Someone must have thought I had leadership potential, because I was put in charge of a crew detailed to pull “kitchen police” (K.P.) duty. “Kitchen police” has nothing to do with law enforcement. This is what is fondly referred to in the Army as a “shit detail” and was tough duty. It meant reporting to the mess hall at 03:30 or 04:00 and working usually ’til 20:00 or 21:00. How tough it was depended on the on-duty “mess” sergeant. Ours turned out to be a classic, garden-variety, 14k gold, card-carrying, textbook asshole. I guess he didn’t like the way I was parting what little hair I had, because he gave me the shittiest job in the U.S. Army: cleaning out the grease trap for the kitchen sinks. The grease trap is basically a metal box about two and a half feet long by one and a half feet wide and about two feet deep. It caught all the greasy drainage from the kitchen, which was considerable.

It is a dirty, stinking job and this prince of a sergeant told me to clean it out with my bare hands! I told him I wasn’t gonna do it without some sort of tool. He said, “I don’t have any tools, trainee!”

I couldn’t help myself; I popped off and said, “Well, sarge, in that case, I don’t have any hands. So, you better call the First Sergeant and have me escorted to the guardhouse.” He nearly shit green apples! I must’ve been the first trainee to stand up to the bastard. Red-faced, and barely able to contain himself…

From Chapter ll,  A Day In Normandy

Click here to buy the Kindle version.

Omaha Beach itself was a defensive tactician’s dream. It was the largest of the beaches to be assaulted, about five miles long, enclosed by 100 – 170 ft. bluffs in a concave shape. It completely enveloping the beach and anchored at each end by 100 ft.  sheer cliffs. There was a gently sloping tidal area averaging about 300 yards between low and high tides, above which was a bank of shingle (small round stones). On the western half, a seawall about 4-12 ft. high, beyond which was about 200 yards of level sand and some marshy area, ended at the face of the bluffs. There were only five exits off the entire beach, with only one paved well enough to handle heavy vehicles. The others were basically narrow dirt roads barely 6 ft. wide. The Desert Fox had seen to it that they were heavily fortified.

The seawall was topped by two rows of barbed wire and the area between the shingle and the bluffs was practically paved with mines. A communications and trench system along the bluffs connected a series of 15 fortified strongpoints (Widerstandsnests, the number of which vary among sources) which triangulated every square foot of the beach with overlapping machine gun fire. There was no cover anywhere.

The GIs of the Big Red One and the 29ers didn’t know it, but they were going head-to-head with eight concrete bunkers with 75mm or larger caliber guns, 35 pillboxes stocked with artillery, 20-24 defensive flamethrowers, 18 anti-tank guns, 6 mortar pits, 35 rocket launching sites, each with four 38mm rocket tubes and about 85 machine gun nests, all firing the dreaded MG-42 or MG-34 machine gun. The German gunners on the bluffs overlooked an amphitheatre. An amphitheatre of death.

From Prologue of A Day In Normandy.

Click here to buy Kindle edition.