My late father, Staff Sgt. Edward J. Selweski, who served
in World War II and landed at Normandy in one of the later waves of troops
after June 6, 1944, was fortunate to have an amateur historian in his battalion.
The unnamed author, obviously known to all in his unit, many
years later wrote a 92-page history of Charlie Company – 3104th Signal Service Battalion. The
Signal Corps’ job was to send and receive coded messages from the front lines
about enemy troop movements and tactics.
Some 600 men from Charlie Company made the 30-mile
crossing from Southampton, England, to Omaha Beach on July 21, 1944. It was D-Day+48
but the area around Normandy had not yet been cleared of German troops.
The excerpt below, the account of the 3104th Signal
Service Battalion’s landing, demonstrates the fog of war and the chaos that can
occur because of it:

Two memories of
this cross-channel trip still stand out in my mind after over fifty
years:  watching the East Indian crewmen eating their noon lunch
while crossing the channel — they all sat around a huge dish and scooped
their food up in their hands; and, the second memory, the debarkation from the
ship.  If it were not for the danger involved at the time, it would
have been comical. 
In order to reach
the Landing Craft which were bobbing like corks alongside the (troop transport)
ship, we were supposed to climb down the landing nets.  This meant
carrying a field pack, balancing your duffel bag across your shoulders on top
of the field pack or musette and slinging your carbine over your shoulder, then
climbing down the net.  You needed both hands to climb down the
net.  You had to keep the duffel bag balanced against your neck and
the field pack and you had to look down periodically so you didn’t step on the
other fellow’s hands climbing down below you.  

The sea was a bit
choppy and the LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) being loaded was bobbing up and
down and slamming against the side of the transport.  We had to climb
down facing the net in order to grab the netting.  This meant feeling
your way down with your feet for footholds and looking down occasionally.  While
you were doing this you had to hang on to the netting since the ship was yawing
and the LCI was bobbing like a cork.  
As you neared the hull of the
LCI, you had to be careful you didn’t get caught between the ship’s hull and
the LCI.  All the while you had to hang on to the rifle and duffel
bag.  Needless to say, we lost a couple of duffel bags and rifles but
no troops.  
Once aboard the
LCI, one could relax until the ship was loaded. When the craft was full,
it took off for the remnants of the pier.  Reaching the pier, the LCI
lowered its bow for debarkation.  We went through the duffel
bag-carbine routine once again since you had to look down to see where you were
stepping and the girders were slimy from sea water.  It took quite a
while before we disembarked the whole battalion.  It was also getting
near dusk since it took quite a while before the LCIs arrived, loaded and
disembarked the troops. 

Facing us was a
bluff which we had to climb.  By the time we reached the summit, the
sun was setting — remember we were still on that amazing Double British Summer
Time.  By the time we were all assembled on the bluff, when we
started marching again we had to hold on to each other’s knapsack because it
was so dark.  We marched in this manner for half an hour before
reaching a seemingly open field.  Here we were told to fall out and
set up tents and dig slit trenches.  
Rumor had it that
we were near a town called Ville St. Laurent-sur-Mer.  Rumor also had
it that we were still engaged in fighting for St. Lo.  
There was
quite a lot going on that we did not become aware of until much later.  It
was also at this camp site we seemed to have lost the rest of the
battalion. Maybe they moved further on to set up tents.

Miles to the east,
at one of the German-occupied French airfields, a nightly reconnaissance flight
was leaving for the Allied-occupied beach areas to monitor beach activity. On
OMAHA beach, an anti-aircraft unit was stationed on the bluff to scare off
unfriendly aircraft.
No one in Company C
knew of either of the foregoing events above but they were soon to find
out.  No one in the anti-aircraft unit (AA) knew the 3104th battalion
had arrived that day.

Once we had halted,
we set about setting up the pup tents.  This tent is so-called
because once set up, it can comfortably hold one St. Bernard pup.  The
Army, however, figured it could house two men and their gear.  Accordingly,
each man carried one half of the tent … in his field pack, along with a
collapsible four foot tent pole, sections of tent rope and 4 or 5 tent
stakes.  You needed a tent buddy to set up one complete tent.  
Al, whom I bunked
with on the trip across the Atlantic, was my tent buddy.  Setting up
a pup tent is no mean feat in the daylight; in pitch black darkness, it is nigh
impossible.  We assembled the pieces on the ground and groped around
until we found the correct parts and then proceeded to put it together.  About
half an hour later it felt like it was set up.  
Since we were dead
tired, we didn’t inspect the tent too closely nor did we think to dig a slit
trench.  It must have been near midnight and we crashed out as soon
as we hit the ground in the tent.

About an hour after
falling into a sound sleep — it had been a long day since we left Southampton —
our world suddenly erupted around us.  We woke up to what sounded
like naval gunfire and planes droning overhead.  In addition, outside
the tent some thing or things were falling in the bushes and through the trees.  When
we came out of the tent, after laying there shivering for a few minutes, troops
were running and stumbling all over the place, tripping over tents and tent
stakes.  
Tents were falling down with fellows still in them.  
No one knew what
was going on and, of course, no one bothered to dig slit trenches.  One
just laid flat and hoped for the best, making yourself as small as
possible.  All we could think of was that it was some sort of German
counter-attack.  After 20 minutes or so — which seemed like an
eternity — everything quieted down.  The droning planes went away
and the objects that were falling all around us, ceased.  Thankfully,
whatever had been crashing into the bushes did not hit anyone.  

We finally heard,
from a sergeant, what happened.  The droning planes were not attack
planes and the gun-fire was not naval guns.  There was only one
plane, a German reconnaissance plane called “Bedcheck Charlie,” who flew over
each night to monitor beachhead activity.  The “naval guns” were (American)
anti-aircraft batteries which had been set up on the bluffs and used “Bedcheck
Charlie” for practice.  
The falling objects were shrapnel from the AA
guns.
We laughed about it
afterward but someone could have been injured by the falling shrapnel.  

The
beachmaster or whomever was in charge of the beach area, must have forgotten to
tell the “ack-ack boys” that we had arrived and were billeted in the middle of
their shrapnel return area.  Our own officers, I assume, never knew
where we were to begin with.  This seeming lack of communications
seemed rampant in the first months of the invasion.  The German Army,
I understand, was also plagued by a lack of communications.  We, in
Company C, also had our share of it.