'Yanks deserved medals the size of dustbin lids' - Peter Rhodes' D-Day Diaries Day 6

The Americans took the western beaches, codenamed Omaha and Utah. Utah fell miraculously easily, with barely a dozen killed by enemy action and about 60 drowned. But 'Bloody Omaha' was another story. Swept by machine-gun fire and overlooked by gun emplacements on high ground to left and right, Omaha Beach became a three-mile killing field where more than 1,000 Americans perished.

Few Brits had any idea what was going on at Omaha.

One of the few was Arthur Weston of Oldbury, a 23-year-old radio operator on a wooden motor launch.

As he watched thousands of Americans advancing towards the maelstrom, he was amazed and horrified:

"My estimation of the Yanks had been pretty low. But seeing them going in, up the beaches, climbing the cliffs, advancing under a hail of machine-gun fire, my opinion changed dramatically. Some of the Americans fell and stayed down, but the green wave of men carried on. I think they should all have had medals as big as dustbin lids."

At one stage the battle-hardened German defenders reported that they had driven the Americans back into the sea at Omaha. Not so. As one US colonel told his boys cowering behind the sea wall: "The only people on this beach are the dead and those who are going to die. Now let's get the hell out of here!"

In countless displays of individual courage, young Americans simply got up, crossed the sea wall and moved forward into the gunfire. Sheer guts and relentless shellfire from Allied ships, some coming dangerously close to shore, drove the Germans back.

Sailor Ken Marcham had a grandstand view as the Omaha tragedy unfolded. German guns and mortars tore the American forces apart in scenes later recreated in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Watching the nightmare from a mile or more at sea were the Royal Navy ships which had escorted the vast US armada.