Bronson's WW2 Zone: WN62 and the Beast of Omaha

A fellow Band of Brothers tour member wrote to me with a great idea to post about interesting books that I recommend. So from time to time, I'll blog about books that I think you'll enjoy. For the first book, I decided to post about WN62 by Hein Severloh.

Severloh's book is a memoir of his role in D-Day as well as his post war life. At age 19, Severloh was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht. He spent time in several areas including the Eastern Front and ultimately assigned to the defense of the Atlantic wall in an area later to be known as Omaha Beach. The exact location of his defensive position was called Widerstandsnest 62 or WN62 overlooking the Easy Red sector.

Severloh claims to have inflicted hundreds of casualties upon American troops with his MG42 machine gun. Over the course of about nine hours, he rained down a gauntlet of bullets onto American soldiers as they exited the landing craft. Most research agrees that Severloh was responsible for the majority of the casualties on Easy Red but the exact figure varies. The slaughter was so staggering to our troops that they nicknamed him the Beast of Omaha. It took Severloh almost 40 years to come to terms with his role on that fateful day of June 6, 1944. His book gives an interesting account from the enemy's perspective of both the war and life after the war.