:06:00
everybody got killed
before anybody got out.
:06:02
Just a wall of steel hit them.
:06:05
First of all it was chaos.
:06:08
That's the only word to describe
what was going on.
:06:13
"Why are we doing this?"
I said to myself.
:06:19
I'd dig a hole and try
to get below the firing squad.
:06:24
Closer you get to the ground,
the longer you'll live.
:06:28
That was my motto.
:06:30
How afraid they must have been.
:06:32
And they were so tired and wet
:06:34
with all their wool and gear
and ammunition and weapons
:06:39
that stepping off those boats,
their pals dying around them,
:06:44
they were so exhausted and seasick
:06:47
they could only crawl
up those beaches.
:06:49
But they kept coming,
:06:51
working their way
up that beach to that seawall.
:06:54
The tendency was overwhelming,
every instinct in them said,
:06:59
"Get down low and just stay there.
:07:02
"This is an unhealthy place."
:07:05
And there was no retreat,
no way to go back.
:07:08
So you either stayed and got killed
:07:11
or did something about it.
:07:13
What happened was over here
a captain, here a lieutenant,
:07:18
down there a sergeant who had
men whose names he didn't know,
:07:22
the confusion was so great.
:07:24
He said,
"l ain't getting killed here.
:07:27
"l'm going up there to take some
Germans with me. Who's coming?"
:07:32
They had to cross
that expanse of open beach
:07:35
with that blistering gunfire
from all directions,
:07:40
and to wade through it,
some of them survive,
:07:44
and go on and achieve
the monumental moment D-Day was.
:07:51
It was a watershed that will be
focused on in history forever.
:07:56
It's not hard to imagine
what it looked like.