Sergeant Aaron B Jones
Machine guns chattered, mortar shells exploded and shrapnel whirled across Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6 1944. D-Day, the most ambitious Allied military operation of the Second World War, was underway as American infantrymen assaulted the 4.5-mile (7km) ribbon of otherwise nondescript sands that the German defenders had turned into a killing ground.
Intended to pierce Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall defences and open a second Allied front in Western Europe, the operation was a tremendous undertaking as 150,000 troops hit the five invasion beaches of Normandy. The combat was fierce in several areas, but nowhere more so than windswept Omaha Beach, where the issue was in doubt for hours. The heroism of officers like 1st Lieutenant Jimmie Monteith tipped
