S1c Richard Coombs: Crawling Through the Sands of Omaha

Ken Harbaugh:

Hi, quick message from the team: This interview is a visceral recounting of the Invasion of Normandy. It follows a boy as he crawls up the beach past the chaos and destruction in one of the most pivotal moments of American military history. We believe this is one of our most powerful interviews yet, but there are brief mentions of gore, so listener discretion is advised.

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Seaman First Class Richard Coombs. Coombs served in World War II as a Navy Seabee and was part of the first wave of the Invasion of Normandy.

S1c Richard Coombs:

Well, we were sent over after bootcamp, four weeks of bootcamp and two week leave. And then I was sent to Pier 92, New York City. And I was sent over on the Queen Mary, Easter Sunday with about, I believe it was 2000 Navy men and 2000 soldiers. And we knew something was coming up. And we arrived, Queen Mary arrived in Glasgow, Scotland. And they took us off there and they sent us to some Navy base and they put a bunch of us in this room and this ensign come out and said he's looking for a hundred volunteers to go into Navy Demolition. And he was looking for volunteers. Well, he asked for volunteers, but he only got about 10 hands to show up. And he says, "We have to have this, so we're going to go from A to C." Your initials, your last name. So I was picked number 97. That was it. That's how I got into the militia. I had no idea what it was going to be.And a lot of the other fellows didn't know either.

I was a Navy man. Demolition teams are made up of a lot of CBs. Anyway, we had a couple of weeks training over there, and the next thing I know we were all put on trucks. And they sent us... I think we drove all night. It was getting close to June and we knew something was up. And we arrived down, I think it was Weymouth or Plymouth, England. And this is around June the 5th. And the next thing I know, the trucks pulled in. There was a priest blessing the trucks. We said, "This is it fellas." And we knew right away something was up. So they put us on LCTs. And LCT is a land and craft tank. I believe, now, I'm trying to remember back many years, I don't know if there was one tank on there or two tanks, but it took our crew on there with 13 men. We had five army men and eight navy men in the crew, but there were also other soldiers on there. And that's what we crossed the channel on.

We started out on the LCT on June 5th. I forgot the time. We got about one quarter of the way there, but the channel was very, very rough. I think General Eisenhower must have told us to turn around and come back. I was just a seaman at the time, you don't know what's going on. All of a sudden everything turned around. If you can just imagine, all these thousands of ships all had to turn around. Unbelievable. We came back and we stayed a few hours. And the word was, it was getting close to June 6th and we were told to go over again.

When we start crossing the channel, I remember sitting down there, I was impregnating my boots with... I said, "What are you guys doing?" They were impregnating their boots with gas and we thought we might get hit with gas. And you kept rubbing. I must've rubbed on my shoes for hours. There was some kind of solvent you put on your shoes to impregnate your shoes from a gas attack. Because we didn't know what we were going to get hit with. I put it on there just like I saw everybody else putting it on. But when we jumped off the LCT onto the LCP, I knew this was it. And you could take a look at everybody's face. Dead serious.

My real mission, what they wanted me and another fellow to carry the four by four posts, they were about eight feet long, four by four posts, and we were supposed to position the post in the 50 yard gap. He was supposed to place it here and I was supposed to place there, if you got up the beach, we never got that far.

We were going to be in the first wave. We got close to the beach. It was about, I guess maybe 5:30 in the morning. It was just starting to get light. And we had to jump off the LCT over to the LCVP with the dynamite and everything and the rubber raft. And the water was very rough, very, very rough. It's a wonder that nobody fell in between, they would've been finished. So we got in the LCVPs, there was 16 of them, and then we start going around in a circle, till all the LCPs were full. And then all of a sudden they all straightened out in a straight line, and we started to head toward the beach.

But anyway, it must've been about six o'clock in the morning and there was a bunch of amphibious craft passed us. It was the Rangers, and they all waved to us like that and we waved back. And they went in before us.

As we headed for the beach, the water that day was terrible. It was very rough. Everybody was sick. I know I was sick, throwing up red and green. I was hanging over on the side. And all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. The battleships opened up with every gun they can think of, the missile launches let go. It was unbelievable. The beach was being blitzkrieg-ed. And I figured, "Well geez, if they're hitting it that much, we'll be okay."

The rangers that went before us, I didn't see anybody standing. They were all laying down. I think they were all either wounded or dead. I didn't see anyone. I don't think many men made it at all. That's when we knew.

