POV: You're an American Soldier on D-Day

POV: You're an American Soldier on D-Day You are below deck in the dark, and the boat is trying to kill you before the Germans get the chance. It's a Higgins boat — thirty-six feet of steel and diesel and thirty other men packed so tight you can feel the man next to you breathing. The English Channel is running four-foot swells tonight, and the hull slaps against each one like a hand against a table. Men are sick. The smell down here is diesel and salt and something you don't want to identify, and it coats the back of your throat and stays there. You grip your M1 Garand across your chest. The metal is cold. Everything is cold. It is 0300 hours on the sixth of June, 1944, and the beach is eleven miles away.