Battle of Saigon

Corey Raab

10/15/06

My name is Lloyd Lanes, I am writing this letter to all my grand children, great grand children, and all of you after that, I want you to be proud of your ancestors and what they did for your freedom so I am going to tell you my about my fight for our freedom June 6, 1944 on Omaha Beach, you will know it all as D-Day.

As we approached the beach, the bullets started hitting the boat and whizzing by our heads. The boat next to us was hit by a shell and blew up, metal shards and body parts were raining on our heads. The ramp went down in about neck deep of water, the water bright red from the our men's blood, men were dropping like flies in front of me. Seeing this, I jumped over the edge of the boat and prayed that I would make it to the beach. I pushed my way to one of the many "hedgehogs" on the beach and sat behind that to catch my breath. You could taste the death in the air. I found my men up in the trenches all catching there breaths and trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this alive. I was talking to our Lieutenant, who was trying to get all the men together, when a bullet went through his helmet and penetrated his skull...he was gone. This made me the man in charge of our platoon. With not many men we did the best I could think of and used grenades to take out the barbed wire in front of us. Once this was done we just ran for it and tried to make it to the next trench. Most of the men made it except me and a few of the men next to me. A shell went off right at my legs and took both my legs and all the men around me too. Luckily the medics came to my aid and patched me up. My men made it past the trenches and the machine guns and we took the beach. I lost most of my friends and my legs but if my grand children and there children can all live without having to worry about going to war or about losing their freedom then it was worth every moment.