Well, our 16 amphibious craft were spread out. I think 8 was going to hit Omaha. No, 16 were going to hit Omaha Beach. There was East Beach and West Beach. I think I hit West Beach. I didn't know this at the time. Over the past 50 years I found out an awful lot. Well, as we started to go in, all hell broke out with all the firing from the ships and everything. It was unbelievable. We thought, "Geez, there can't be anything standing." But I found out later that a lot of the battleships shells went over the beach, some hit the beach, and a lot of the missiles went over the land and went inland.

So there was a German, when I hit the Omaha Beach, they were still alive up there in the bunkers and they were shooting down right straight at us. Well, we started going in, and about, I'm talking from my own amphibious craft right now, about 100 feet or 125 feet off the beach, we got stuck on a sandbar. And the gunner's mate, there's a coxswain piloting the craft. And the gunner's mate yells up up, he says, "I see you're up there. I see you're up there." And he yelled all kinds of curses I don't want to mention. "I see us." And he opened up with the machine gun and as he opened up with the machine gun, he started blasting the hill. And this kid went crazy. He was laughing like anything. And I said, "Oh my God, here goes nothing." But I was sick at the time and I think everybody else was. So, "You guys got to get off, you guys got to get off. You can't go in anymore." So the ramp went down and the first five guys in the front were the five Army engineers. They were all braced like this. They had the primer cord tied around them. And we each had tetrytol to on us near the sacks of dynamite. Well, we all had a wade in the water, but as you hit the water, the water was over our head and it was... You ever see a beach with the waves going in? It was... Well, I went to the bottom like everybody else, and we had these rafts life belts and I had to press it to come up. Well, I was really weighted down and I had a carbine in my hand and it must've stayed on the bottom of the water.

Anyway, our job, me and this other young fella, I had to put these markers up on the beach. We started to go in. And I found out a lot later that the five army guys never got out of the water. And as we start to go up the beach, they opened up with everything. They had us pinned down. Now the first guys... I was one of the last to get off and the other kid was carrying the other four by four pole. He must've jumped just before me. Well, the rest of the team, there was 8 and 9 and might have been 11. They started getting out of the water. I heard the five army guys never got out of the water. Well, the rest of them started heading up the beach. How they ever got up that beach, I don't know. By the time we tried to find where they went, we must've been a hundred feet over this way. And I start following the other guy with the pole and I had mine, and we just got lost from those fellas. And we really got pinned down by fire because my friend's pole was machine gunned right out of his hand. So I yelled over to him, and it was just... Imagine the fire, you couldn't even stand up it was so bad. If you ever saw Private Ryan, that's the closest thing I could tell you. Well, I crawled over to him. I said, "You're okay." He says, "I think so. I think so." So I rolled him over and he didn't have blood. I said, "No, it looks like it's just machine gun." Well, at that time I must've left my pole, but we couldn't find where the other fellas went. And we started to crawl up the beach. You couldn't stand up. If you were to stand up, you're dead, you would've got hit for sure. I never knew there was so much firepower like that. You can't imagine, bullets hitting the sand, 88s going over your head and explosions here. And it smelled like death. You heard moaning, guys screaming, smell of gunpowder in the air. It was a very bleak, stormy day. How we ever accomplished and got in there, I don't know, but we did it.

So we just kept crawling up the beach until we didn't see anybody at all. But when I crawled over to the other fellow, I said, "You better take off your sack." Because we couldn't find the other men with the dynamite in. So we left them by some obstacles. We left them there by the obstacles. We never even got a chance to plant the four by four posts 50 feet apart. We couldn't even stand up. So I said, "We better keep crawling."

So as we crawled up there, I don't know how much time went by, but we found one of the guys that were on our crew, and he was hit, he was hit in the leg. So we tried to move him. I think his name was Johnny Line. I haven't seen him to this day. In fact, I haven't seen a lot of them. And he said, "No, I think I got hit with a wooden bullet. I can't move. Don't try to move me. Don't try to move me." We are just 18 years old. "You guys go ahead, go ahead. There's a sea wall made of rocks." So I turned around on the beach and I saw the medics crawling up. He said, "I'll wait for the medics, they'll get to me, they'll get to me." But all the time it was heavy fire and we didn't want to leave him. He said, "Go, go." Because he was I think a Second Class petty officer or something like that. So he made us go. So we got by the sea wall. The sea wall is like rocks going on an angle. And we laid there for a while. And I remember there was an army man came next to me. And he looked up like this over the beach, and he got a bullet right through the head. And he just rolled over, and the blood kept pouring out of his head. I said, "Oh geez, he's dead."

