Word: crafting
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...battleships came a deafening barrage. The Texas and Arkansas trained their 14-in. guns on German artillery batteries atop the cliffs towering over Omaha Beach; the Nevada and three cruisers pounded nearby Utah Beach. Twelve miles offshore, thousands of infantrymen scrambled down sheets of netting into the boxlike landing craft that began chugging toward the heavily mined and barricaded shore. Aboard the flagship Augusta, General Bradley stood with ears plugged by cotton and watched through binoculars as the vanguard of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions waded slowly into German machine-gun fire on Omaha Beach. "The commanders...
...commanders, everything is always part of a plan, but to the ordinary soldiers in the landing craft, the invasion seemed more like a series of fragments that added up to chaos. The storm that was supposed to have died down still churned up waves four and five feet high, and the landing craft wallowed through them. White-capped waves slurped over the sides. Seasickness became epidemic. Drenched, shivering, scared and loaded down with almost 70 Ibs. of wet battle gear, they had to keep bailing...
...least ten of the 1,500 small landing craft foundered. One lost 30 men out of 32 aboard. Others took shellbursts and a steady pinging of bullets against the steel sides. Still others collided with the jagged obstacles and barbed wire that the Germans had embedded along the beach. The heavily burdened invaders had to scramble out into neck-deep water, or worse. A number of amphibious craft loaded with artillery turned back. Armored units had an even harder time. Their Sherman DD tanks were outfitted with devices that were supposed to keep them afloat while they lurched ashore...
Everywhere there were noise, explosions, gunfire and wrenching cries for help. "Medico! Medico! I'm hit! Help me!" Aboard one landing craft, a German shell struck a flamethrower strapped to one soldier's back. The explosion set the whole landing craft on fire, and it burned all day long, the fire punctuated by explosions from the craft's ammunition supply...
...ships, meanwhile, kept ferrying in more troops, more guns, more supplies. Major Stanley Bach of the 1st Infantry Division managed to scribble a few notes: he saw a landing craft hit three mines. "Navy men go flying through the air into the water. They