That evening, toward dusk, Henderson dug in at the foot of the cliff opposite the Vierville draw. I promised God that I would do all in my power to help prevent such a terrible event ever happening again.' We prayed for those who had been lost and thanked the Lord for our survival.

Sometime that afternoon, Henderson recalled, 'Before the bodies could be removed, the first religious service was held on Omaha Beach.

He and his section unloaded jerry cans of gasoline, the first of millions of such cans that would cross that beach. First Army passed out 125 million maps), but because the front line was just over the bluff at Omaha, only men, ammunition, weapons, and gasoline were being brought ashore, so he had no maps to hand out. Henderson's job was to distribute maps (a critical and never-ending process - eventually in the Normandy campaign, the U.S. Then we saw that the beach was literally covered with the bodies of American soldiers wearing the blue and gray patches of the 29th Infantry Division.'Īlthough the fighting had moved inland, sporadic artillery shelling and intermittent sniper fire from Germans still holding their positions on the bluff hampered movement on the beach. We saw many bodies in the water.We jumped into chest high water and waded ashore. The beach was covered with debris, sunken craft and wrecked vehicles. Going in on his Higgins boat, 'I noticed that nothing moved on the beach except one bulldozer. Horace Henderson of the Sixth Engineer Special Brigade landed on Omaha Beach.

Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose