254
Sergeant Branham lands in front of Dog White
with its LCVP of K/116
Sergeant Felix Branham, Chief Platoon at Cie K/116
Felix Branham got into a LCVP at 4:20. Like his friends, he found the Channel bad.
Rain and spray soaked them and the waves made them sick. "Every time a boat was launched, he joined a growing circle. We turned in circles until we finally headed for Normandy. We were not within range of machine guns or rifles and only occasionally a shell arrived by chance. We were approaching enough that, with the sky clearing, we would distinguish the contour of the coast and the horizon. It looked like Slapton Sands. A guy in my boat got up and looked over the edge. He was defiled and said, "Shit, one more exercise, I thought it was for good."
"At 6:00 a.m., the Navy started firing. The noise of the shelling above, the bombs dropped by the medium bombers and the bombers, - (only heavy bombers intervened) - and the firing of the German coastal batteries and heavy mortars - (there were none) - was deafening. When our LCVP approached again, the machine guns started hammering the ramp and trimming.
"About 50 m from the beach, we hit a sandbank parallel to the shore. In the assembly area, we were told that there would be sand banks and above all not to stop there and lower the ramp. We had to cross them and get closer. The Navy's two guys were gonna lower the ramp, but the Lt. Lucas, our boat section chief yelled "No, no!" and told the boss to bypass the bench as we had been recommended. Unfortunately, other boats forgot the lessons and came out of the LCVP on a sandbank. With all their heavy equipment, the waves, the tide rising 30 cm in 10 minutes, they drowned. Other vessels on a sandbank were destroyed; the sick men who remained on board were burned to ashes.
"I had water over my boots. We were screaming, screaming, dying, running on the beach, equipment was flying everywhere, men were bleeding to death, crawling, spreading everywhere, shooting from all directions. We threw ourselves behind everything that was the size of a football.
"Colonel Canham (Comd the Regiment), Lt. Cooper and Sergeant Crawford were screaming to get us out of the beach. I turned around to tell Gino Ferrari "Let's go, Gino" but before I finished my sentence, something crashed on the side of my face. He had been hit in his face and his brains had crashed on me. I advanced and the tide came quickly to cover his body and I didn't see him again.
"A BAR gun-trailer had been pulled out of Canham's hands shortly before. The bullet had crossed his right wrist and he was wearing a fortune splint. His bodyguard, Private Nami, was following him closely, making sure to reload the Colonel's Colt 45 pistol. Canham emptied a charger, handed the gun to Nami who was reloading the gun. Before, during training, we used to call all names Colonel Canham. When he took command of 116èmeHe ruined our lives. We thought he'd still be a second-rate leader. After seeing him in battle, I had to change my mind."
Sergeant Felix Branham counted only 20 out of 30 men in his boat section when they arrived in the assembly area in the evening. "We dug manholes, hoping that the other boat groups would join us. The morning of June 7th; we were a group of 150 and went down to the beach. I've never seen so many dead and wounded in my life. The tide was rising and the bodies were thrown on the beach. Before we took them, we would gather them together."
Branham had been raised in hatred of the Germans after his father and uncles' accounts of World War I. D-Day increased his resentment. "I hated the Germans, the bastards. I was there to destroy them after everything they did to us, the buddies killed, the ones I grew up with. When I saw some Americans killed, my hatred increased again. We had two injured left by a road. We found that some Germans had returned and killed them with their own weapons, shot face to face in the head. A man who had made the death returned to the emergency station and told what had happened.
"We had orders, the first three days to kill and destroy, without making prisoners. I almost killed an old woman near Vierville. I heard a noise, I approached the M1 rifle near to fire. She was an old woman picking up broken glass from a broken window. A chaplain from the 5thème Rangers lowered my gun. "No, my son, not her"
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