General Eisenhower, in London, was tense. The invasion had originally been planned for June 4, but weather would be rough. The earliest day to attack with good weather was June 6. After that, there'd be two weeks of bad weather, restricting movement of supplies. But to postpone the invasion until June 19 would give the Germans that much more time to anticipate the Allied landings, and God knew that without initiative and surprise, the invasion was doomed.

While there were a total of fifty divisions allotted to the invasion, there were only enough landing ships to bring eight divisions - about a hundred thousand men - onto the beaches. Surprise was of the utmost necessity.

Airborne troops, including those from the 101st "Screaming Eagle" Airborne Division, were already landing behind Germany's coastal defenses.

* * *

The veteran US Ranger battalions at Portland, Great Britain, steeled themselves for what they predicted - correctly - would be a vicious fight to take on the German Empire on their own turf. Their mission was to disable the coastal defense guns along Omaha beach, while the main invasion force fought to establish a beachhead from which supplies, men, and equipment could be ferried in to the front. Hopefully, Hitler wouldn't be able to bring in heavy reinforcements into Normandy before the Allies had secured the beachhead. Eisenhower had isolated Italy by bombing the living snot out of all railways into the country, but the German Wermacht Panzer Grenadier divisions had proved many times over that they could react to a threat quickly and efficiently.

It was all a matter of time; one big mother of a race against time.

* * *
British cruisers, destroyers, and battleships were bombarding the beaches. Most of the veterans knew that this wouldn't help much. The only way artillery could take out a well-built pillbox or bunker would be by a direct hit, and, accurate as the British gunners were, that wouldn't be happening anytime soon.

"Angels in the sky…" one of the soldiers said as a flight of P-51Ds flew overhead.
"Angels of death," retorted a squad Sergeant. "Don't go pansy on me now, Gossard."
"No, sir."

Most of the men aboard the Mulberry - a massive mobile harbor from where the Allied landing ships would be debarking - were watching the beautiful blossoms of orange-black flame erupting all over the beach, hopefully smothering the dug-in Germans with a rain of hot shrapnel and debris.

Wishful thinking.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ashby, leader of B Company, walked onto the deck of Mulberry. "Listen up!"
Most of the troops onboard were too ill to even utter an acknowledgement. Most of them were green and inexperienced, un-blooded and just out of Basic Training. Those that had seen combat, however, were standing at attention, alert and tense.

"Final briefing!" Ashby announced. "When we hit the beach, keep in mind that we're racing against time. We must secure a beachhead as quickly as possible. We've got a day to rush in supplies, and after that, we're gonna be in for some seriously rough waters."
Someone vomited, his bile spattering all over the deck as someone shouted "you bastard!"

"Rangers!"
A chorus of energetic "sirs!" cut across the relatively quiet seas, heard despite the constant thump of the guns unleashing a barrage of high-explosive incendiary onto the beaches.

"You'll be landing just west of Omaha; that's where the coastal defense guns are. Once," all the Ranger troops knew that the Lieutenant-Colonel meant "if", "you take out the guns, you haul your ass over to Jerrie's flank.

"B Company!"
Several tried to speak, but instead dry-heaved.
Ashby couldn't stop the seed of doubt from popping up into his mind. "We're doomed."

* * *

Hours later, the British ship guns exhausted, the Allied troops were heading out towards Omaha. Squad leaders were giving last-minute pep talks while those soldiers with weak stomachs hurled all but their internal organs out onto the decks of their landing craft.

Twenty-four thousand troops, all packed into twelve hundred LCTs - Landing Craft, Tracked - were struggling to stay on their feet, weighed down by seventy-pound quick attack packs loaded with ammunition, grenades, entrenching equipment, C-rations, blankets, and medical supplies. With twenty troops in each landing craft, projectile vomit was a real danger. In the words of Private Gossard, "like a friggin' diarrhea exchange that goes through the boat like dominoes." Once one man started it, all the others had to let it go, drenching the floor of the landing ships (and sometimes the coxswain) with bile and/or miscellaneous fluids that looked like stewed celery.

