Omaha Beach—and the Pathfinders

[June 6, 1945—POW]




From Minnesota to Omaha Beach


Buck Sergeant, Wally Siluk born in St. Paul, Minnesota, along the banks of the Mississippi, it seemed every one in the Army spelled his name differently, had said his goodbyes to his father Anton Siluk,, and was on one of the five thousand ships, twelve miles out, off the beaches of Omaha, the date: June 6, 1945. He was looking at the coast of Normandy (Europe’s France), he and 200,000 other troops, American and British. The pathfinders had already left, the men who were to light up the way for the drop zones of paratroopers and gliders, infantry. This indeed would be remembered as D-Day. Back home, back in America, his sister Elsie was with her new child Michael Edward, she was without husband, and working at the munitions plant. Her father was taking care of his restaurant, and Elise, like the rest of the world was holding their breaths to see the outcome of this Second World War [WWII].


The Pathfinders


H-hour, the assault-troops were crunched within Coast Guard boats [LCA’s] that raced for the shore, racing by the U.S.S. Augusta on the sidelines. Mountains of waves hit his boats on all sides, as they received direct hits from the Germans ashore, thus blasting boats in flames, mounds of flames, with groups of men that would never see the sun again, youthful officers and enlisted men alike, flames that digested the boats before they even got to shore, blasted to kingdom come, exactly where and on exactly what service they had done, nobody at the time would say, could tell (in the best of clarity, they became the target, allowing another boat to jealousy roar by, and prey thunderous prayers they did not meet with the same fate), therefore, like Sergeant Wally Siluk’s boat did, it passed immune in the uproar across the waters, the cheering cities of America back home, would only cheer for the victory on victory day, not for the souls, individual souls, that would be left for the individual families, in those boats that no longer looked like boats, but more like a totem pole of innocence, for another man’s war, a floating piece of melted metal, with hieroglyphs on the side of them, marking once a name given them, a number, now burning, like a lozenge slowly melted in the mouth of a German gunman.
Furthermore, the off shore sea, was covered with fire, an inferno blaze of metal sizzling (as if in a frying pan) in the waters, never before seen to that date. And those bodies fried to a crisp, never made it back home that was their hearse. But Wally said to himself, “This is war,” as if, what do you expect. And so the Anglo-Saxon war went on, the battle went on…

You could see weapons being held over their heads: the who, the soldiers in the cold green waters, soldiers from North America, trying to make it to shore—now in the waters, some survived the blasts, some jumped out of their boats in time, others hit other boats, clumsy was the invasion, and thus, soldiers were knocked out of their boats by their own kind, holding their weapons high over their heads; gear on their backs, many drowning before they got one shot, one round out other the weapons they practiced with for exactly this service, being the water was too deep, too much equipment to carry, too heavy and way too long carrying what they had to carry to fight a battle, a gutter-sweeping battle for Europe: them soldiers caught in the impossible reach for help, caught in the waves and flames, and fire overhead, all struggling just to get ashore, those men, permanently separated from mankind’s, manmade civilization, to fight animal, to kill for the practical purpose they were trained for, paid to do, for their country, and Europe, they did their best, whereupon—even up to death.
And yet the battle had barely started, Germans would be waiting for them, were waiting for them, meanness itself had failed, the very thing they were taught in Basic Training, had failed in actuality, war was different, it was intact and unbreakable in comparison to what they seen; war was ruin and destruction, no time for hesitation or argument, no sainthood available here, only heroism, and that was a remote place, merely because someone had to see you with some rank doing some impossible thing, and then, regardless of whatever you did, it would be to the advantage of the military, to suck more youth into their cause, to fight their war, to keep the munitions plants in America pumping out killer bees, so the rich could get richer. The earth did not falter, it was mankind.

Ambush

And so the Germans on shore, were waiting, ambush, it was set up to be an ambush, it was like an ambush, but save that one, Sergeant Wally, believed they knew the answer to this war, this battle, youth before family, country before youth, modesty and discretion, God is with us, we are the powerful, the potent, we are enough to win, we are the cushion between the two continents, we are the inheritors of Atlantis, but it didn’t stop the cold outrage of Germany, plucking boat after boat, soldier after soldier, in this ambush, as the Angel-Saxton wave, mass of soldiers drifted to shore, almost surreptitiously, so they thought, but for many his crucifix indeed was waiting, the talisman (the charm of needed victory on both sides) had set up the ambush (the Germans knew in advance, and so did the Angle-Saxons know of the slaughter that awaited them, the higher ups, industry, they knew the sea would be covered with blood).

Many would die, and be wounded before the day was over: before the battle really started, many, so many had died. What if someone would have said: I’m not firing, and a chain reaction took place, resulted in no one firing: God sent, but I think God these days said: “So be it, let it rest on your shoulders, as it has in your hearts!” And it was as it was.
Men from the 4th Division, at Utah Beach were also hit, lightly hit at first, but then came the Artillery—one could hear the German made shells ‘88s’, explode among the troops still rushing out of the waters onto the beaches. The privacy of battle was over, the Germans had their hands full now, and they flung away the meager cardinal thinking that they were the candidates for consecration by the God of War.
General Norman Coat, walked aimlessly up and down Omaha Beach, the reason? Who knows? Wally fell to a shell, it blew, and he flew (as pantomime furbished out of the blood-filled literature that would be written about this battle in days to come); thus, he flew several feet in the air, the lower section of his leg now off, blown off, off from the upper part of the knee. He would be a POW for the rest of the war; it was a rough day, for both empires, both fighting against fore zenith of victory.
Utah Beach was the biggest success of the day. By dusk, Utah was in allied control, as Wally was pulled off Omaha by the enemy, and put into a concentration camp.
The only thing Wally would remember of that day for a long, very long time was Father Edward Walters’s words, servicing the 1st Division. It was months after his arrival home that he got his full memory back.


Note: Written in the summer of 2005 (St. Paul, Minnesota and modified, revised and reedited, 11-2008, in El Tambo, Huancayo, Peru.