"THE BEST MOVE WE MADE"
By Greg Edwards & Mark Morrison
The Roanoke Times
June 4, 1994
The D-Day armada of nearly 5,000 ships, including 709 warships, was the greatest the world has ever seen. Allied aircraft began to bomb the French coast as dawn approached, flying 11,000 sorties before the day ended.
Hitler and many of his top commanders felt the invasion would take place at the town of Calais near the Belgian border where the English Channel was only 20 miles wide. Even after the invasion began, the German high command delayed the release of strategic Panzer tank units, thinking that the landing in Normandy was only a feint.
The Allies did all they could to keep the Germans believing the landing would come near Calais. They built a dummy army along the English coast near Dover, equipped with inflatable rubber tanks and plywood planes. At its head was Gen. George S. Patton Jr., a highly respected U.S. field commander.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had earned fame for his exploits in North Africa, was in charge of German Army Group B and the coastal defenses in northern France. He answered to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who commanded all German land forces, 58 divisions, in Western Europe.
Rommel was so confident that the invasion would not come during the lousy conditions that he left his headquarters near Paris and headed to Germany to celebrate his wife?s birthday and to ask Hitler for the release of the tank reserves.
Rommel and von Rundstedt disagreed on the strategy to defeat an Allied invasion. Rommel felt the Allies should be met on the beaches and beat back into the sea. Von Rundstedt believed a classic counter-attack was the way to beat the invasion. When Rommel finally got his reserve armored forces, it was too late. The invasion was well under way.
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Crouched behind the sandbar with Leo Dombroski, John Talton unwrapped his rifle from the wrap they had been given to keep their weapons dry. The gunfire continued from the bluffs above.
"We've got to get out of here. We're drawing fire," Talton said to Dombroski.
They made a break, crawling in the sand to another sandbar. Talton pulled up his rifle and fired, but sand was all that came out of the barrel. He tossed the gun aside and crawled with Dombroski down the beach to a wounded boat crew chief, who had been hit trying to land one of the demolition teams.
The crew chief cradled a machine gun, but he was too hurt to use it. Talon tried to take it for himself, and the crew chief fought until Talton overpowered him. The gun was also full of sand, worthless.
Talton and Dombroski crawled on. Then they saw something they couldn't believe. Out of the smoke came a German soldier, unarmed and without his helmet. "He looked just like a mirage."
He was followed by a sound they had never heard before - a whistling buzz, the sound of German mortar.
They watched the German soldier run to an abandoned boat and dive under its dropped ramp, and they scrambled close behind. "The best move we ever made."
An instant later, mortar shells fell all around them. more
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