One Who Made It

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William Schiller of Wood-Ridge, N.J., knows firsthand why the invasion of Normandy is called the Longest Day. A tank commander with A Company, 741st Tank Battalion, Schiller faced the withering German defense at Omaha Beach and survived.

Schiller’s tank wasn’t a DD Sherman, so a landing craft launched it in just 5 feet of water—in the wrong sector. “We had to fight our way back to Omaha Beach,” he recalls. “The smoke was so thick we couldn’t see anything, we fired at the flash of gunfire. By the time we arrived at Omaha Beach, our infantry was already there. As we rode along the water’s edge, machine gun fire and shrapnel hit our tank like rain. Our telescopic sights had been shot away, so we were driving blind, riding over our own dead and wounded.”

As Schiller’s crew tried to maneuver to high ground, their tank hit a mine and threw a track. The men abandoned the vehicle and joined a group of infantrymen hunkered down low on the beachhead. “We were surprised to see that none of them had guns. They had lost everything in the rough water,” Schiller says. “The beach was full of antipersonnel mines, so we just lay flat with our faces in the sand to present the smallest possible target. Bullets and shrapnel flew over us, and at one point the soldier next to me was hit in the neck, spraying me with blood.”

Schiller hugged the earth for several long hours, until the destroyers off-shore knocked out most of the German gun emplacements and heavy equipment cleared the mines from the beach. Only then could the soldiers race to the high ground.

“Shortly after, the 741st regrouped,” Schiller notes. “On D-Day plus 1 we went on the offensive, fighting for every hedgerow. We experienced heavy combat day and night for two weeks, until we reached St. Lo.”

During a particularly fierce battle at St. Lo, Schiller’s tank was hit and his hand was crushed. Schiller ordered his men to throw him out of the tank and keep attacking because the vehicle was still operable. Sometime later Schiller was rescued by frontline medics and evacuated back to England.

“After St. Lo, Patton’s Third Army took over,” Schiller recalls. “France was now open country and all roads led to Paris. The Third Army took 50 miles in one day. It took the First Army, which we supported, almost six weeks to take just 20 miles.”

—By Donald Vaughan