//------------------------------//
// Journal Entry: Omaha Beach 
// Story: Saving Private Bloom: The Captain's Logs 
// by Tiedye3000 
//------------------------------//

Journal Entry

Capt. Twilight Sparkle

June 6th, 1944

Omaha Beach


The smell of fear and salt water was in the air. Dozens of boats were headed to the shore of Omaha Beach to send dozens of soldiers to either victory, or death. I was in one of those boats, with my friend Whooves, who was a Sergeant, and was going to be leading a few squads onto the beach. Most of us, not including me, weren't used to the being on boats for long periods of time. Here and there a pony would gag and lean over the boats to vomit. The boat trip was nearing the end as the beach came closer and closer. My right hoof started to twitch again as I brought my water can to my mouth and drank two mouth fulls of water.
"Clear the ramp!" The boat driver shouted, "Thirty seconds! May God be with you!"
"Port side and Starboard side stick!" I instructed the ponies, "Move fast and clear those Mortar holes!"
"I want plenty of beach between ponies!" Whooves instructed his squad, "Five ponies is a juicy opportunity! One pony is a waste of ammo! All Pegasi, do not fly! You'll become easy targets!"
"Keep the sand out of your weapons!" I shouted, "Keep those actions clear! I'll see you on the beach!"
Omaha Beach was divided into 10 sectors: Able Sector, Baker Sector, Charlie Sector, Dog Green Sector, Dog White Sector, Dog Red Sector, Easy Green Sector, Easy Red Sector, Fox Green Sector, and Fox Red Sector. We were going after Dog Green. Omaha Beach was just a couple of seconds away. I knew that they would be prepared for this visit, and that this was not going to be an easy mission. Some of the boats ahead of us had reached the shore, but no pony came out. They had already been shot by one of the many mounted machine guns set up around the hill top, covered by a wide bunker. The water around the boats were turning red. And so the battle began for Dog Green began.
The driver was then shot in the head, and the boat stopped moving. With the gun fire shooting at us, we couldn't risk going through the hatch, but we were close enough to shore to swim there. Then an idea struck me like one of the many bullets being shot by the machine guns.
"Over the side!" I commanded, and every pony grabbed their equipment and crawled quickly over the side of the ship. Some were shot off, and became bloody , floating on the surface of the water. I jumped off the side of the ship with my rifle, wrapped up in plastic to keep water and sand out, and my water can and braced myself for the coldness of water that surrounded me.
Some ponies, I noticed as I swam, brought too much gear with them. Some drowned while trying to get their heavy gear off, and others were shot by bullets that were shot into the water. Noticed one nearby me was drowning, so I swam to her quickly and helped her onto the beach, where ponies were dying left and right from gun shots and grenade explosions. I took the pony onto the shore. The Private ran to the beech obstacles, which i followed in suit, dropping down next to her. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the stinging salt out.
"Sweet Luna!" she exclaimed breathlessly, "Thanks, ma'am!"
I peered behind the beech obstacle and saw many things happening almost simultaneously:  A pony with missing back legs (the bone was sticking out, it might've been from a grenade) was crying and crawling toward one of the beech obstacles, and was shot multiple times in the head; Three ponies, one a pyro, the other two gunponies, were engulfed in flames when a bullet hit the gas tank on the pyro's back; A pony was running to cover, one are blown off, the other carrying her disconnected hoof; A boat had caught fire, and ponies were running out of it, their uniforms burning their skin off as they ran back to the water.
Across from us, one of the ponies shouted something to me, but it was inaudible due to the gunfire.
"What!?" I shouted back.
"I said, what the hay do we do now, ma'am!?" she responded.
I couldn't think straight with all the gun fire. But then, I heard a familiar voice shouting my name. I looked around, and a few beach obstacles ahead, I saw Whooves waving to me, shouting to me.
"Twilight Sparkle! Twilight bucking Sparkle!"
"Sergeant Whooves!" I yelled, waving back. He and his platoon were hiding under cover. "Get your ponies off the beach! Go!"
