Compounding the situation were the problems the demolition teams encountered while clearing paths through the beach obstacles. The Germans soon became aware of the activities of the engineers and made special targets of them. Worse, the engineers’ own comrades often took cover behind the very obstacles about to be blown. The demolition teams had only been able to clear 5 1/2 lanes across the entire Omaha Beach area before the second wave arrived. As the tide came in, covering the obstacles, only one of those lanes could be marked. That meant that the next wave of fresh troops to come ashore would have to endure the same hazards as the first. Because of the high rate of casualties under withering German fire, many of the units on the beach found themselves leaderless. Incoming troops only added to the confusion.

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One eyewitness to this seemingly complete disaster was war correspondent Ernest Hemingway. He described the dismal scene of burning tanks and landing craft and of the shocked, dead and dying troops that had stopped at the waterline. The…[assault] waves lay where they had fallen, he said, looking like so many heavily laden bundles…between sea and first cover.

As the debris of war piled up with the arrival of each succeeding assault wave, for many it seemed that their worst fears–complete failure of the landing–had been realized. By morning some considered evacuating the survivors and diverting the reinforcements to either the Utah or British sectors.

West of Omaha Beach was Pointe du Hoc, a rocky outcropping with almost vertical cliffs where a large coastal battery was believed to be situated. The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was charged with destroying the battery. What many thought impossible the Rangers achieved–they scaled the 100-foot cliffs under heavy fire. Once on top, though, they found that the guns were not there after all.

If the American experience at Utah was the best and at Omaha the worst, the experiences at the three British beaches were somewhere in between. The British came ashore after a longer bombardment and at a later H-hour. Because of the later H-hour, the troops landed on a higher tide and closer to the beaches, giving them a shorter assault run, possibly saving the British from high losses similar to those at Omaha. Commando units were used to cover the flanks of the British beaches. Also, two midget submarines, X-20 and X-23, were used to mark flanks and guide landings in Operation Gambit.

Like the engineers at Omaha, the British frogmen encountered numerous difficulties clearing the beach obstacles. As the first and later waves made their runs, it appeared that the invasion was going to be a rough show. It turned out, however, that the offshore obstacles were the toughest resistance some of the British troops encountered. Resistance from the German defenders was sporadic across all three of the British landing areas. In some places opposition was light; in others, it was murderously heavy. The 1st Hampshire Regiment landed in the teeth of the right flank of the German 352nd Infantry Division on the west side of Gold Beach. The Hampshire were nearly wiped out as they left their landing craft and struggled ashore. In most places, however, units were able to strike inland shortly after H-hour.

Of the three British beaches, the Canadians at Juno had the greatest difficulty. They had a delay of 25 minutes due to rough seas before their landing ordeal began. Upon hitting the beach, they found that many of the strongpoints had not been knocked out, and the fighting was intense. But as difficult as the fighting was, it was also brief. Within half an hour the Canadians were off the beach. Within a short time the sector could even be described as quiet, and the support waves had little trouble getting to shore. Before long, Gold and Juno beaches were linked by a single continuous front.

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