Receiving Assignments

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"It was only about a day later that we were indeed given our mission, our assignment. We were to assemble at Poole, which is a nice harbor for landing craft because it’s shallow. Big ships can’t go in there but you could put a ton of landing craft in there because they don’t have that much draft. We were to assemble at Poole, and we were to lead the entire invasion fleet across the channel to a place – it’s 100 miles away – called Biville-sur-Mer on the map, and it had the code name “Omaha Beach section Easy Red.” And this was the most heavily defended spot along the Norman coast. Again, we were to proceed in prior to the assault wave. We had very designated targets, and they were fairly far inland, which meant we had to get very close to them. Our rockets only have a range of about a mile, so we had to get very close to the beach to have them in firing range. So all we had to do really was we got 35 tons of TNT on the deck exposed in these racks and another 35 tons below, and all we really had to do was lead the invasion force across the channel, then go into the most heavily fortified place on the beach, and shoot them. Simple, easy assignment."