Testimony of Richard Willstatter,
Officer on an LST, "baché" on June 7 in Vierville
"Richard Willstatter was an Officer Mechanic aboard LST 133, he remembers that his ship never approached Omaha Beach on June 6 as a result of the chaos on the beach. LST 133 laid anchor on its affected anchorage and received injuries for treatment. Shortly before night, the Officer in charge of the 5 DUKW ducks of the 1stera Division, loaded with ammunition, left the LST with its ducks and proceeded smoothly to the beach.
The next day, Willstatter remembers: "At about noon, we were ordered to go to the beach unload our cargo. We reached land slowly around 2:00 pm (mid-down tide, on the Dog White/Dog Red boundary). When I got up on the bridge, I was told that the troops on the shore had signalled that we were off the beach because of the mines and obstacles that had not yet been cleared. The beach was a spectacle of ruin and desolation. Right in front of us, LCI 92 was stranded at the top of the beach and in the dry, and across. His bottom was flat and he burned. At our starboard, there was LCI 91, (in the middle of the beach), another blackened hull.
"As the sea descended, she discovered many trucks, jeeps, ducks all over the beach. Hundreds of obstacles had not been removed, with Tellermines or explosives on each of them. Lifeless bodies or body pieces littered the whole area.
"The trucks left the LST, rolling slowly on the beach, after the first one dropped a metal grill so that the taxiing would take place on a hard surface. As the vessel was emptying, the wounded arrived, both on stretchers and the valid ones on foot. Some of these have returned immediately to their units after processing."
"Willstatter noticed the cargo line, "Gooseberries," sunk to form a breakwater. Willstatter and his sailor comrades left the beach shortly before night (the high tide was around 11:30 p.m. on June 7) and 1 day or 2 later they left for England to land the wounded and load soldiers and equipment for the next battles.