And I saw a lot of things that day, which I don't even want to tell you about it. The guys going out for their mates and guys yelling for help. I saw one fella go out and try to rescue him and a 88 landed and two of them went up in the air, come down like a rubber ball. So anyway, a little time went by and the kid I was with, he went up the hill inside the white tracer markers. By that time some of the soldiers start to get up the hill, and they were starting to knock off the Germans in the bunkers.

So I had to go up inside the white markers. They were about so wide like that. And we went up there and we found what was left of our outfit. There was maybe 250 or 300 guys, and I only saw maybe about 20 or 30 up there. And the commanding officer at the time was Commander Cooper. So we just got up there and we sat down. And the next thing I know, Cooper yells, "Girnin, Coombs, take all these wounded men down." It must've been some were our men and some of the Army. They were all bandaged and anybody that could walk. So I said, "Oh boy." So we had to go back through it again. So back to the beach and get them out to the hospital ship.

Girnin took the front, I took the back and we had them all put their hands on their shoulders and we went down in the white tracer marks, marched them back down. And all the time, 88s were still landing on the beach and we had to get them out. It was LCIS pulling in, landing craft infantry ships, small ships, had a little gangplank. So we took him to the water and the captain, he's, "Hurry up, hurry up, bring him up here." So we had to march him up the ramp. And we went up there with them and we had to get down, but, "Come on, we got to leave. We got to leave." So we went with them. We knew we shouldn't do this, but they made us go with them anyway. We get out to the hospital ship, and we said, "We have to go back." And they wouldn't let us go back. If you can just imagine what two 18 year old kids look like, they wouldn't let us go back. So they put us on a hospital ship and they took us back to England. We ended in the hospital, and I think they treated us for immersion, like I said. But we told them we had to get back, but we were in the hospital about three days.

I meant to tell you before that when we got out to the hospital ship, they wouldn't let us come back. And I think it was a couple hours later when I woke up that I asked the Navy Corps man, the nurse, whatever you call him, "Whatever happened to that ship? Did the ship get back?" And he told me something I don't even want to remember.

It was an LCI, landing craft infantry. They brought the wounded out and were going back for more. It's a little one, has a little gang plank. He told me that he doesn't think it ever got back to the beach. He thinks an 88 sunk it. And I said, "Oh my God." But Commander Cooper sent us down with all these wounded men. I don't know if he found that out or not and whether that story is... I'm still wondering whether this story is true or not, whether that ship got back. But that's what the corpsman told me.

So when my Commander Cooper found that out, if he did find that out, he must have felt very bad because when I met up with the outfit again, someplace in England, we had to report to him and explained what happened. He put his arms around us, he was glad to see us. I don't know what else to say, but it was a real bad day. I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I feel as though it was something that had to be done. Somebody had to do it. If I did anything, I just helped bring some of the wounded down. And they had a good chance of getting me that day. I guess I was just one of the lucky guys.

The rest of our outfit, I found out later, there was about seven or eight of them. They got through to the obstacles. I was in Boat Team 12. There was a chief petty officer in charge of us. His name was Barba. And we had the other Navy men. There was supposed to be eight Navy men. There was three seamen and five petty officers. There was one chief petty officer and the five army men. They never got out of the water.

There's a book out on the market, it was made out called Naked Warriors. And if you read that book, they'll tell you about Omaha Beach that day. And my unit broke through. I don't know how they did it. They all got wounded. And they got the tetrytol blocks where it had to be on the obstacles. And I heard that just when the petty officer, the chief Barba, was ready to pull a fuse, a 88 landed right in the middle and blew the whole thing up. So we did manage to blow... Well, my outfit managed to blow a 50 yard gap. Cost a lot of guys.

It must've hit the ground and they had the obstacles already tied to the primer cord and that was tied around the obstacles itself. There was this wooden structure and they had German mines on that. And they had crosses, iron crosses in the dirt, just all kinds of metal to stop the amphibious craft from coming in. But it was rough. It was rough. It was a rough day.

But I must say that I think what helped us there was two destroyers. There's another book out on the markets. Omaha Beach, two destroyers came as close as they could. They knew we needed help. We didn't have any backup power. And whoever were on those destroyers that day, they came as close as they could and they opened up with everything they had hitting them bunkers. And I think that helped us very much that day. Now it must be written in the book what names they were. I think there was two of them.