Private Chadwick Dannelley, 2nd Platoon, B Company, fought the urge to vomit and steadied himself. The M1Garand was weighing him down like a lead block, likewise the QAP and assault jacket strapped onto him. Lieutenant Owens was telling the men, "Damn it," they should "look alive!" One of the Privates retorted "with all due respect" that though they seemed to be in the land of the living, they were in reality already dead. This was due to the fact that almost every soldier in Bravo Company was now sea-sick beyond all comprehension.

"I don't want any pansy-flower attitude!" Owens shouted. "We're going to hit the beaches, and when we do, we're going to eat those Jerries alive!"

"What if they're like Chinese? Fifteen minutes later, you might be hungry all over again."
It was so unexpectedly funny, everyone, including the coxswain, burst with fear-bred laughter, the tension of impending death momentarily held at bay by Private Gossard's light humor.

But if the Allied troops were having a bit of tension-releasing recreation, the elite Panzer Grenadier divisions defending the Atlantic Wall were having no such luxuries. Little or no damage had been taken from the furious barrage of artillery fire. The Wermacht troops were working like navvies now that the artillery barrage had let up, checking machine guns and mortars while the German artillery crews wheeled everything from Pak38 50mm anti-tank guns to Flak18 88mm AA/AT dual-purpose guns to their sandbagged foxholes.

German artillery began to open up, harassing the Allied landing ships with high-explosive incendiary. One of the lead landing craft was engulfed in a violent plume of frothing water, mixed in with shredded flesh and vaporized body fluids.

"Don't worry, boys," one of the coxswains announced to his cargo, "only a lucky shot!"
An 88mm AP round crashed into his craft, crumpling the frontal armor like a paper cup under 14.4 pounds of pressure per square inch. Fourteen of the men onboard were killed outright by the concussion, most of the bones in their bodies now a powdery white substance that churned into their blood. The six men that weren't killed at once were now sucked under, the shards and chunks of steel imbedded in their bodies pulling them down into the depths of the Atlantic, their screams lost to the deep blue sea that was now replacing the air in their lungs.

Three hundred meters to go before the ships would hit the shore.

"Not to worry," Dannelley's coxswain shouted above the low growl of the landing craft, "Another minute and we'll hit the beach. I'll find you a nice spot to land at. Heck, I'll be surprised if you get your feet wet!"

"Yeah," enjoined a harried Lieutenant Mark Owens, "Don't mind ol' coxswain Jim, here, he's been having diarrhea and deliriums all day."
"From the Chinese, sir?"

Another hundred meters and the men would be pouring out of the boats and into chest-deep waters. Some of the men weren't afraid of the gunfire they'd be facing - they knew that machine guns were inaccurate when in the sustained fire role, especially at long ranges - but the crater holes blown out by the British ships. They water they'd be in was deep enough, but one misstep…

"Remember, spread yourselves out - five men, and they've got one, big, mother of a target with a bulls-eye attached; one man, they're wastin' their ammo!"
Owens shouted, "Sapper teams!"

He was referring to the demolition troops carrying either the mine-clearing charges or a pair of industrial-sized wire cutters.
"You're leading the way! Once you cut through the wire, you get those Bangalors up! You've got about a minute to clear out a sector for us to get through!"

"Cutting to the bone, sir."
"Damn straight I'm cutting to the bone. We've got to get point blank with those Krauts, force 'em to get out of their little cubby holes and fight like men!"
"Yes, sir."
Fifty meters. "Thirty seconds, boys, thirty seconds."
Forty.
Thirty.
Twenty.
Ten.

The landing craft were now decelerating in unison, edging closer to the beach. Nolan felt the LCT stop, rocking steadily with the waves of the ocean.

"Unlock the ramps!"
The bow ramps were lowered, the rapid, metallic "duc-duc-duc" momentarily drowning out all sound.

