
of the main assault force. For the anxious
pathfinders on the ground, the chutes were a welcome sight. TOM MCCARTHY: I heard the
drone and I looked up, and there were planes and
pretty soon there were chutes. I said, oh, boy. They're here. NARRATOR: Because the
pathfinders had been scattered, the main assault force
was scattered too. But in a stroke of luck,
their broad pattern confused the Germans. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
never realized the true size of their attack and never
ordered a full counterstrike. Some things, however,
did go as planned. In this rare footage
shot just after D-Day, Captain Frank
Lillyman does his best to stake his claim as the first
pathfinder to land in Normandy. INTERVIEWER: This is Captain
Frank L. Lillyman of Syracuse, New York, from the pathfinder
section 502nd Parachute Infantry. Captain Lillyman was the first
man to set foot on France during the invasion. Is that right, sir? FRANK LILLYMAN: I jumped
in number one position in the leading
aircraft that night. INTERVIEWER: Well, that should
have made you number one, sir. FRANK LILLYMAN: It sure is. INTERVIEWER: What time was
that on D-Day, captain? FRANK LILLYMAN: 15
minutes after midnight. INTERVIEWER: On June the 6th. FRANK LILLYMAN: That's right. INTERVIEWER: And you were
wounded that that night, I understand. How did that happen, sir? FRANK LILLYMAN: The events
of that night is still pretty hazy to me. NARRATOR: The pathfinders
paid dearly for their success. Nearly 150 were either killed,
wounded, captured, or missing. ROBERT SECHRIST: Everything
didn't turn out the way we'd liked it to turn out. I can only say that I
don't feel I ever have to take a back seat to anyone. There should be no
question in anybody's mind that the Pathfinder unit was-- it was tops. NARRATOR: The pathfinders
had kicked off the invasion of Europe. And for those who followed,
the dangers only increased. A few miles inland from
the Normandy coastline at the town of
Merville, the Germans had built four large bunkers. The concrete casemates were
equipped with large caliber artillery guns. The guns had the
range and the power to chew up any British
soldiers attempting to land at Sword Beach. If D-Day was to have
any hope of succeeding, the guns would have to be
knocked out before H-Hour. TONY LEA: Well, prior
to the invasion, it was decided that the
only real way of ensuring that this-- these guns were neutralized
would be by airborne assault. NARRATOR: The critical mission
was given to the 750 men of the Ninth Parachute Battalion
of the British 6th Airborne Division. These were young
paratroopers who had not yet tasted real combat. 29-year-old Lieutenant
Colonel Terence Otway was their commander. TERENCE OTWAY: The average
age of the battalion was 20. I was 29, one of the eldest. But I had absolute
confidence in them. They were very, very keen. They were completely unafraid. And they're a very brave lot. NARRATOR: For all
intents and purposes, Merville Battery was a fortress. The bunker walls were
two meters thick. It was encircled by an anti-tank
ditch, a minefield, and two barbed wire fences. There were 20 machine gun
nests called Tobruks, on top of and surrounding the casemates. 130 enemy troops
manned the garrison. The assault relied on a
complex plan devised by Otway. The night before D-Day,
part of the battalion would parachute into France
while gliders brought in more reinforcements, and
heavy weapons, and explosives. Specially trained engineers
would clear the minefield. Then after the Ninth
took the Battery, they would destroy the
guns with explosives. The group rehearsed
the plan for months. Gordon Newton was a private. He was assigned to
one of the gliders. GORDON NEWTON: We were the creme
de la creme, esprit de corps, and all that. I don't think I would
have wanted to have missed any part of a fighting. I was never scared. I wasn't apprehensive. I wanted to do well. NARRATOR: On June 5, the 750
men climbed into their C-47 transports and Horsa gliders
for the trip across the channel. Leonard Daniels was a
22-year-old paratrooper ready for his first
jump into combat. LEONARD DANIELS: Then we had
the effects of the Canadians. I stood in a row and
put our heads down. And the hair was cut like
a coconut but cut in with V-I-C-T-O-R-Y. So you had the
word victory spelt when we put our heads down. These are sort of
things to take your mind off the actual operation. NARRATOR: Frederick
Glover was just 17. He would ride to France
in one of the gliders. FREDDIE GLOVER: I
remember quite distinctly, we were waiting on the
airstrip with the gliders and their tugs. And I had a feeling
which probably was not peculiar to me, but it was
rather strange in so far as I felt that I
was two persons. I remember when we're told
to enplane into the glider. Physically, I was
moving and enplaning, but mentally, I
seem quite detached. NARRATOR: It was almost
midnight as it transports tugs and gliders carrying
the British Ninth Parachute Battalion crossed
over French soil. It was the last thing that
would go according to plan. The weather turned bad. Some of the pilots
became disoriented. The confusion intensified
as the Germans opened fire on the planes. Sidney Capon was 22. SIDNEY CAPON: And all of a
