Original subtitles

- My name is Bill Belichick.

I've been very fortunate

to be a professional football coach for many years now.

It's a career I continue to feel very passionate about

and one that I became interested in

at a very early age thanks to my father.

The biggest influence in my life has been my dad, Steve,

who played in the National Football League

and was also a football coach for 50 years

at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

That's where I grew up and learned much about the game.

Like millions of other men of his generation,

my father who passed away in 2005,

served his country in World War II.

Dad was in the United States Navy.

He spent time in both Europe and the Pacific.

The men and women of the World War II generation,

such as my father, are responsible for all we have today

including my own opportunity

to be a professional football coach.

The following is a story about one day in World War II,

June 6, 1944, D-Day.

A time of both heroics and horror experienced

by teenagers and young men.

Many locations still show the marks of battle decades later.

This film brings us unique views

of the landscape of Normandy, France.

Intertwined are the stories are the stories of the men

who fought on these beaches

and among these French villages to preserve our freedom.

On June 5th, on the southern coast of England,

in towns, villages, seaports and airfields,

tens of thousands of men are about

to board planes and ships,

ready to begin the liberation of Western Europe

from the Nazis.

- We'd had briefings for several days,

so we knew that this was the invasion of Normandy.

- General Eisenhower visited our unit

down in the marshaling area.

We were in a compound behind barbed wire fences,

couldn't talk to anyone.

- In our training we were told, you know,

the old story, look to your right,

look to your left, only one of you is gonna survive.

- I'm only 18 years old,

what the hell did I know about anything.

And, so I really, I had no idea that this,

how big an invasion this was.

- The paratroopers were among the first to leave,

heading across the English Channel

in the late hours of June 5th,

taking a route that would drop them

over Normandy's Cherbourg Peninsula.

Below them, thousands of ships filled

with American, British, Canadian

and other Allied landing troops were also headed for France.

- Soldiers, sailors and airmen

of the Allied Expeditionary Force,

I have full confidence in your courage,

devotion to duty and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory.

- I was sitting where I could look out the door

and as far as I could see there were ships,

battleships, cruisers, PT boats.

I told someone, I said, that's where I think there are

even some canoes in the bunch.

All they ever, everything heading towards France.

Everything England had.

And then when I could look up,

the sky was full of airplanes.

- Yes, it looks like he could walk over there

on those ships.

- When I went on the plane,

there was very little noise, no talking whatsoever.

You hear people say, well I wasn't a'scared,

don't let them kid ya.

When your life is on the line,

everybody's excited and scared.

- The Pathfinders were the first to jump on D-Day.

Over 300 of this special force parachuted

around villages and towns with names

like Chef-du-Pont, Amfreville,

Sainte-Mere-Eglise and Sainte Marie-Du-Mont.

Men such as the 82nd Airborne's Bill Hannigan,

headed for fields and villages

behind Utah Beach in support

of one of D-Day's first missions.

The early arrivals jumped into Normandy

to help guide in C-47 planes

carrying their fellow paratroopers

in the early morning hours of June 6th.

- They just told us

it would be a dangerous mission.

- And a Pathfinder goes in a few hours ahead

of the rest and sends up a homing device.

It's a device that's you put in the ground

and when you put it in the ground

and set it you can't see it

but that palace could in the distance.

- We came in low and fast, too fast,

and too low and we hit the ground you know quickly

and which we liked but it was dangerous.

This is not a fuzzy arrangement this is the real McCoy

and you wonder if this was your wisest move.

Maybe it wasn't.

- One vital objective on D-Day

for American paratroopers was the 11th century French town

of Sainte-Mere-Englise which was a key road junction.

Henry Duke Boswell of 82nd Airborne was bound for the town,

as was fellow paratrooper Emmett Nolan

of the 101st Airborne Division.

It needed to be taken to prevent German counter-attacks

from reaching Utah Beach to disrupt

the eventual troop landings there at 6:30 a.m.

- Just before we got to Sainte-Mere-Englise,

they had a big cloud bank thousands of feet up

and all the planes just disappeared into it.

- The pilots that were flying us,

this was their first mission.

- Our original drop zone was Sainte-Mere-Englise.