Quick, shrill whistles and buzzes of MG42 rounds snapped the air around the soldiers, taking down eight or so of the men up front. The two men farthest back were decapitated, the German machine gunner five hundred meters away in his little bunker not anticipating the MG42's tendency to jump high.

Dannelley jumped out of the LCT into cold, frothing water. Bullets were slapping the water and cracking the air around him. The three men behind him were moving fast, clearing the ramps as quickly as possible while ricochets spanged off the LCT's walls. Coxswain Jim was about to shout something, but then he was dead, lungs chewed to a pink, pulpy mass.

Dannelley could hear the sharp thuds of 7.62mm rounds punching into the soldier ahead of him.

The first of twenty-four thousand were now wading through the water, like little targets bobbing up and down in the rocking of the ocean.

"Incoming!"
Dannelley saw it too late; the high-velocity 88mm AP round crashed into him, cremating and tearing his body into pieces at the same time, bits and pieces of what remained of his skeletal system snapping across the water. Bone fragments cut through two soldiers, and then shrapnel from the Flak18 round hit them, shredding them into long, thin strips of flesh and bone.
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This is the second part of the story. Good fighting, here.
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Allied troops continued to be cut to pieces by the highly concentrated German machine gunfire, caught in a murderous crossfire that butchered the shore party's troops with both armor-piercing and high-explosive incendiary from the enormous shore defense gun emplacements on either side of Omaha. Mines all along the beach were exploding with deafening, metallic "clangs" and taking down any hapless trooper on his way to cover.

Atleast a hundred troops, however, had made it to the rows of tank traps that lined the beach. Of these hundred, ten were demolition engineers, charged with the task of dismantling the tank traps to allow the American armor on to the beach.
The shore defense guns were mauling the Allied troops, sparing them no time for rest and sending in salvo after salvo, destroying incoming LCTs and killing troop concentrations as they poured out onto the beach.

Lieutenant Owens with, another Private, was rushing up to the row of tank traps. Owens turned to the last man of his squad.
"Where's Dannelley?"
"Bottom of the Atlantic, sir! Friggin' eighty-eight hit him!"
Owens swore.
"That means the Bangolor's gone?"
"Yes, sir."

88mm rounds were raining down all over the place, blowing out craters onto the beach and tearing apart squad after squad as they huddled in droves under tank traps. Those that had made it to the tank traps were now dying very quickly, the German machine guns re-directing their fire to the Allied troops gathered around the big, steel "X's" that were now becoming a double-edged sword; they blocked off Allied armor and provided protection from the mass of small arms fire that was now much like a torrent of flying lead.

The Allied sapper teams that had made it onto the beaches now scrambled forward to cut the barbwire that blocked off the advance onto the beaches. However, the first wave of fifty sappers was cut down with impunity.

Several of the squads improvised and used grenades to clear out a sector of the wire, but the sections blown out weren't wide enough for a large concentration of troops to pass through. Among the squads to get through the wire utilizing this tactic was Private First Class James Parker.
"Parker!"
"Yeah."
"You think that flame-thrower of yours can reach the pillboxes up there?"
"Yeah."
"All fire teams, cover this man!"

There was a sudden roar of small arms fire from an Allied heavy machine gun team, the M2 .50 caliber machine gun pelting the German defenses with a sudden barrage of armor-piercing rounds. Nine Panzer Grenadier troops were now dead in their pillboxes. But a second later, the heavy machine gun team was splattered all over the beach after having been raked by three of the German MG42s.

"Parker! Incoming!"
James saw the 50mm coming in, and he dived down onto the sand. Moments later, the round hit, and a piece of shrapnel cut through his fuel tank.
"Crap!"
"Parker!"
A high-pitched squeak, followed by the roar of a huge jet of flaming gasoline. Parker caught fire, and instinctively rolled in the sand, hoping to smother the flames. No such luck. As his friend caught up to him and tried to stomp the flames out, a machine gun burst hit both of them. Both were engulfed in a large ball of fire, slowly burning to death as the napalm stuck to their skin and liquefied their bodies.