sudden, the antiaircraft fire came up and hit the plane,
and you see the amber glows outside. And all the occupants,
including myself, were thrown from
port to starboard. NARRATOR: 66 men
and three gliders followed the planes loaded
with the paratroopers. MAN: And at one time, we
got into a searchlight. It was quite an eerie sensation. The glider lit up like daylight. NARRATOR: As the main
group flew over France, the confusion continued. Paratroopers got the signal to
jump without being certain they were over the rendezvous point. SIDNEY CAPON: Then
all of a sudden, standby the doors, red light,
red light, green light, go! Of course, I fell out
like a sack of coal, quite different
with the training. NARRATOR: The drop went badly. 192 men were lost or
drowned when they landed in Rommel's flooded fields. TERENCE OTWAY: Roman had
ordered that the area was to be flooded. I, personally, was wading
through water up to my chest. And I saw three or four
chaps drown in front of me. There was nothing one could do. NARRATOR: Otway quickly realized
the battalion's drop had been off target. At 10 minutes to
3:00 in the morning, fewer than 150 men had
reached the rendezvous point. The gliders carrying their
jeeps, heavy weapons, and explosives had
crashed or gone astray. But Otway couldn't wait. He had to knock out the guns
before the invasion force hit the beach. TONY LEA: I suspect he may
have seen disaster looming. But then, again words turns
out where in the Parachute Regiment, failure
is not an option. TERENCE OTWAY: We only
had one fixed machine gun and no engineers. You can't give up. I mean, you can never
speak to your friends again if you gave up. So I had to reorganize
and left at a proper time, and crossed my fingers
and hoped it would work. NARRATOR: Because their
engineers and minesweepers had been lost with the
gliders, Otway's men were forced to cut
through the barbed wire and clear a path through the
minefield with their bare hands and bayonets. The paratroopers
waited in the darkness for the three gliders filled
with men who were you join them in the assault. Only one
glider managed to get close. Otway knew that even with
a badly undermanned force, he would have to attack. Among the men with him that
night outside the battery was Sidney Capon. Terence Otway,
he said get ready, we've got to take this gun. And he says, get in, get in! Of course, I have done what
I've done in training-- running, shouting bastards,
bastards, bastards, swerving, zigzagging, running
the gauntlet of cross fire. NARRATOR: As the men
stormed the bunkers, they took heavy losses. LEONARD DANIELS: Some trip
and go down and get up again, some go down and don't get up. No, that's all there is to it. You don't stand and cry because
you might have been hit. You don't know who's been hit. TERENCE OTWAY: I
was actually hit. Crippen was hit, not me. I got one through the-- [inaudible] and a
bullet right through-- went through the
back of my uniform. So I was lucky. NARRATOR: Capon and the others
managed to toss their grenades into the bunker. Yes! NARRATOR: When the Germans came
out, the paratroopers went in. SIDNEY CAPON: And
all of a sudden, there was a noise
coming from inside. And they pushed each other out. And one or two said,
Ruskies, Ruskies! What the hell they
want about Ruskies? And I later learned that
there's been Russians to fight for the Germans. NARRATOR: Many of
the enemy soldiers were Russians, conscripted by
the Germans to guard the guns. Most were unwilling to die at
their posts and surrendered. Without the engineers
and their explosives, Otway's men detonated
grenades and the gun breaches, and neutralized the battery. It was over in 20 minutes. SIDNEY CAPON: They should
have annihilated us. They should have annihilated
us in that defensive position, but they didn't. NARRATOR: The Ninth
Parachute Battalion had taken Merville, but
not without a price. Of the 150 men who actually
attacked the battery, just 65 were left standing. TERENCE OTWAY: I'm
proud of the fact that the Ninth
Parachute Battalion did the job it was asked to
do, despite the problems. As simple as that, I'm
still very proud of them. LEONARD DANIELS:
There's only one way to describe the rest
of our battalion, and that was we
were all muckers. We pull together,
work as a big team. NARRATOR: The guns of
the Merville Battery had been knocked
out just in time. Within minutes, the
main invasion force would be approaching
the beaches. It was now time for the
Navy combat demolition units to go to work. By sunrise on June 6, 1944,
the pathfinders and the British Ninth Parachute Battalion
had completed their missions. Three airborne divisions
had dropped into Normandy and were fighting to hold
inland roads and bridges. Just off the coast,
130,000 soldiers were poised and
ready to come ashore. But before they could land,
specially trained demolition teams would need to
clear the beaches. The Navy Combat Demolition Units
or NCDU's had been formed back in 1943 when Navy Lieutenant
Commander Draper Kauffman started the Navy Demolition
School in Fort Pierce, Florida. The teams of seven
sailors all volunteers, trained in a variety of ways
to blow up beach obstacles. The planners of Operation
Overlord saw reconnaissance photos showing that the
