Ernest Hemingway and D-Day, June 6th, 1944

As the light of the morning increased, and Hemingway trained his field-glasses on Omaha Beach, the old First World War One US Navy battleships, ‘Texas’, ‘Arkansas’ and the ‘Nevada’ opened fire with an assortment of high explosive shells and rockets on the German positions concreted into the bluffs behind the beach. Surely nothing could survive, thought Hemingway, under that sort of bombardment, but when the order came for the landing craft to advance deadly German 88 artillery fire came screaming in, with two shells exploding very close to the side of Anderson’s boat. But Anderson kept his craft heading in as straight a line as he could, until the fire became so intense he shouted to his Coxswain, Frank Currier:

” Frank, get her round and outta here before we’re all dead meat!”

Frank lurched the craft to starboard and, with the 225hp engine roaring and shaking at full-throttle headed  back along the craft’s own wake.

Anderson now put his hand on Currier’s shoulder and looked at Hemingway.

” Frank, now turn her back round for another go,” shouted Anderson.

The LCVP turned quickly in the increasingly choppy waters.

” Okay, Bob,” shouted Hemingway, ” see that church over there, and the wooded inlet to our left, head between the two.”

Anderson looked through his glasses and nodded.

” Okay Frank,” shouted Anderson, ” head straight for that gap between the church and the inlet.”

” Yes, sir,” shouted Currier, who then gave the engine full throttle once more and took the LCVP in fast under heavy German artillery and machine gun fire.

The LCVP hit the beach at speed with the ramp crashing down immediately. Officers and NCOs started barking orders as murderous MG38 and MG42 machine gun fire ripped into the GIs scrambling to get ashore. Most didn’t make it.

Hemingway couldn’t believe his eyes. Omaha Beach was a bloody shambles, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of dead and dying everywhere. There was no cover for the GIs. Where were the bomb craters that were meant to give some sort of cover? Young Americans were being slaughtered before Hemingway’s eyes, he couldn’t do anything except look and remember. For the first time in his life he felt utterly helpless. All he could do now was help get some wounded back on board as the LCVP reversed rapidly away from the beach, its ramp closing slowly like the bloodied mouth of a huge whale.

Later that day, on yet another run to the beach, Hemingway could see GIs climbing the bluffs.

‘ They were not firing’, he wrote later, ‘ just slowly, laboriously…going the other way from home.’