Page 4

- for Cornelius Ryan 2 -
Your name Carroll B Smith
Did you by any chance keep a diary of what happened to you that day?
no It was not authorized, in fact forbidden

Were any of your friends killed or wounded either during the landing or
during the day? Yes many! In fact my boat landed on a mine or a shell fell in the middle just as the ramp went down on the beach we never knew for sure which

Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became
casualties?
My operations Sgt John ---Mueller lost half of his "fannie" when the boat blew up Chaplain Burke Orange, V was administering the numerous wounded and dying on the beach when he got a million dollar wound in the heel One very close friend of mine Captain Burroughs operations officer of the second Battalion ^who had always suffered from migraine headache
was shot squarely in the forehead and I couldn't help thinking as I ran by him that he'll have no more migraines One phrase that sticks with me was expressed by Lt. Col Mullins CO of the 111th FA Battalion After seeing every one of his artillery pieces sink in
Were you wounded? No
Duhn's He said "come on men, we'll have to fight like Infantry men now " and charged towards a German position to be mowed down by rifle fire

Do you remember what it was like--that is do you remember whether
you felt any pain or were you so surprised that you felt nothing? I was not wounded that day but was on the 9th grand camp and later on the 19th at Belle Fontaine for which I spent two months in the hospital in England
Do you remember seeing* or hearing anything that seems funny now, even
though it did not, of course, seem amusing at the time?
Yes As I ran up the 300 yards of beach towards the foot of the cliff I kept noticing little puffs of sand jumping up all around me and I thought as I charged along that its funny that sand crabs should be out in all this noise and confusion Later when I reached the cliff and looked back I could see my puffs of sand were the strikes of machine gun bullets which gave me my first twinge of fear But a moment later he picked me up again and I managed to escape his this time by jumping in the bucket
Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic, or simply memorable, which struck
you more than anything else?
of an old rusty steam shovel which was sitting in an unfinished anti tank ditch at the foot of the cliff but the noise of bullets again steel was so deafening I quickly hopped out and found cover in the ground
* A German -Jewish sgt ^(I believe his name was Newsome) who was our intelligence Sgt and who^ hated Germans with a passion because some of his family back in Germany had been exterminated had an undying ambition to fight his way back to Germany for revenge This boy and I were crawling up the bluff trying to get close to a german anti-tank gun firing from a camouflaged pill box which was knocking out our boats in the water
--------------------- Before I could stop him he rushed this pill box single