Germans were building obstacles on the beaches the Allies
had targeted for the landings and called in the NCDU's. The Navy Combat Demolition teams
would go ashore with the very first assault troops. Because they were first, they
expected to take the heaviest enemy fire. In 1944, Jerry Markham
was a chief machinist mate with Navy Combat
Demolition Unit number 46. The Omaha Beach then was
crescent shaped, about five miles long, and was
flanked with sheer cliffs from 100 to 150 feet high,
embedded with concrete gun placements. Every section of
the beach was zeroed in for direct and crossfire. There were about 20 bands
of heavily mined obstacles. Our job was to blow a path
to those mines obstacles for the incoming forces. NARRATOR: John Talton
was a Seaman Second Class with NCDU 44. JOHN TALTON: I'd been in
the service for two years. And being young, I wanted
to get into combat. My vision of combat was me
doing all the shooting, never considered being shot at. I had no idea what I was getting
into or where I was going. Nelson Dubroc was a
boatswain's mate in Unit 130. NELSON DUBROC: I remember when
we had signed up for the thing, they had told us that the
possibility of casualties would have been heavy. You know, maybe two or three
out of five would get hit. It haven't dawned on me
that I was going to get hurt or could get hurt. Of course, when
you're 18 years old, you know, you're pretty well
shockproof or invincible. You think you are anyway. NARRATOR: Mockups
of the obstacles were built in England. Special explosive packs were
created to help the demolition teams get their jobs done. One was called the Hagensen Pack
after its inventor, Lieutenant Carl Hagensen. The ability to
carry explosives and compact little packs that
would do the job of blowing these mine obstacles
was a very tricky job. Hagensen Pack was a pack
about 9 or 10 inches long. It was about 2 inches square,
like a sausage shaped. You could bend it around the
joint in an arm beam, or rather the leg of a log,
or what have you. NARRATOR: Using an
explosive called C2, the pack solved the problem
of how to blow an obstacle without throwing debris that
could injure the assault troops. The men also carried larger
packs filled with explosives that could be strung together
with a detonator cord and set off with a single fuse. Nathan Irwin was an
ensign in Unit 139. NATHAN IRWIN: These
obstacles are all in a line down the beach. So you have one man with a reel
of the detonating cord, called Primacord. And we start at one end, and
we tie all these loose ends to this detonating cord. It's like Christmas lights
on a Christmas tree. NARRATOR: As the men trained,
it soon became clear, the seven-men units
were too small to clear all the obstacles that
the Germans were building. JERRY MARKHAM: We were
severely undermanned. So we then joined the Army
combat engineers and farm captives. We trained with
them for two months. We taught them
everything we knew about underwater demolition. And then, we got five combat
engineers assigned to our unit. NARRATOR: With the addition
of the Army combat engineers, the seven-men teams grew to 11. Two more sailors were added
to help carry more explosives. The new 13-man group was
called a gap team for the gaps they would blow on the beach. On June 5, 1944, the Navy
Combat Demolition Units boarded transport ships called
LCT's to cross the English Channel. The seas were rough,
foreshadowing the trouble that lay ahead. JOHN TALTON: Those who were
seasick fell on the decks and rolled back and
forth like you see-- you could see logs on a
flat plane raining on them, rolling and slushing. Vomit, helmets, all the
paraphernalia at wartime slushed back and forth as the
LCT roll cross the channel in about four knots. NARRATOR: As each
hour approached, each gap team climbed into the
landing craft called an LCVP, or a Higgins boat, that
would carry them to shore. Richard Coombs was a Seaman
First Class in Unit 22. RICHARD COOMBS: It's just
starting to get light. And we had to jump off
the LCT over to the LCVP with a dynamite and
everything, at a rubber raft. And the water was very
rough, very, very rough. We got into the LCVP's
There were 16 of them. And then we start going
around in a circle. Then all of a sudden,
they all straightened out and we started to
head toward the beach. NARRATOR: It was just
minutes before sunrise as the first boats
approached the French coast. The Navy Combat
Demolition teams were at the point of the
greatest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. The Navy Combat Demolition
Units had been promised that the German defenses
protecting the Normandy coastline would be pulverized
by Air Force bombing and Naval gunfire
before they arrived. NATHAN IRWIN: We headed
down toward the beach. And of course we, had to
follow our lead craft. Wherever he took us, we went. And the sun came up,
sunset was about 6:00. And when we were approaching
the beach overhead, you could see thousands
of airplanes, all kinds-- transports, Pfizers, bombers. And as far as you could
see on the horizon were all types of Naval vessels. It was very rough. I mean, everybody was sick. I know I was sick,
throwing up red and green. I was hanging over on the side. [explosions] And all of a sudden,
all hell broke loose. Battle ships opened up with