Allied soldiers continued to pour onto the beaches, only to be subsequently cut to pieces by a heavy barrage of MG34 and 42 fire.
Sergeant Harrison fired a burst and threw himself onto the ground. Small arms fire was throwing up the sand all around him. Fifty meters away lay the barbwire that blocked the Allied soldier's advance, despite repeated attempts from sapper troops to cut the wire apart; they had all been torn apart by machine gun fire.
"Shit!" Harrison shouted.

Behind him, a two-man bazooka team let loose a rocket-propelled grenade, which threw itself, ineffectively, against one of the pillboxes.

Harrison sensed a pause in the torrent of small arms fire around him and climbed to his feet, propelling himself forward with newfound energy. Up ahead lay scores of dead or dying men, some screaming for their mothers, others praying silently, their lips barely moving. Blood exploded out of his leg in a fine mist, the MG42 round going on to kill two more soldiers moving up to a tank trap, piercing one's heart and severing the other's jugular.

The Sergeant continued to limp on, and snatched up a pair of cutters just meters away from the barbwire. The delay in taking up those wire cutters, however, gave the German machine gunners enough time to get a bead on Harrison.

The American's back seemed to explode with blood as Harrison went down, jerking spasmodically and frothing at the mouth while, just by chance, an accurate burst severed his right arm away from his shoulder, another taking a sizeable chunk out of his face and flinging him back across the sand. The cutters flew out of his hand and imbedded themselves into his stomach.

88mm rounds were hitting the beach everywhere, one hitting a tank trap and killing all four troops taking cover behind it. Limbs and other miscellaneous body parts were flung across the beach like a baby discarding an unwanted toy.

By now, the US mortar teams had set up their 60mm mortars and were now laying down a rapid fire mortar barrage of thirty rounds a minute. Though the mortar bombs did nothing against the heavily armored pillboxes and bunkers, it did delay the companies of Panzer Grenadier troops and the elite 5th Paratroops Division from swarming upwards to charge down the seawall and tear apart the huddling American troops.

The mortar commander, a Captain Andrew Young, ordered all mortar teams to fire their smoke rounds.
"We've got to give our troops cover…let 'em get past those MG42s so they can take out the under-bunkers!"
Seconds later, the mortars had blanketed a square half-mile with a dense cover of smoke. The German gunners were now firing blindly into the thick smoke cover, aiming for movement and/or dark shapes in and around the blanket of smoke.
"We're clear!" Lieutenant Roper shouted above the din of small arms fire. "O'Reilly, Kemp, Jameson! With me! Jimmy, Powell, we've got you covered…you cut the wire!"

While other squads struggled to move up to the wire, Roper, Jameson, O'Reilly, and Kemp dashed away from their tank trap, sprinting towards the wall of barbwire that separated them from the seawall. German gunners directed their guns onto the three runners, but they had already spotted the barbwire, where they were protected by a small degree from the mound of packed sand that the barbwire was planted in.

A second squad followed after them, firing sporadically, a lucky shot hitting one of the MG42s and shattering the weapon. The two Germans manning the heavy machine gun were hit by shrapnel from the ruined weapon, the shards of metal and steel imbedding themselves in one of the other gunner's eye and cutting into his brain. A grenade went off somewhere close by, sending a wall of black dirt and sand into the pillbox, momentarily blinding the machine gunners. This delay allowed the sappers - Jimmy and Powell - to reach the barbwire with their cutters unmolested.

"You do know, sir, that this is the only thing separating us from the Almighty?" Kemp commented.

Jimmy and Powell cut through the wire and tore out the posts with their bare hands. While teams of sappers reached the barbwire and began to cut through.
"All clear!" Jimmy reported, and then he was on the ground, clutching at his neck while his blood spurted upwards in a miniature fountain.

