American bombers had shelled the landing area and, laden with ammo, a pack and an M-1 rifle, Nelson stepped off the side of the ramp into a crater. He sank to the bottom.

“I can remember this Sgt. Schultz, I’ll never forget his name. He jumped in and hauled me out, but I was getting out all right, I thought,” Nelson said.

Back in England, the same tech sergeant had told the men that no matter what, “hang onto your piece because you’re damn sure going to need it during the day,” Nelson said with a smile. “And he lost his rifle going in after me.”

Some 156,000 Allied forces landed by air and sea on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of Normandy that day.

Nelson considers himself one of the lucky ones. Utah, the westernmost beachhead, was taken with relatively few casualties. On shore, as he ran to find cover, he came to a concrete barrier.

“I looked over that wall and right in front of me was a miniature tank, with some wires going out of the back,” he said.

It was a Goliath tank, devised by the Germans as a radio remote control land mine. Fortunately for him, its operator wasn’t alive to detonate it.