every gun I could think of. The missile launches let go. I was thinking, well, jeez, if
they're hitting it that much, you know, we'll be OK. We were told there were going to
be 4,000 bombs dropped on Omaha Beach before H-Hour. We were told that there
were going to be thousands of rockets fired on the beach. We were told that
battleships and destroyers we're going to blast the hell
out of all the gun positions on the Omaha Beach then. It would be pretty
well nullified. By the time we got there,
it would be a cakewalk. It wasn't. NARRATOR: The massive
bombardment failed to knock out the German guns. For the most part, Navy shells
were fired too high and landed inland. The bombers too
missed their targets. When the NCDU's came ashore,
the Germans opened fire. [gunfire] JERRY MARKHAM: As
we hit the water, we could see the
machine gun fire. I could see their
little crossfire machine guns sweeping. I found out later that the
Germans had four machine guns, two crossfire, and
they were using anti-personnel projectiles. And there is my officer lad
faced down on the water. So I turned him over
and he was dead. He'd been killed with
every piece of shrapnel. [gunfire] JOHN TALTON: I saw
when the LCT come in. And as they drop the ramp, one
of these shells hit on them. And it just throws
them in position, like, yeah, they just burned
them as they stood in position to let the ramp down. It looked like, to me, there
were miles of this carnage going on down the beach. NARRATOR: On Omaha Beach, where
the fire was most intense, the invasion stalled. Like all the invaders the
NCDU's were pinned down. JERRY MARKHAM: So as I began to
move along looking for my men, I would see some of them down
and some of them wounded. And I tied in as best I could. After about an hour of this,
it was a matter of survival. We couldn't work. The fire was too intense. NELSON DUBROC: Then you could
see all the bodies floating in the water. Then you realized they were
using real bullets, you know. When we would train, you
just automatically did what you had to do. NARRATOR: Individual
soldiers and sailors taking the initiative put
the assault on Omaha Beach back on the offensive. JERRY MARKHAM: That cross
current swept some of the units into ours. And that unit was half
depleted with casualties too. So I merged the two and
used their explosives to blow a partial gap
in those obstacles. It was the only thing we could
do, or just lay there and get killed. NARRATOR: In addition
to the men on the beach, the Navy ships helped
turned the tide. JERRY MARKHAM: Four destroyers
come in and laid their keels on the bottom. These destroyers put
their guns at a low level, right into those machine
guns, and they blasted open that ravine right
behind Omaha beach. And that's when the
engineers broke through. NARRATOR: After four
hours, the infantry made it through the holes
blown by the gap teams and finally moved off the beach. Approximately 2,500
Allied soldiers were killed on the beaches
of Normandy that morning. 33 of them were members of the
Navy Combat Demolition Units. JOHN TALTON: I developed
a strange disease. It was called the
fox hold shakes. I was talking as calmly
as I'm talking today but my hands were
doing like this. I couldn't stop them. I asked the
Americans, said, hey, have you got a pill for that? They said, son, there
ain't no pill for that. NARRATOR: The
success of Overlord was the beginning of the end
for Hitler and his Third Reich. The pathfinders, the British
Ninth Parachute Battalion, and the Navy Combat
Demolition Units all played a key role
in that success. NORMAN POLMAR: These
guys did a superb job. If they had failed,
then the invasion of Normandy, the Allied assault
on Europe would have failed. If the Ninth had not
accomplished their mission, the British could
not have landed. If the unit teams had not
destroyed the beach obstacles, the main American force
could not have landed. If the pathfinders had
not placed their beacons, we would have lost
thousands of paratroopers. TOM MCCARTHY: I never
went around with my chest out telling everybody
that I'm a pathfinder. In fact, most people
don't know it. And it's all right with
me because it was a job. I did the best I could. Sometimes I wish I did
it a little bit better. I know one thing. I gave it my best shot,
never backed down, never-- I was part of the best fighting
machine the world ever seen, the 504th Parachute Infantry. Never lost one foot and that's
not bad, never lost a foot. JERRY MARKHAM: In
retrospect, they claimed the successful
invasion of Normandy is what caused us to
win the war in Europe. And we played a major role
in that successful invasion. I've often said I wouldn't
take a million dollars for the experience. I wouldn't give you a
nickel for any more of it. I was pretty damn
proud of the outfit. I'm still proud of it. FREDDIE GLOVER: Well,
I'm proud of being a member of an excellent unit. I regretted nothing. I often thought about it and
felt that when I look back, did I really, for that
period of time when I was in the 9th battalion,
I lived with kings. JOHN TALTON: The men that
died on the beach that day, they were all facing Germany. You could look at them up
and down that afternoon, they were facing forward,
and not backwards. [music playing]