"Go, move, move, move!" a Captain shouted, and the remaining Allied soldiers mustered what was left of their strength and charged forward, some with their weapons already unsheathed and on full automatic.

O'Reilly, his M1928 Browning Automatic Rifle swaying by its shoulder strap while he threw a grenade up, was one of the first to reach the seawall. Milliseconds later, an entire squad flung themselves beside him. The inclination here was too steep for the MG34s and MG42s to aim for the Allied soldiers, but the German mortars continued to rain down on the American soldiers.

"Do we have a sapper up here?" someone shouted.
"No, sir!"
"Son-of-a-bitch!"
Sergeant Lennard, being one of the last ones to land, was farther back, just now clearing the water. He and two others - all that was left of his ten-man squad - rushed to the tank traps. He shucked the plastic wrap off of his M1 and then was flying, not yet realizing that a mine had taken his legs apart. Blood was spattering all over the sand, his legs, on the ground and spurting out massive pools of blood, were still kicking. Machine gun fire raked his body, tattooing him with 7.62mm. Lennard, still alive and screaming, hit the ground, only to have his face torn apart by another mine's explosion.

O'Reilly and Lieutenant Roper were both at the seawall, O'Reilly with his BAR unsheathed and firing in sporadic bursts, Roper throwing a grenade up and over the second line of barbwire. There was an earth-shattering whump, followed by several screams from the Germans above.

"How do we get through?" O'Reilly shouted to his commander.
"Stern!" Roper shouted.
"Sir?"
"Let loose with a jet," Roper said, pointing up at the pillbox above them.
"Yes, sir!"
A twenty-foot tongue of fire licked its way up the wall of the pillbox.
Inside the pillbox, a machine gun exploded, fragmenting and cutting open the gunner's neck.
"How do we get through the wire, sir?" O'Reilly asked again.
Kemp, with the M3 submachine gun, pressed the tip of his barrel against a barbwire post and fired. The post splintered and fell over. Ten feet away, Powell did the same, causing the rest of the section to collapse.
"All clear!"
The remaining twenty men of 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, all climbed up and over the breach.

The smoke cover was dissipating, revealing several of the eastern and westernmost units still moving to the second line of barbwire. Artillery crews opened up, after having stopped firing to conserve ammunition. A little more than a hundred Allied troops went under heavy artillery fire, each high-explosive round drowning out all the screams of the already dying men.

O'Reilly, in the ten-foot trench past the second line of barbwire, noticed a slit in the concrete several feet away. He stepped towards it, and suddenly, a muzzle flash erupted from it.

"You're a dead man!" O'Reilly announced and drew a grenade from his vest. "L.T.!"
"Yes?"
"Found our front door!"
O'Reilly pulled the pin, snapped the arming lever down, and tossed the grenade in through the slit.
A second later, the grenade popped back out.
O'Reilly swore.
Jonathan Grant, one of the Allied soldiers still holed up at the tank traps, saw an explosion of smoke and debris accompanied by the crump of a grenade. Blood was spattered all over the base of one of the pillboxes.

Bullets clanged into his tank trap, and Grant ducked back behind his cover. A salvo from the shore defense guns hit the earth around him.

At the seawall, a flame-thrower-toting soldier approached the firing slit in the bunker cautiously. Then, at a good angle, he popped his weapon up and fired in a long stream of super-heated gases. There were screams from inside, followed by 7.62mm ammunition popping off, their charges set on fire by the flame-thrower's burst.

A second soldier popped up and brushed past the barbwire, as other troops crowded around the firing slit. He crouched down and fired several shots into the bunker, then slid in.

Bits and pieces of him flew out of the bunker after the MG42 had stopped firing.
Private Kemp, with a bad shoulder wound from the grenade's explosion, threw in a grenade, then crouched down and fired repeatedly with the M1, killing the remaining machine gun team. He turned away from the firing slit, and the grenade went off.

