BERLIN -- In the army that had already suffered through the blood and ice of Stalingrad, even a raw recruit like 18-year-old Herbert Muschallik knew that the Normandy coast was easy duty in the spring of '44.
By day you trained or built fortifications. You looked out at the empty sea and yawned, wondering occasionally if the Allies would ever come. At night you drank French wine and bedded down in a farmhouse. There were fresh eggs and milk. The locals were friendly. And the air was fragrant with the blossoms of early June.
With the war news from the Eastern Front becoming gloomier every day -- the Russians were still advancing -- a wry punch line set the tone: "Enjoy the war. Peace will be terrible."
In the first hour of June 6, Mr. Muschallik was trudging off to bed, bleary-eyed from guard duty at a post a few miles inland. An excited voice shouted to him. He looked up and saw an officer running toward him across a darkened field.
"They've landed, they've landed!" the officer shouted. Allied soldiers had begun dropping onto nearby fields in parachutes and gliders. Within a few hours, tens of thousands more would wade ashore.
Mr. Muschallik did not know it then, but D-Day had begun. For the German soldiers at Normandy, the time for enjoying the war was over.
The days that followed would bring momentous changes for him and his countrymen.
If the Germans had pushed the attackers back into the sea, the Russians might have swept across all of Germany, putting the entire country behind the Iron Curtain.
But for the German soldiers who met the Allied assault, vivid memories have left little room for reflection on the battle's larger implications.
In retelling their stories 50 years later, they speak not of history unfolding but of personal dramas.
Mr. Muschallik arrived at Normandy on a cattle truck in September 1943, as the Germans began building up the coastal defenses of the "Atlantic Wall." He was 17, a veteran only of six weeks of training.
When the attack came, he was told, he would man an anti-tank gun. In the meantime there was guard duty, training, guard duty and training. He lived in a farmhouse.
"It was a pretty easy life, but pretty boring. We didn't get into the towns much for fun, and when we did, there was a 10 o'clock curfew.
"We didn't think much about whether there would be an invasion. We let the officers do the thinking."
Seasoned Panzer division
By early May of 1944, reinforcements were steadily moving into the area.
Among them was Helmut Ritgen, commanding a tank battalion in the Panzer Lehr Division, a "demonstration division" of the newest weapons and most seasoned veterans.
For Colonel Ritgen, Normandy was a welcome break. He had traveled with the army through its greatest highs and lows, riding a tank in the first wave of the lightning sweep across Poland in 1939, then joining the second wave in the invasion of France that pushed the British Expeditionary Force to the brink of disaster at Dunkirk.
Then it was on to Russia, and the nightmare of Stalingrad.
Life at Normandy followed a pattern he had established a few months earlier after first being posted to occupied France.
"It was very quiet," he said. "The French people were reserved, but very loyal to us. There was no sign of hostility. We walked the forests more or less by ourselves, hunting pigs. People were also nice when we were in the shops and cafes."
By then an Allied invasion was considered inevitable.
"That had been clear since January," he said. "We witnessed every day the [Allied] bombers accompanied by fighters as they passed overhead on their way to targets. We kept our tanks hidden in the woods, and we carefully saw to it that we left no tracks in the open.
"We could not do anything. We were just waiting. We did not know where the landings would take place. But we were quite confident. We had captured France in 1940, and we felt superior to anybody."
Hopes slipping away
But Colonel Ritgen had become fatalistic about Germany's chances. He sensed the last hopes slipping away when his division failed to break through to save the encircled German force at Stalingrad.
Also arriving in Normandy that May was Werner Weinlein, an anti-aircraft gunner stationed several hundred yards from the coast.
He, too, had suffered through some of the worst of the campaign in Russia, where sniping partisans were a constant danger.
France was a relief. Not only was he fluent in French, but he had pleasant memories of an earlier posting in Le Havre, where he had been invited to parties and served generously with wine and crepes.
In Normandy he was busier, digging gun emplacements and moving from spot to spot as Allied reconnaissance planes spotted their positions.
