John Webster

Combat Engineer

The Invasion of Europe

a conversation about June 6, 1944- Omaha Beach

D-Day

Mr. Rozell: This is John Webster. John Webster was a 19-year-old first lieutenant at Omaha Beach. John was a member of the 20th Engineers. The 20th Engineers would see a lot of combat, but their primary job was to build.

John, you said you were in the third wave on June 6^th, 1944, I remember you telling me last week that you felt that if you had to be in an early wave, it might as well have been the third wave, rather than one of the later ones. Why was that?

  John Webster: Well, the first wave was in the new dawn, low tide (and of course a tide goes between low tide and high tide in twelve hours and that cycle is repeated twice in twenty-four hours). In the first hour, first hour and a half, the first two hours of the landing, the beach was mostly not covered with water and the obstacles were in open sight.

MR: Jess, bring that slide up, the Atlantic Wall.

JW: Our mission, going in early on the third wave, in my case, was we had the job of clearing lanes in the beach so that succeeding waves, boats could come in and discharge soldiers without hitting the obstacles and running up. When the tide came in these obstacles would be underwater and then the Navy and  Coast Guard couldn’t see them, it would be very hazardous in the operation of trying to land troops when the tide was in. So we were landed early so we could accomplish our mission, which was an engineering mission removing obstacles, removing mines, and clearing lanes and marking them so that following waves could come in safely.

Now the reason why I felt that coming in on the third wave, thirty minutes after H-hour, was almost preferable as being in the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh wave would be that we did catch the Germans by surprise and the first thirty minutes while they showered us with small-arms fire, machine gun fire they hadn’t zeroed in their artillery and their mortar fire too badly. I mean we had some, but not anywhere near what it was like later on when they had a chance to bring out more equipment and more troops when the surprise was gone. The latter part of the morning the Germans really got the range, so they could drop mortar fire and drop artillery fire, not only on us on the beach, but on the succeeding waves coming to the beach out in the boats. You could be on the beach and look at what was happening in the water and say “I’m glad I got in when I did” rather than be brought in later on. So I answered your question.

  MR: Yes. So the tide was coming up?

JW: Well, from six o’clock it was low tide, at twelve o’clock noon it was high tide, and six o’clock in the evening it was low tide again. It was that continual, gradual change of the water level on the beach at first. So that actually when it got late in the morning, ten to twelve, there was much less beach exposed than was covered up with water. And some of these slides that you have here (looking at the PowerPoint slide show) with water around the obstacles and soldiers when they were dead in the water, those weren’t H-hour, they weren’t second or third wave. Those were later on when the tide was in washing around these obstacles maybe around nine, ten o’clock in the morning. I can tell you this, I don’t think there was ever an operation that was so extensively planned as Normandy.  The military had lots of time to plan because it was almost a full blown conclusion that we were going to have to land on the continent of Europe. So it was actually thoroughly planned. After we loaded on the boats in the English Channel, only then were we told what our mission was. We knew after we got on the boats. The boat went away from the shore so that security could permit the soldiers to know what we were going to be up against. We were told just about every single thing imaginable about the operation; how many paratroopers were going to land and where, how many bombs the Air Corps were going to drop and where, and all different sizes. We were told exactly what the Navy was going to do. We knew the names of each ship, practically, and the number of shells they were going to fire.

 We were going to try to eliminate obstacles. We were given all kinds of information carefully laid out to us. Our mission was to remove obstacles and mines and to mark lanes, but like so many things in war, things didn’t go the way they are supposed to. There were a lot of instances at Omaha Beach where missions couldn’t be carried out any where near successfully like they were supposed to and our mission was one of them. Landing as we did, thirty minutes after H-hour, the minute any of our men got around these obstacles to demolish them, or whatever they did, they’d get shot with machine gun fire and rifle fire immediately.

I mean it was just something you couldn’t do, you couldn’t accomplish it without a complete loss of life, no protection or nothing to hide behind, you were exposed to the beach. The Germans were on the high ground shooting at you, so our outfit really didn’t carry out the mission like we wanted to and when the tide came in and water came up around these obstacles they were still there, so that later on in the morning lots of landing craft couldn’t land. The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth wave didn’t even climb the mainland, they stayed out in the water because their ships couldn’t get on the beach. I’m going to stop and let you ask your question (smiling).

MR: Thank you, John. Do you remember what time you got off the beach? 

JW: Well, it was very late morning, maybe eleven o’clock. When tide came in almost full, there was very little beach left and most of American troops, whether they were infantry or engineers or whatever, were still seeking protection behind the first dune, which gave us protection from direct fire from machine guns and rifles, but by that time the Germans had got their range where there were mortars and artillery, so that they were dropping the shells right where we were and this meant that the time came on D-Day morning when it was safer not to be on the beach but to be off the beach and inland, pressing harder against the enemy. So it’s just a matter of self survival. Lots of units started in small numbers to go over the dune and start inland because it was a safer place to be than to be on the beach where the Germans had the range. This wasn’t a case like Picket’s Charge at Gettysburg, this was a case where no one person got up and said, “follow me men” and went over the dune, it was just small independent groups of soldiers that decided with their officers this was time to go forward get off on the beach-for all these guys- not really much of a heroic action, but save our own skins. We went in there and pushed the Germans back.

MR: Self-preservation.

click here for John Webster's recon photos