- We parachuted into Normandy landing

about two o'clock in the morning

not too far from Sainte-Mere-Englise.

- I jumped and of course you jumped

with a group of people

but then when you started coming down,

you're all by yourself.

There's no one right near you, the wind scatters you.

- By the time you got up 15 men traveled probably

from a half a mile to a mile.

So we were strung out all over that Cherbourg Peninsula.

- They were shooting at us,

machine guns, anti-aircraft,

we could see the tracers coming up.

I got out of my shirt, got my rifle assembled.

- And we missed Sainte-Mere-Englise.

- I can remember I, when I landed I landed in a tree

and I didn't know, it was pitch black.

- I understand that we were the only unit that landed

on our correct drop zone, 505,

the others had missed theirs,

some by a little, some by a lot.

- Scattered all over,

soldiers from different divisions, regiments and units,

gathered into small groups and headed out

for the nearest objective.

- And we were involved

in a battle right away with the Germans.

- One of the companies had jumped right

over Sainte-Mere-Englise and they came down over the town.

Some of them landed in the trees,

they were shot by the Germans who were right there

before they could get out of their harness.

- Walked into Sainte-Mere-Englise

and saw John still hanging on the tower.

I thought he was dead, he'd been wounded

and they later got him down.

- At 4:30 in the morning,

the battalion commander raised a flag

over Sainte-Mere-Englise over the City Hall.

So that was quite an accomplishment,

so we had that time to breathe, then we had to hold it.

Our job was to block the cross roads and the bridges

and keep more Germans from getting down to the beach

to drive our people off.

- There were several attacks on Sainte-Mere-Englise

by the Germans and the 3rd battalion '05 was able

to repulse the attacks.

- All around Sainte-Mere-Englise

and the small hamlets and towns of Normandy,

were what the French called the bocage

also referred to as the hedgerows.

The majority of villages in the region were surrounded

by farmland and these ancient hedgerows,

dense vegetation and trees growing up

from mounds of soil sometimes rose to 30 feet in height.

Dating back to the 16th century,

the hedgerows were natural borders

that kept the cows in the fields

and defined property lines of the farms.

- They were so thick you couldn't see anything.

- The bocage in Normandy was so dense

that an American paratrooper could be standing

just a few feet away from a German soldier on the other side

and have no idea each other was there.

It was an unnerving way to fight.

- You had to fight your way

through a century or two

of growth on 'em.

- 82nd Airborne paratrooper Bob Chisholm

was bewildered by the bocage.

- The hedgerows was quite difficult

and our intelligence hadn't really briefed us on it

so I don't think they even knew about it.

- Among the hedgerows and just about five miles

from Sainte-Mere-Englise was another key landing zone

for the American paratroopers.

The ancient village of Sainte Marie-du-Mont

which provided key exits off Utah Beach for the landings.

Dominated by a church that dates back to the 11th century,

the village was a key objective

of the 101st Airborne on D-Day.

Like nearby Sainte-Mere-Englise,

Sainte Marie-du-Mont had been occupied

by the Germans since 1940.

It needed to be taken to prevent German counter-attacks

when the beach landings began.

Unknown to Allied planners on D-Day,

was the location of four German 105 millimeter cannons

just outside of Sainte Marie-du-Mont

at a place called Brecourt Manor.

Brecourt Manor dates back centuries

and to this day is still owned

by the de Vallavieille family

it remains a working farm.

On D-Day the four German guns were located

along this hedgerow facing towards Utah Beach.

As the landings got underway,

the German guns began blasting away.

They needed to be silenced.

The difficult mission was given

to First Lieutenant Richard Winters

of the 101st Airborne Division.

Winters led 11 other soldiers in the initial attack

to knock out the guns defended

by roughly 100 Germans in and around this field.

A trench that once ran along the hedgerow was the only route

to attack the guns.

It was early on D-Day morning.

- Take out those guns is the way it was put to me.

The first thing I did was go off by myself,

crawl out this one hedgerow to scout it out.

After I scouted it out I could see where a machine gun was

and I thought there was a gun in that hedgerow there.

I knew enough about where the trench was

and where these guns were came back and I gave my orders.

Was Compten, you go up this hedgerow

and I'll go up this hedgerow.

