JIMMIE MONTEITH

In the crucible of battle at Omaha Beach on D-Day, this officer of the famed 1st Infantry Division earned his nation’s highest honour at the cost of his life

- MICHAEL E HASKEW

Machine guns chattered, mortar shells exploded and shrapnel whirled across Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6 1944. D-Day, the most ambitious Allied military operation of the Second World War, was underway as American infantrymen assaulted the 4.5-mile (7km) ribbon of otherwise nondescript sands that the German defenders had turned into a killing ground.

Intended to pierce Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall defences and open a second Allied front in Western Europe, the operation was a tremendous undertaking as 150,000 troops hit the five invasion beaches of Normandy. The combat was fierce in several areas, but nowhere more so than windswept Omaha Beach, where the issue was in doubt for hours. The heroism of officers like 1st Lieutenant Jimmie Monteith tipped the scales that terrible day – from possible defeat to hard-won victory.

Company L, 3rd Battalion, 116th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, was fully immersed in the maelstrom on Omaha as its soldiers slogged through the surf under fire, sought temporary cover, then made the move against their assigned objective: the opening of the Cabourg Draw.

Five of the six landing craft intended to bring Company L ashore reached the beach, but heavy currents had dragged some of them off course. Nevertheless, Monteith managed to bring his platoon ashore amid the chaos. Omaha is remembered today as the most fiercely contested of the landing sectors, where approximately 2,500 American soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions were killed or wounded.