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Morris Henry Magee

it with him, although not in the same craft, and he didn't once
think of them until that night or the next day. They were
too busy watching and doing to think much of anything.
Once during this hour, Germans began firing on them from close
by. So they just let lose with their guns, and the Germans
ran up a white flag immediately.
[inserted] Lots of the infantry were drowned, cause landed far out and if they
couldn't swim with heavy equipment, were sunk. [end inserted]

At 10 o'clock, an English^soldier began directing them to move
through the wall, and [inserted] telling them [end inserted] how to get their tank through the wall.
The soldier was on foot, acting as a policeman. Many tanks
had gone through before them, but somehow as their tank
edged through the hole, it struck a mine that hadn't gone off
yet. It couldn't hurt the tank, the tank was too thick. But
the English soldier directing them was torn to bits, and
became just a mass of blood. It was really their tank that
had done it, and it made them all suddenly realize how quickly
and easily they could get it. Up till then, they'd been
getting over the seasickness and feeling more or less de-
tached from the whole thing. From then on they realized
that they might be next. [insert] Magee remembers seeing holes through the
man and then blood.

When they made their first position at about 10:15 or so, about
200 yards from the beach, they began firing all day. Magee
remembers during this time seeing an infantry man, his arm
completely off and hanging, with a bayonet in the other hand
jabbing about 20 German prisoners with the bayonet. And
he really jabbed them. So, with the wounded, they were
re-loading hundreds of prisoners.
Sometime during the afternoon, around 4 o'clook,, someone
mentioned food, and they pulled out some. Up till then
noone had thought of it. [underlined] Also, sometime during the
afternoon, Magee pulled out his razor and shaved.[end underlined] He says
he never missed a day of shaving during the war. (He says
his hand didn't shake when he did it either.)

At 6p.m., they went about 3 miles in to the top of a hill,
Beny-sur-Mer overlooking the beaches. On the hill there
were about 90 others with them. Of the 4 original tanks,
they were the only one to get to that second position.
And of the original 40 men on the landing craft with him,
all 40 were there and no one was wounded.
Here they dug foxholes. Everyone laughed at the depth
of his, but when the Germans started shelling, he soon
had company. There were mortars firing behind them and
someone said it was the British mortars firing on the
Germans, but it wasn't, [inserted] (they learned later) [end inserted] it was the Germans firing at the
British. During the night it was noisy as the devil,
with planes, bombs etc. [inserted]Were tired but with noise had no
trouble keeping awake. [end inserted]

These things I've been calling tanks were tanks with their turrets
taken off and 105 mm guns mounted on them. They were American
weapons [crossed out] They were [end crossed out] called SPs.

When others took their sergeant stripes off, he didn't because he
[inserted] " [end inserted] didn't believe in it. [inserted] " [end inserted]. The only time he was scared was when
the man directing them died. The rest of the time there was
too much going on.

It was a hot, warm, nice day. His wife was in England and she

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