I split up what we have here so that

if we do get pinned down we both won't be pinned down

at the same time and we got everybody together

and set up the two machine guns we had

to lay down a base of fire

and had Compton, Popeye Wynn and Malarkey go out there

and try to put some hand grenades on them,

so that with the instructions

as soon as you throw those hand grenades,

we'll all charge which we did.

And we were fortunate enough to get in there

as those hand grenades are going off

and we got on top of them and we got in the trench.

- Just a short distance from Brecourt Manor,

where the four German guns were silenced,

is a monument recognizing Richard Winters' bravery

and leadership on D-Day.

The Richard Winters leadership monument

was dedicated in 2012.

The monument not only honors Dick Winters' own D-Day efforts

which resulted in the Distinguished Service Cross

but those of all American junior officers

who displayed so much courage on June 6th, 1944.

Damian Lewis played Dick Winters in HBO's Band of Brothers.

- Dick was very, very skeptical.

He was suspicious of Hollywood

and he said, "I don't want my story,

"the story of my war, the men I shared the war with

"turn into some sensationalist Hollywood thing."

And Tom had to talk him down and you know, just say,

we guarantee you will do everything we can

to make this social document

not a bit of sort of sensationalist storytelling.

And Dick was won over

and he was very, very proud to be associated with it.

- Around 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 6th, 1944,

the Allied beach landings got underway.

Utah Beach on the very western end

of all the invasion beaches was the objective

of the American 4th Infantry Division.

both Bill Miret and Jim Gaff were in on the first wave

as the Navy began approaching the beaches

and began to receive fire

from German gun emplacements and pillboxes.

- Everything is seemed calm until

all of a sudden you had taken troops to go to the beach.

- It's hard to look back out there

and think that we've brought our boats in as close as that.

- This is a special bulletin.

The long awaited British and American invasion began.

- They were everywhere.

I mean all kinds LCIs, LCTs, LSTs, destroyers

and they were just covered with ships.

- We interrupt our program

to bring you a special broadcast.

- Eisenhower's headquarters

announces Allies land in France.

- This is D-Day.

- Allied troops began landing

on the northern coast of France this morning,

strongly supported by naval and air forces.

- My LST was just loaded with wounded soldiers

and the tank deck was full of cots.

- A landing was made this morning

on the coast of France.

- When you think about it,

you know an entrenched enemy in pillboxes,

looking down on the beach with machine guns and cannon

and those soldiers crossed that beach,

took an awful lot of guts.

- The British American landing operation

against the western coast of Europe,

from the sea and from the air,

are stretching over the entire area

between Cherbourg and Le Havre.

- Today a museum dedicated to the Utah beach landings

stands just off one of the key exits soldiers took

on June 6th, 1944, to move inland from the beach.

The Utah Beach Museum, built from an old German bunker

that faced out towards the English Channel,

was the vision of Michel de Vallavieille,

wounded on D-Day as a teenager during the fight

around his family-owned Brecourt Manor.

At about the same time the landings were going on

at Utah Beach, 30 miles to the east,

two American divisions were also coming ashore

on Omaha Beach to secure that part of the Normandy coast.

Walter Szura was with the 1st Infantry Division,

Mort Kaplan was a Navy Beachmaster,

tasked with traffic control.

The eastern end of Omaha was the responsibility

of the 1st Infantry Division.

- Yeah, you're scared.

You tighten up and you don't think,

I didn't think about it, says what happens happens.

- Several hundred yards of open beach

and murderous German fire awaited their arrival.

- A lot of firing, ships, planes and strafing.

How are you gonna explain this

and machine guns coming from the beach.

- Climbing across little fences things of that sort,

there was some in the water,

bodies which had been cut in pieces.

- I saw a lot of bombardment on this shore

and after the second day we served as a hospital ship

and carried casualties off of this beach

into London, England.

- Then there was a cement wall,

when you hit the beaches there's a cement wall still there,

part of the cement wall a lot of us guys hid in it,

we land up in there and that's where I headed for.

- Today a monument

to the 1st Infantry Division's heroism stands guard

over the eastern end of Omaha Beach.

Nearby the remnants of several German bunkers

and machine-gun nests stare coldly back

at this part of the beach.

On the western end of Omaha Beach,

the fighting was just as fierce

as it was on the eastern end.