"We got angry with all this moving, saying, 'Damn it, always digging these holes in this stony ground, and now again. Enough.' But later, when the bombers came, it was worth it."
By then the comfortable billets in the farmhouses were full, so his unit slept with its artillery pieces. But there was still wine and fresh food.
Rommel's pep talk
A few miles inland, Alexander Uhlig, a paratrooper, was just arriving after hearing a pep talk from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Field Marshal Rommel, the "Desert Fox" of the Afrika Korps, was now in charge of building up the coastal defense.
"Around the end of May, he [Rommel] visited our regiment and told us that if the Americans come, they'll come here."
The general pointed to a spot on the map near the town of Carentan, a few miles south of Utah Beach. "And if they come here, he said, they will come with paratroopers, so put your regiment on this place," Mr. Uhlig recalled.
"We arrived there, inspected the area, and checked where the U.S. soldiers would land."
They then set to work diverting streams and blowing dikes apart.
"We flooded the whole area," he said. "At night this could not be seen from above."
The flooding would prove disastrous for American paratroopers in the first hours of June 6. Weighted with heavy equipment, some would drown in the swamped drop zone.
Once these preparations were complete, there was little else to do but wait.
"It was nice there," he said. "The weather was good, and we drank Calvados with the French. I was not afraid, although I knew an invasion was coming. I had experienced so many missions before, more than a hundred, and once we were done with our preparations we thought, well, now they can come."
'You go crazy'
Such talk was not mere bravado. Many Germans posted in Normandy had already survived some of the hardest campaigns of the war. Besides, they had learned to avoid contemplation of what the coming battle would be like.
As Mr. Weinlein said: "Once a battle starts, one cannot evade some things, no matter how intelligent you might be. If you're shot, you're shot. It is not good to wonder much about this, because if you do, you go crazy."
But for all the preparations, no one had a clue as to when the attack would come, and when it finally came it surprised everyone.
Mr. Uhlig's experience reflected as much. On June 4, after months of waiting, his request to return to Germany to be married was finally approved.
He boarded a train out of Normandy 12 hours before the Allies landed. By the time the attack began, he was near the German border, and he didn't hear the news for another 12 hours.
He didn't make it back to Normandy until June 16, and by then his battalion had been destroyed, overrun by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division.
He was hardly the only one to miss the first days of the fighting. No less than Field Marshal Rommel was in Germany June 6, home to celebrate his wife's birthday.
Chaos took over
Once the attack came, Mr. Muschallik's unit was quickly ordered to march toward the coast. Then chaos took over.
"We were marching through the night and ended up in a forest," he said. Bullets smacked against trees and whizzed overhead. "We kept moving, on through another village and into a field."
By now it was light.
"We were already confused as to where we were, and we were already surrounded. A tank approached and fired, and the explosion threw me and some others into a ditch. It was now maybe 9 a.m., and there was so much firing you couldn't even lift your head. From 9 a.m. until 5 that afternoon I never moved from that ditch."
Within the first hour he had been hit in the right shoulder by shrapnel.
"I lifted my head and thought, look what [a situation] I've got. I took my helmet off and buried my face in it, getting as low to the ground as I could. I couldn't even get up due to the pain. I was crying and thinking of my mother, all that sort of thing. Then I
was hit in the upper left arm. The bullet went in and through. Later another bullet hit my left side."
Unit pinned down
Mr. Weinlein, meanwhile, was pinned down by naval and air bombardment throughout most of the day. Although his position was only a few hundred yards from the ocean, it was in a gap between the American landings at Omaha Beach and the British landings at Gold Beach. Otherwise it would have been overrun by late afternoon.
As it was, his unit was able to retreat south once the covering bombardment for the landings stopped.
Not until the next day would he realize the scope of the attack, when he mounted a hill less than a mile from the shore and gazed down toward the beaches, where troops and equipment were still coming ashore.
"All the others wanted to take a look as well," he said, "and we said, heavens, that is a whole lot of stuff they have."
Five days later, he, too, was wounded. First he was shot in the foot.
