"The Invasion of Normandy"
by Matt Gagliardi
The invasion of Normandy took place on June 6th 1944, and Jerry O'donnell witness this in first person. Jerry joined the Marines in 1941 right after Pearl Harbor. He was just one of the many many other angry Americans after this. During normandy he was 21 he joined when he was 18. Here we will start into the story.
Hi, I am Jerry. I am a private in the United States Marine Corps and right now i’m on a ship in Great Britain, we were just told the news that tomorrow we leave for an invasion. We woke up at 04:00, and were almost at the beach by 0700 I was next to a kid named “Jones,” he was only 18.
Our stomachs started to turn as we saw the machine gun bunkers firing on people on the beach, and that's when we both said “this is going to be bad.” As we neared closer to the beach we could hear the young marines screams for medics and morphine then we heard a huge BANG and the driver of the landing craft said “charge!” and bullets leaked into our ship killing most of them. And me and jones hopped off we swam to the beach in fear, we covered behind big metal pillars that were preventing getting tanks on the beach.
I piled onto the beach with many others and the sand danced up in front of us because of the machine gun fire. As i was hiding behind that with jones said, “If i die tell my mother i love her.”
I replied with “Jones don’t talk like that brother we’re going to make it out of this.”
Moving on, I was horrified on this beach; it was straight hell. Out of nowhere we heard a Lt. say “charge the bunkers.” And me and jones ran fast and furious up the beach and I saw the saddest thing I ever saw… Jones was shot dead in about 10 yards in and I broke down totally. And a man came over and said “jerry get up and charge!” So I got up and ran. We saw the bunker so we covered behind a sea wall built up with sand and we planned our strategy, there was only one way to do this though… just charge with all the men we had and throw grenades into the bunker. So that is what we did. A man named dave tossed a grenade into the bunker and we heard screams it was just terrible. But we had to do this to get where we wanted to be.
This wasn't over yet though, we still had to get to Caen by night fall and it was 1400. Caen was a crucial point to capture so the germans couldn't send reinforcements to the beach leaving the 3rd wave troops helplessly stuck on that beach.
We marched to the bridge of Caen and we faced heavy fire so we sent our engineer to the bridge and we detonated it and most were killed from the explosion. So this meant we had to walk through the water at the bottom of the bridge when we were crossing i was talking to a man named mike said “were on our way to berlin boys” And I couldn't believe what I just survived it all started going through my head I was just so amazed that I was still alive. I made it across and we set up post for the night and went to bed with just a little bit of rations.
In the middle of the night our Lt. woke us up and said we're going to look for paratroopers that went off course. So I was the first one up and I went out because i had orders to go by myself to cover more area.
After scouting the area for 20 minutes I found a trooper stuck in a tree. And i went up the tree to cut him down we started back to the camp when I heard a crack and i heard “HALT” but I wasn't going down this way I told the trooper to keep running west and you will find our post. So I went Rambo on them I charged… Jerry o'donnell was shot dead on this day, but because of his bravery he was awarded the navy cross 2 years later. (the navy cross is the second highest award under the medal of honor. Also to add on to this the paratrooper did find the camp and lived.)
Hi, I am Jerry. I am a private in the United States Marine Corps and right now i’m on a ship in Great Britain, we were just told the news that tomorrow we leave for an invasion. We woke up at 04:00, and were almost at the beach by 0700 I was next to a kid named “Jones,” he was only 18.
Our stomachs started to turn as we saw the machine gun bunkers firing on people on the beach, and that's when we both said “this is going to be bad.” As we neared closer to the beach we could hear the young marines screams for medics and morphine then we heard a huge BANG and the driver of the landing craft said “charge!” and bullets leaked into our ship killing most of them. And me and jones hopped off we swam to the beach in fear, we covered behind big metal pillars that were preventing getting tanks on the beach.
I piled onto the beach with many others and the sand danced up in front of us because of the machine gun fire. As i was hiding behind that with jones said, “If i die tell my mother i love her.”
I replied with “Jones don’t talk like that brother we’re going to make it out of this.”
Moving on, I was horrified on this beach; it was straight hell. Out of nowhere we heard a Lt. say “charge the bunkers.” And me and jones ran fast and furious up the beach and I saw the saddest thing I ever saw… Jones was shot dead in about 10 yards in and I broke down totally. And a man came over and said “jerry get up and charge!” So I got up and ran. We saw the bunker so we covered behind a sea wall built up with sand and we planned our strategy, there was only one way to do this though… just charge with all the men we had and throw grenades into the bunker. So that is what we did. A man named dave tossed a grenade into the bunker and we heard screams it was just terrible. But we had to do this to get where we wanted to be.
This wasn't over yet though, we still had to get to Caen by night fall and it was 1400. Caen was a crucial point to capture so the germans couldn't send reinforcements to the beach leaving the 3rd wave troops helplessly stuck on that beach.
We marched to the bridge of Caen and we faced heavy fire so we sent our engineer to the bridge and we detonated it and most were killed from the explosion. So this meant we had to walk through the water at the bottom of the bridge when we were crossing i was talking to a man named mike said “were on our way to berlin boys” And I couldn't believe what I just survived it all started going through my head I was just so amazed that I was still alive. I made it across and we set up post for the night and went to bed with just a little bit of rations.
In the middle of the night our Lt. woke us up and said we're going to look for paratroopers that went off course. So I was the first one up and I went out because i had orders to go by myself to cover more area.
After scouting the area for 20 minutes I found a trooper stuck in a tree. And i went up the tree to cut him down we started back to the camp when I heard a crack and i heard “HALT” but I wasn't going down this way I told the trooper to keep running west and you will find our post. So I went Rambo on them I charged… Jerry o'donnell was shot dead on this day, but because of his bravery he was awarded the navy cross 2 years later. (the navy cross is the second highest award under the medal of honor. Also to add on to this the paratrooper did find the camp and lived.)