Hal Baumgarten of the 29th Infantry Division,

came ashore in the second wave.

The inexperienced 29th fought their way in

just below the French village of Viereville-sur-Mer.

Crossing 300 yards of open beach

was the challenge facing Baumgarten and his fellow soldiers

on their pre-assigned landing zone on Omaha.

- I got shot in the rifle.

It vibrated, I turned it around,

my seven bullets in the magazine section saved my life.

So I didn't get wounded until after I hit the ground.

I looked up at the pillbox number 73 on the right flank

and a 88 went off in front of me.

Ripped this cheek off, ripped the upper jaw off,

holding the roof of the mouth, teeth and gums on my tongue.

- The men had not seen combat yet

and consequently you know they had

that innocent high morale

and exceptional training and if anybody could do it,

they knew they could.

I mean and it was interesting

because they combined that rawness

with their landing partner to the east,

the 1st Infantry Division which was exactly the opposite

and you know they had already been

in two amphibious assaults

and were highly, highly experienced.

And so it was a good combination of the two units

because they brought two different perspectives

to the whole operation.

- All these guys that you knew as your friends,

you trained with them and they're there laying dead.

When I look at Dog Green Sector I see all the bodies.

It's kind of sad each time.

For example on Dog Green Sector we lost 85% casualties

in the first 15 minutes.

- As is the case on the eastern end of Omaha,

time stands still on this part of the beach

with German gun emplacements

and bunkers still intertwined with the landscape.

While the Americans fought their way ashore

on Omaha and Utah

over on Gold Beach the British began

to land close to 7:30 that morning.

Frank Amalfatano was an American assigned

to a landing craft responsible

for bringing British troops into Gold Beach.

- All I can remember that in front of us was a big hill

then there was a lot of resistance up in front of us

and then we got into trouble,

that the soldiers didn't want to get out of the boat.

We used some rough language

but then we finally got them off.

- Within range of Gold Beach

and Frank Amalfatano's British troops

were the large German gun emplacements at Laurent-sur-Mere.

- And there was a lot of booming, banging going on

and I think to myself that we were 18 years old

and we didn't know what the heck we were doing,

know what was going on.

- By 6:20 that morning,

three of the four long-range guns had been knocked out

by British naval fire.

The fourth would not be silenced

and captured until June 7th.

Roughly halfway between Omaha and Utah Beach

in the American sector lies the 100 foot high cliffs

of Pointe du Hoc.

On D-Day, the 2nd Rangers were facing

what was considered to be a suicide mission,

climbing the cliffs under German fire

to eliminate six big guns believed to be on the Pointe.

The mission was called the most important on D-Day

by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower,

as the enemy cannons had Utah and Omaha Beach,

and the ships in the English Channel within range.

- When we got to Pointe do Hoc

and landed and our ramps went down,

we got on the beach and made our way to the bottom

of the cliffs where we had fired our ropes up

over the tops of the cliffs

and they were draped down in front of the cliffs.

And it's 100 feet straight up.

We had to run to the rope

and climb that rope with our gear and all.

And all the way up the 100 foot cliff was being shot at

at the same time by the Germans along the top of the cliffs,

and they were dropping grenades on us

and trying in every way possible to keep us

from successfully climbing that cliff

and getting up there and battling it out with them.

And it got to the point of hand to hand combat at times.

But we did, we were lucky, a lot of guys weren't lucky,

we had heavy casualties.

- It turns out the guns

the 2nd Rangers had been after

had been moved inland to a nearby apple orchard.

- Only the large gun positions that is believed

to have housed the coastal guns at Pointe du Hoc,

they weren't guns at all,

what appeared to be their barrels were telephone poles,

very dark and they were maybe stained

or painted black or whatever.

And from an aerial photograph,

I don't know how high they took it at,

it looked like the guns were in these particular positions.

And my platoon and company had positions four, five and six

on the west side of the Pointe.

They weren't there.

When we found no guns, we headed for the road

to establish a roadblock.

I only had 12 men, so I told 10 of them,

with their sergeants,

now you guys go ahead, set up a roadblock

and make sure no Germans get through here to keep contact.

And Jack, you come with me, my platoon sergeant.