Later, the concussion of a nearby artillery explosion burst his lungs. He and other wounded men were put aboard a commander's car for evacuation, but the shells kept coming. The car dodged tanks and dive bombers. Not a single German plane appeared.
"We finally took refuge at a small farm," he said. "My comrade lay me down so I could rest. Suddenly the farmer came out. We thought he would come after us with his pitchfork. So my driver took out his pistol. But what did he do? He brought us a pitcher of wine."
Mr. Weinlein eventually made it back to Germany, to recover from his wounds.
Colonel Ritgen, meanwhile, led his panzer battalion in a series of counterattacks and retreats. He made it through the rest of the war unscathed.
Mr. Uhlig, after returning to Normandy on the 16th, went on fighting until November, when he was taken prisoner in eastern France.
Long odyssey begins
But Mr. Muschallik's life was changed most of all by D-Day.
With three wounds in his upper body, he eventually fell asleep in his trench on June 6.
He awakened to the prodding of a British bayonet, and his captors took him to a hospital tent, where they put him on a cot.
Sitting on another cot were four wounded British soldiers. He spoke no English, and they spoke no German, but by sign language they asked him his age. His flashed his fingers to count out 18. They smiled and tossed him a bundle of cigarettes, biscuits and chocolates.
"I always keep thinking about them and what a nice gesture it was," he said. "I wish that I knew who they were and could meet them again."
From there he began a long, winding odyssey.
He spent six weeks recuperating in a British hospital, although doctors decided not to remove the bullet from his left side.
Then he shipped out for the United States as a prisoner of war. He cut sugar cane in Louisiana and picked peaches in North Carolina.
In 1947, two years after the end of the war, he was sent back to England, where he took a fancy to a young woman who served him tea. They married, and today they live near London.
In 1952, eight years after D-Day, doctors finally removed the bullet that struck him in the left side on June 6. It became his final souvenir of war.
"It wasn't even a British bullet," he said. "It was a ricochet from a German gun."
HEAR D-DAY ON SUNDIAL
You can hear the sounds of D-Day - the world leaders, the soldiers, the news, the music- by calling Sundial,. The Baltimore Sun's phone information service. Using a Touch Tone phone, call 783-1800 if you live in the Baltimore area and punch in one of the four-digit codes you see below. If you live in Anne Arundel County call 268-7736; in Harford County, call 836-5028; and in Carroll County, call 848-0338.
The Leaders - 6100
Excerpts of speeches from allied leaders announcing the invasion has begun.
MA President Roosevelt, General Eisenhower and General DeGaulle.
The Soldiers - 6101
Maryland soldiers who participated in D-Day describe what they say that day.
The times - 6102
The year was 1944. The Andrews Sisters were big, and Bing Crosby crooned in "Going My Way." Familis gathered in front of the radio, not the TV. And on Broadway, the hit play "I Remember Mama" featured a promising young actor name Marlon Brando.
The Day - 6103
In the first days of June, the Allies made final preparations for one of the greatest invasion forces in history. And they managed to keep it a secret. There were no leaks to the press. no CNN coverage, no spy satelities tracking troop movements. Using historical research, we've re-created the events of June 1 - 5 on Sundial. On D-Day, June 6, you can call Sundial every three hours to get battle updates
D-DAY 50th ANNIVERSARY: Fifty years ago this week, the clock was counting down to D-Day, June 6, 1944, the moment in World War II when the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe would begin with the assault on Normandy by a huge force of men, ships and aircraft. This is the second in a series of articles looking at the event through the eyes of those who were there.
THE D-DAY SERIES
The Sun's coverage of the 50th Anniversary of D-Day continues today with the experiences of the germans who were defeated. In continues throu this with the French and the Americans, especially the Maryland/Virginia 29th Infantry Division soldiers who landed at Normandy
TODAY: THE GERMANS
JUNE 3: The French
JUNE 4: The Yanks
JUNE 5: D-Day Begins
JUNE 6: Vets Revisit France
JUNE 7: clinton at Normandy