D-Day Survivor: An Autobiography

Overview

"There was no way to anticipate the horrors of the holocaust that awaited us on the Dog Green sector." --Dr. Harold Baumgarten

Just as it was portrayed in the major motion pictures The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach was the smallest but most heavily defended part of Normandy Beach, only nine hundred yards long by three hundred yards wide at low tide. Considered an impregnable Atlantic wall, Omaha Beach was fortified by concrete walls, landmines, a twenty-five-foot seawall topped with mines and barbed wire, and a one-hundred-foot bluff.

It was the bravery and heroism of the 116th Infantry that made subsequent landings of the Twenty-ninth Division possible. In the face of heavy fire and despite suffering the loss of eight hundred men and officers, the 116th Infantry overcame beach obstacles, took the enemy-defended positions along the beach and cliffs, pushed through the mined area under heavy fire, and continued inshore to successfully accomplish their objective.

Dr. Harold Baumgarten, a multidecorated survivor, gives his eyewitness account of the first wave landing of the 116th Infantry on D-Day, June 6, 1944. As the spokesperson for soldiers who perished on the sand and bloody red waters of the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach, Baumgarten feels it is his mission to make sure these men are never forgotten.

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