I said, you and I are gonna go find those guns.

Well, Jack and I could only remember

this one sunken road that went to the rear.

And we saw what looked

to be the wagon wheel tracks on the dirt.

And this hedgerow,

and it was a hedgerow was a good nine, 10 feet tall,

with 50 foot trees out of the top.

And there lo and behold are the guns

of Pointe du Hoc, only five of 'em.

There were supposed to be six.

The five were in position, they were aimed at Utah Beach

and they had their shells all orderly set up, ready to fire.

And remember further that the Germans never believed

anybody would be crazy enough to come up those cliffs at 'em

so they didn't have them very heavily guarded.

There were no guards on the guns that I saw.

But I went in and I had his grenade,

a thermite grenade and my thermite grenade.

Then I took my field jacket off,

I wrapped that around my submachine gunstock

and I smashed the sights of all five guns.

So I destroyed the sights of the five guns

so they couldn't sight it.

I destroyed two of the guns with a thermite grenade

and I said Jack, we gotta run back

and get the other guys thermite grenades.

And I was able to take those grenades

and put one each on the remaining three guns

and repeat what I had done before,

thus putting all five guns out of action

so they could not be used.

That was our mission, that accomplished our mission.

- Of the 225 Rangers assigned the mission,

135 were dead or wounded after two days of battle.

- We were successful for the next couple of days

in the beating off attacks by the Germans,

we accomplished the mission of D-Day and we were relieved,

D plus two and our wounded were taken care of

and our dead guys were taken care of.

And why I say that is because

there weren't very many left of us after that battle,

of D-Day, at that point in time.

- Thanks to the air force, prior to D-Day,

and then shelling by Allied ships

in the channel on June 6th,

the Pointe is forever scarred with massive craters.

- I came to the area where they were gathering the bodies

of the men in the battle.

And lo and behold they had all my guys lined up,

laid out along the roadside,

on the shoulder of the road with a name tag on 'em

and who they were and preparatory to taking them

to a cemetery or a morgue or something, somewhere.

But they had all young men together

and here for the first time,

I was seeing

what happens in war.

We indeed come here brothers, we still are.

I had brothers in real life,

but I don't think my own blood brothers

or any brother meant more

to me than my fellow Ranger buddy.

- Today, a monument on top of Pointe du Hoc

recognizes the Rangers' courage and sacrifice.

Back behind Utah Beach another fight was raging

just outside of Sainte-Mere-Eglise

in the tiny hamlet of La Fiere,

Ted Morgan, a medic and the American 82nd Airborne Division,

found himself right in the middle of the fierce battle.

La Fiere and this bridge and causeway

along the Merderet River had become some

of the most important real estate in Normandy.

- I think we had to be there on the scene

to understand what a major objective that was.

- Where did the Germans were trying to get across

and we were trying to push him back.

- The Germans needed the 1600 foot long causeway

to send reinforcements towards Utah Beach

and the American landings there.

The 82nd Airborne was fighting

to prevent that from happening.

- Because that was the major bridge

over which the Germans could send in reinforcements

and they weren't able to do that

once we secured the bridge.

- Ive heard it described as one

of the most important battles of the Normandy campaign

and they lost quite a few people.

- there was artillery fire, small arms fire.

- Disabled German tanks symbolized

the fierce fight going on to hold the bridge.

- With their weaponry they had a,

this 88 was just an amazing weapon.

We had to be covered, we had to take cover

and eventually with the reinforcements

with tank reinforcements from the beach,

we were able to secure the bridge

but it took two or three days to do that.

It wasn't a simple task.

- The fields surrounding the causeway had

all been flooded by the Germans

to prevent paratrooper and glider landings.

- Some of our men became casualties,

they drowned in the water that flooded the fields.

- The destruction of the local manor

and the surrounding buildings was extensive.

Across the causeway on the German side,

the ancient church in the hamlet of Cauquigny was leveled.

The entire area had become the focus of a fight

that may very well determine the success or failure

of the Utah Beach landings.

- There was one of our troopers injured

on the side of a road going to the bridge.

I remember taking care of him

and while I was taking care of him

there was a German tank coming toward us

and he kept saying Morgan, there's a tank out there,

there's a German tank coming towards us.

