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from the coastal road. There was a house to the left, the battery was
on the right. "It was the biggest damn thing I've ever seen" said Hollis
later. "Each emplacement had walls 6 feet thick and each separate gun
emplacement was 30 or 40 yards square with four pillboxes in front of the
three guns and communication trenches linking them all. The guns were
heavy naval 11 inchers. The whole lot was camouflaged with black and
green netting with sacking in a variety of colours."

Several landing craft hit mines on the way in. There were shouts from
A Company men in the water only about 40 yards away, for help. But they
couldn't stop. The guns didn't hit the boats of D Company. There were
two Marines on each landing craft, one looking after the engines, the other
steering. There was a stripped Lewis gun propped up against the front
of the assault craft and Hollis wondered why it wasn't being used as they
were getting heavy machine gun fire from a bathing chalet which had been
turned into a strongpoint near the high water mark. He grabbed the Lewis
gun, climbed up on the top of the ramp and began firing. It was loaded
with tracers and he happily watched the stream of red tracer spatter about
the chalet. He fired the whole pan in one burst. Forgetting the red
hot barrel he grabbed with his hand when he'd expended all the ammo and
in that moment got his "most painful wound" of the war - a badly burned
palm. He dropped the Lewis gun with a yell. Just then the LCA ground
to a halt. The ramp went down and Hollis leading the way with a sten gun
in his hand yelled "Forward the Yanks and for Christ's sake get off the
beach". As he raced up the 200 yards of beach with Mullally on one side
and machine guns bullets flaking the sand all around he said to Mullally
"I've been in better places Paddy" "So have I Sarge," said Mullally.

ADD tank - Holles thinks - to their right suddenly blew up and the hatch
bowled across the beach at incredible speed. All he remembers of that
moment was "Oh, if that gets among the Company it will do more damage
than the Germans" but he couldn’t take time to find out. He raced on up to
the high water mark and he and Mullally flopped down on their bellies.
Ahead of them was the minefield surrounded by concertina forked wire.
As they waited for the remainder of the Company to come up - and many never
would because many men were lying wounded on dead behind - Mullally pointed
to two birds sitting calmly on the wire. "No wonder, they're not flying
Sarge" he said, "there's no room in the air for them".

When the Company came up and assembled their two engineers set out through
the marshy minefield with mine detectors. Quickly he got through with
the Company in single file following the gape which the engineers had laid.

Everyone knew what they had to do after they got through the marsh. Nobody
oddly enough at this stage got hit. On the coastal road in single file
on either side of the road they began the advance on the batery. Now
the casualties were felt- Mullally was one of those killed but Hollis didn't
know about it until the end of the day- machine gun and mortar fire fell
around them. In the next few minutes on this quarter of a mile approach 11
men were hit.

Now 16 platoon turned left to attach the house while 17 and 18 platoon
went for the battery. The Company Commander, Major Ronald Lofthouse and
Hollis were behind 17 and 18 and when they got near the perimeter pillboxes,
they noticed that one pillbox had been bypassed. Hollis spotted two machine
guns moving in the slits. He didn't say anything but sprinted across towards
the pillboxes and as he started to run they opened fire. Somewhow, even
though they were firing at 250 rounds a minute they didn't hit him. He
flattened against the wall of the pillbox, poked his sten gun into the gun
slit and pressing the trigger waved the gun around inside like a hose with
his right hand. With his left he yanked a grenade from his belt, pulled
the pin out with his teeth and tossed it in. Next he jumped on the roof,
put another chip on his sten and walking across the top of the pillbox yelled
"Come out you bastards". (There was screaming and yells inside the pillbox
at his firing.) Now the Germans came out through the door at the back of
the pillbox. He doesn't know why he didn't shoot them and there- instead
he handed them over to other members of the Company who had come up.