"Quick!"
Two soldiers went in, firing on full automatic.
"Clear!"
A submachine gun team went down.
Six more under-bunkers were found, and each one was subsequently blown out with grenades and submachine gun fire, and then a squad was sent in to "clean-house" - clear out the underground system of tunnels that inter-linked the German pillboxes and bunkers.

Above ground, the battle raged on as shock troops were coming up from the tunnel and trench system to fire down on the Allied forces below.
Corporal Dwight Dukowski, at the base of the seawall, unleashed a long burst from his BAR. "Go!"
Two bazooka fire teams rushed past him and crouched down behind the barbwire fence.

"Grenades!" Dukowski shouted over the roar of nine M1s firing rapidly just ten meters away. One was tossed to him; he pulled the pin, armed it, and threw the high-explosive incendiary device at the base of the pillbox thirty feet away. Three more grenades went up, and they all exploded in unison, clearing out a second, ready-made trench for another squad to fill.

The bazooka teams let loose their RPGs, one of them entering the pillbox and blowing it out with great force, the second shattering the front of the concrete structure and obliterating the faces of the machine gun team manning the MG34.
"Clear!" one of the bazooka teams reported.

Dukowski moved away from the base of the seawall and charged forward, towards the burned-out bunker.
"Where's the Airborne?" a rifleman shouted to Dukowski.
"God knows!"
In fact, most of the airborne troops had been miss-dropped all over Normandy. This was due to several of the pilots' wanting to avoid the heavy anti-aircraft fire all over Normandy. Now, the airborne troops were too isolated and/or lost to organize any kind of attack on the Atlantic Wall's rear.

Dukowski raised the BAR and approached the bunker's entrance cautiously. Footsteps pounded heavily on the concrete, and the rifle squad to his left opened up, taking them down in less than a second. Dukowski stepped in front of the entrance and poured in an enfilade of fire, taking down a light machine gun team and two other shock troops waiting at the end of the corridor.

Below ground, Allied troops were wreaking havoc on the German Panzer Grenadier troops. Grenades were clearing out huge sectors of hallway, and destroying entire pillboxes while concentrated rifle fire tore up fanatical 5th Paratroops soldiers.

In the heaviest fighting, Kemp and Jameson, along with nine other soldiers, were pouring in an enfilade of gunfire down a corridor, cutting down an entire paratrooper squad as they attempted to exit their bunker unnoticed. Shortly after, a large squad of Panzer Grenadier troops appeared from a flight of stairs on full automatic. Four of Kemp's squad went down, including Jameson, and the entire corridor erupted in gunfire. Seven of the German shock troops went down, along with the rest of the Allied troops, and just then, Dukowski and seven others charged in, BARs and M3s on full automatic. The remaining seven shock troops went down, and Dukowski and his troop of seven charged down the corridor, paving their path with grenades and a flame-thrower.

Now that the Allied soldiers at Omaha had established a foothold, reinforcements and supplies came rushing in, still under fire from the German 88s, but the Rangers, led by Captain Micheal S. Jacobs, had successfully dismantled the German shore defense battery, allowing Allied ships to move in closer to shore. Despite the inevitable Allied victory at Omaha, the Panzer Grenadier divisions and elite 5th Paratroops showed no signs of surrender; every trooper in the tunnel system fought to their last breath.

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Alright, now that the story is over, I just wanna cover a thing or two. This story was written two years ago by my friend, ShinHwaJinusean, which is why I posted this under his name. I named it simply 'D-Day' because I didn't want to ruin his outstanding story by giving it a gay name. You may have read his excellent C&C:Tiberian Sun novel under his OTHER writing name, Joong Hwae.I haven't talked to him in about a year, and before that, I yelled at him over and over to post his story.
I'm sorry if the HTML is a little shoddy, I'm not the best with it. Primarily troubles with where to put the paragraph tags.
So big credit to him for taking the time to write it. I hope everyone liked it as much as I did, since I'm a huge World War II fanatic. I don't know if he still goes to this site, but if he does, then he should email me his new screen name. And yes, I still have my old name. Comments are welcome