And I wasn't about to leave him, I couldn't carry him

and I just didn't pay much attention

and all of a sudden the tank drew up beside us

and a German head popped out of the turret.

He looked down at us and the casualty,

he says, "They're going to kill us Morgan

"they're gonna kill us both."

All of a sudden the head went back down,

the tank cover closed,

the tank took off up the road

which was probably a miracle I guess

but that was, I remember that vividly.

- Finally on June 9th,

after three days of savage fighting

and hundreds of casualties,

La Fiere and Cauquigny were in the American hands.

Today a monument to the fight stands near the Merderet River

just yards away from the bridge.

It features an airborne paratrooper referred to

as Iron Mike.

22 miles away from La Fiere,

is the French village of La Cambe.

La Cambe is inland near the ancient French town of Bayeux

and behind the Omaha Beachhead.

Just outside of the village can be found

over 21,000 German war dead from the fight in Normandy.

The German cemetery here is a quiet and somber place.

Men and young boys who died

because of Adolf Hitler's vision for Germany.

- He managed to call upon

some nationalist ideas,

you know there was the First World War

which the Germans lost

but the general feeling was

that we had been unjustly treated

so he was welcomed by the majority as a leader

who takes us out of that misery

after this First World War.

And by the time some people became aware

which way he was going to lead us, he had enough power

so the resistance was very difficult to organize.

- One German soldier that I was treating

hauled out a wallet, took a photograph out of it,

and it was over his family,

his wife and kids back in Germany.

And I thought then and I to this day I felt sorry for him.

He didn't want to be there you know.

He was forced to be there and here he is seriously wounded.

- About 10 miles from the German cemetery

at La Cambe outside of the village of Colleville-sur-Mer,

and rising above the cliffs overlooking Omaha Beach,

is the Normandy American Cemetery.

Over 9,300 white crosses and Stars of David marked

the resting place of American soldiers,

fathers, sons, brothers and husbands

who also died in the fight for Normandy, many on D-Day.

It is meticulously cared for by the French.

- Going back there and standing beside those crosses

and knowing who was buried there even to this day

it's heart rendering really.

You think of those guys,

you remember them as if it were yesterday.

It's a sad occasion just to go there to visit.

- Their lives were cut short,

they never got the chance to realize an adult life

and they were just kids really

and they never had a chance

to have families and children and all.

It's sad.

It's sad.

- Yeah, it is the common sentiment

that every man you take back to Normandy says,

you know, the only heroes are in the cemetery.

And it's unspoken, but the predominate theme

when then return is that it's an honor to the men

who never got a chance to grow old.

- When I got out I had to go back to high school,

finish high school and then I had to get to college.

Those are the key things that I needed to do

in my life to get on with it.

- Thought never comes your mind

what I'm gonna do this because I'm a hero.

It's something you do because it's what you're trained to do

that never ever entered my mind that I was a hero.

I was just doing what I was supposed to do

what I was trained to do.

- Well you were proud of your outfit,

'cause you lived up to the tradition of the outfit,

you know what I mean.

Satisfaction because we had just accomplished our mission.

- If I contributed just a little bit

to their success you know I'm proud of that.

- There was no way

that I was gonna let my personal feelings or my fear

interfere with completing the mission that we were given

and especially if it had anything

to do with my fellow troopers,

I was not going to let them down.

The fear of letting them down was more

of a fear than getting getting wounded or getting shot.

- I was proud to be a military man

during World War II.

- I earned one Silver Star,

two Bronze Star for valor and six Purple Hearts.

- It was an experience

that I knew would probably be

the most important thing I did in my entire life

would be part of that invasion.

- The legacy of the men who fought on D-Day

and served in Europe and the Pacific

as my own father did still resonates today.

Their courage, determination, sacrifice

and belief in their country and fellow man is unrivaled

in our history.

Despite the passing of my dad

and more and more World War II veterans each day,

I hope what they humbly accomplished will always resonate

with future generations.

The men and women of World War II won as a team

and that's a lesson for all of us

as we too try to accomplish great and noble goals

in our own lives both personally and professionally.

Men like my father and millions of others gave so much

to make sure we have that opportunity,

both on June 6, 1944,

and during the other momentous days of World War II.