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Utah Beach - June 6, 1944 - D Day

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Profiles

  • Staff Sgt. Edouard Wilson Gorzell (1918 - 2009)
    from his obituary: "Staff Sgt. Gorzell was the first of Battery A, 980th on Utah Beach running phone lines and scouting gun emplacements while waiting for the "Long Tom" 155mm guns to come ashore. The ...
  • Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Medal of Honor (1887 - 1944)
    Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., are one of only two sets of fathers and sons to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. The other set is Arthur and Douglas MacArthur. D. Roosevelt, ...
  • J. D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)
    Jerome David "J. D." Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American writer. Living reclusively after much-noticed publications early in his career, he last published an original work in ...

Please add only the public profiles of those who served actively in support of Utah Beach on D Day (6 June 1944).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_beach

The objective at Utah was to secure a beachhead on the Cotentin Peninsula, the location of important port facilities at Cherbourg. The amphibious assault, primarily by the US 4th Infantry Division and 70th Tank Battalion, was supported by airborne landings of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Division. The intention was to rapidly seal off the Cotentin Peninsula, prevent the Germans from reinforcing Cherbourg, and capture the port as quickly as possible. Utah, along with Sword Beach on the eastern flank, was added to the invasion plan in December 1943. These changes doubled the frontage of the invasion and necessitated a month-long delay so that additional landing craft and personnel could be assembled in England. Allied forces attacking Utah Beach faced two battalions of the 919th Grenadier Regiment, part of the 709th Static Infantry Division. While improvements to fortifications had been undertaken under the leadership of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel beginning in October 1943, the troops assigned to defend the area were mostly poorly equipped non-German conscripts.

The 4th Infantry Division landed 21,000 troops on Utah at the cost of only 197 casualties. Airborne troops arriving by parachute and glider numbered an additional 14,000 men, with 2,500 casualties. Around 750 men were lost in engineering units, 70th Tank Battalion, and seaborne vessels sunk by the enemy. German losses are unknown.