We didn't have any backup coverage. I imagine the tanks, all the tanks that were coming in, floating in the water, I didn't see it one tank make it. I think all the tanks sunk with the men in it, so we didn't have any tanks on the beach firing up at the hill protecting us. So it was a real rough day. Thank God there was no German planes up that day because all I could see was all American planes going over. And it looked beautiful to see that. If there was any German planes up there that day and they came down to scrape the beach, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now and I wouldn't have my family.

I would say that was a pretty dangerous job. Oh yeah. We had no idea how much fire we were going to get. They threw as much as they could... They threw the book at us. And if you saw that picture Private Ryan, you'll hear one of the soldiers say, "Give us a chance." They were all hiding behind the obstacles, the ones that were blown. Not all the obstacles got blown that day, from what I understand there was five gaps, 50 feet. I don't know, on East Beach and West Beach, I don't know where they were. Now, you got to realize we've just two young kids and trying to do the job there. A miracle saved us.

I think that day. If I moved to the left or I moved to the right an inch this way, an inch that way, something would've hit me. And I think somebody was watching over me and the other kid. And that's my story. So we ended up in the hospital in England. I was one of the lucky ones I guess. But I feel bad that I never got back to the beach though. That's something you don't want to do. So I believe the rest of the men who stayed there, stayed there for another 30 days. And I believe the next day they blew out the rest of the obstacles on the beaches. But we lost a lot of men that day. In that first... I would say that first half hour was hell. I wouldn't want to go through it again. I think it was the 459th German Battalion or something, but they really threw everything at us, everything.

But we all got lost going up that beach. The firepower was so... It was a rough day, to be honest with you. How many of those guys are alive? I think they should have been given the highest metal that I can think of, if they did that job. A lot of them were wounded out of that. We did have one fella killed running around, putting the chargers on

Over the past 50 years, my wife helped me sit down and write letters on this and stuff. I wrote to the Museum of New Orleans. They asked me for experience, I wrote a letter over there. But every time you think of it, you dream. That's how bad it was.

Never saw the beach before. I have copies of the map that's in the museum now. You see it hanging on the wall in there, East Beach and West Beach. And on that map you'll see 16 craft with names up there. You'll see Barba, Boat Team 12. That's the beach I hit. And its lines drawn on a beach like this, and that was the area. I never saw that before. We were just supposed to follow the leader or just hand over the tetrytol sticks. We never even got that far.

I'll tell you, that was hell that day. I wouldn't want to go through that again. I can't even explain it. I never told my family, but they'll know now. My wife helped write the letter with me. She did all the writing, and we sent it to New Orleans, the Eisenhower Institute, I think it is or something like that. They wanted anybody that was in combat so the future generations will see what it was like that day.

I guess I mentioned it from time to time. I try not to talk about it. Even when I got back to the States with the fellows, the guys didn't want to talk about it. We got back to the States, we had a lot of casualties. We went back to Fort Pierce, Florida, if you want to know that. And they made instructors out of us. I was put in a small boat crews, taking care of the amphibious craft. They were putting other teams through. And I've been down there for a little while, taking care of the amphibious craft. I was a diesel mechanic. And then I think about nine months later, the last teams are going through and they asked some of the demolition guys who went through this combat who wanted to volunteer.

I think they got about 30 fellas to volunteer to go out to the Pacific that were on Omaha and Utah, I guess. And they went with UDT 25, and I think they were getting ready for the Japan invasion. But thank God that invasion never came off. I was hoping to meet some of them, but I don't know. I don't know how many fellas we got here this weekend, maybe 10 of 11. There's a whole bunch of names on this plaque that we’re being awarded. And I don't know where they all are. Over a period of 54 years, they must have died normally or there's some out there. But I'd like to tell them if they're listening, there's a base down in Florida, the SEAL Museum, and it has plaques down there. If you're listening, come on down to Fort Pierce, Florida, Vero Beach and see for yourself. If they're still alive, I don't know, it's 54 years.

Well, you feel like you were in on something that happened. It was a big event. If you talk to Chief Markham, Jerry Markham, I'm sure you interviewed him, he'll tell you about it. That was the biggest day that ever was. And at that time we didn't even know it. That was the beginning of the end of the war over there. But like I said before, if there was any German planes up that day, we wouldn't be sitting here right now telling the story.

Nobody knew how bad it was going to be, and it was bad. Thank God it's over. I hope it never happens again. I would never want my sons to go through anything like that.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was S1c Richard Coombs. To hear more about Jerry Markham, who was mentioned in this episode, you can listen to his interview which is linked in the show description.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.