 So in our five days leading up to the invasion life, we were mostly all prepared up to that time. There wasn't much to do except that. And we were ready to move out to a Zivwack area. We were in this family in this area, and it was unbelievable. For myself, it was the anxiety, the thing that we've been waiting for for a long time. From the loudspeaker, I heard the word attention. I, with the other troops, snapped to attention. And in the corner of my eye, I could see two men, one wearing an American uniform and the other a British uniform. The American was General Eisenhower and the other was Field Marshal Montgomery. General Eisen said that we were about to embark on a great cause, the liberation of Europe. God be with you. Montgomery said almost the same thing, but added that he was grateful for the help and surprising troops from America. We left the marshaling area with full battle equipment, about 100 pounds per man. The harbor of Weymouth was crowded with ships of every size, shape and description, most of them flying the stars and stripes. From the evening of June 5th, the harbor came alive. I could see one ship signaling to the other that this was it. We would hit the beach the next morning at 6.30 a.m. June 6th, 1944, to be called D-Day. Around 001 hours, June 6th, I heard the Royal aircraft. I got up and looked out into the sky and I noticed airplanes and gliders behind them. The hunting first, the second airborne were being thrown to be dropped behind the soil of France. I guess the morning early, early morning of June 6th where everything started moving, then we went up to our bleed form where we assembled with hundreds and hundreds of ships. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And then I guess we were on our way. Chaplain Kelly held a man's service on the deck of the anvil in which he requested God to see us through the landing safely. We left the anvil on British LCA. The huge bluish black waves rose high over the sides of our little craft and batted the boat as well as us with unimaginable fury. It was as if the waves were trying to crush our salt boat and we in it. We were all soaking wet. I tried to keep my rifle dry by putting a plastic cover over the rifle. We were so loaded down with equipment. Every man had at least one anti-tank mine and we had bundles in the door, bundles under the aircraft. And the seat bar he said was loaded to the point where he could take off but he couldn't land with it so he had to drop it. We had run to Lude for quite a while. They'd get the air, Amanda, and it was into a formation. We crossed the English Channel and I was standing in the door. We looked down, looked at, looked down and it was the most beautiful moonlight evening. Looked down and had never seen so many ships in all my life and probably will never see them again. You could have walked across the English Channel not that you had to walk on water. You could just step from ship to ship. That is how it looked from the air. What I can describe was massive. It was massive. I can imagine being a German looking out through binoculars and seeing all this. No wonder Hitler didn't believe him. The fury of the water broke our front ramp and the boat began to fill with icy channel water. Lieutenant Donaldson rammed his body against the inner door of the ship and said, well, what are you waiting for? The helmets and start bailing the water out. The landing craft inch closer to the beach shall begin to explode around us. The craft, next to us, hit a mine and exploded. But as we were about to land, they had huge obstacles in the water. Big railroad tracks, crisscross, sticking up out of the water so nobody could get close. There was a ground fall and we were supposed to be flying at about 600 feet. I jumped out of the tube. We couldn't see any landmarks. We couldn't see where we were going or anything. But the order was before we left that no one would come back in the aircraft whether we found our object, whether we found our disease or not that we would go out somewhere over Normandy. Just as soon as it bailed out and as you knew that was the end of it, that was not coming back anymore because I had never seen so many tracers in my life. Tracers all over the place were shooting at us. I already got the thoughts out of my mind when I went through an apple tree. My feet just barely touched the ground the top of my canopy had caught my fall and I just hung there real nice, no problem. I cut my knife, cut myself out of my harness and immediately started to gather the people together that jumped from our aircraft. I saw the beach with its huge sea wall at the foot of a massive 150-foot bluff. An 88-millimeter shell landed right in the middle of the LCA on the side of us and splinters of the boat, equipment and bodies were thrown into the air. The ramp was lower and the inner door was opened and a German machine gun trained on the opening took a heavy toll of light. I waded through the waste-deep water watching many of my buddies fall alongside of me. I expected a bullet to rip through me at any moment from the right. I reached the stone wall. I looked down and being washed around by the incoming water. I saw the bodies of my buddies who had tried in vain to clear the beach. When we hit the beach, I knelt down and kissed the dirt whispered, thank you, guys. I then looked around and saw many dead in the water and on the beach. My company was being held up by a machine gun fire from the hill Colonel Taylor, regimental commander, got up and said, if we have to die, let's die on the hill. We moved out and took the hill by giving the air rights and for holding friends.