"Alrite, you ponies!" He shouted to his platoon, "Get on my rump and follow me!"
"What's the rallying point!?" one of his ponies shouted to me.
"Any where but here!"
We started moving up the beach, but we couldn't go that fast because we were still in waist-high water. We moved up until we were at knee-high, ponies dropping dead every where and coloring the ocean water red, and then we dropped to cover again.
"To the sea wall!" I commanded the others, "Move up to the sea wall!"
"Ma'am, I'm staying!" cried one of the ponies.
"Clear this beach and make way for the others!"
"Ma'am this is all we've got between us and the Almighty!" yelled a blue Pegasus pony.
"Every inch of this beach has been pre-sighted!" I shouted to them, "If you stay here, you're dead ponies!"
I got up and moved on, with the other ponies behind me. The beach now had several small rivers of blood flowing down into the sea. Radio ponies were shouting into their micro phones for things I couldn't hear. Several ponies were on the ground, bleeding rapidly and dying slowly. Medics were doing their best to save them as they used tweezers to get the bullets outs of their skin. One of the wounded was beyond repair, though. Her stomach was been shot open, and she was screaming for her mother as her intestines leaked out of her open stomach.
We finally reached the sand, and I trotted towards the closest cover that was available. There were four other ponies in there, all with red pluses on their helmets.
"Who are you guys!?" I asked.
"104th Medical Battalion, ma'am!" shouted a white unicorn with a pistol in response. "Here to set up field operations!"
"Get rid of that crap!" I shouted to her, looking at her pistol, "Grab yourselves some real weapons! Follow me!"
We ran out into the field, and we passed by more bodies. The guns hadn't let up at all since we arrived. I heard someone screaming, and I looked to my left to see my friend Lyra, writhing in pain and bleeding from the gut.
"Lyra!" I shouted, shocked, and I rushed to her aid, running over the painted sand.
"I'm hit low!" she screamed, "Get me out of here! God, it hurts!"
"Medic!" I shouted, "Medic!"
"Navy Beach Battalion, ma'am!" shouted a pony from my right, over Lyra's screams, "We gotta clear these obstacles! Make holes for the tanks!"
"All armor's founding in the channel!" I yelled back.
"Orders, ma'am!" she shouted, "You go somewhere else! I'm clearing this one!"
"Come on, Lyra!" I yelled to Lyra, who was still bleeding and crying. I took her by the strap of her backpack and dragged her a few feet, close to cover, when a grenade exploded near us. I was knocked down, but I didn't take any other damage. I took Lyra's strap again, and dragged her a few more inches, when I noticed she suddenly felt lighter. I looked back at her to see that the grenade that went off wiped everything she had from the waist down clean off. Her clothes were ripped and stained with blood. I looked at her face, which had permanent terror marked on it. A tear left my eye as I galloped the rest of the way to the sea wall, dodging bullets this way and that, with dozens, and only dozens, of ponies behind me.
A Radio Pony from Shore Party dived next to me, and immediately began yelling into the phone of her radio.
"Shore Party!" I shouted to her, grabbing her by the shoulder and turning her around to face me, "Shore Party! No armor has made it ashore! We got no D.D. tanks on the beach! Dog One is not open!"
She went back to the radio, yelling over the machine guns firing.
"Who's in command here?" I asked a pony on the other side of me.
"You are, ma'am!" she shouted back.
"Sergeant Whooves!" I shouted, spotting him a few feet away from me on the sea wall.
"Yes, ma'am!?"
"You recognize where we are!?"
"Right where we're supposed to be, but no pony else is!"
"No pony's where they're supposed to be!" shouted the pony next to him.
"Shore Party!" I yelled, grabbing the Radio Pony again, "First wave, ineffective! We do not hold the beach! Say again, we do not hold the beach!"
"We're all mixed up, ma'am!" yelled Whooves, "We got the leftovers from Fox Company, Able Company, and George Company!"
As he yelled this, he rolled over to my position, keeping low as he rolled from under the sea wall.
"Shore Party!" I yelled, grabbing that pony for the third time, "Shore Party!"
But she was dead. She had taken something big to the head, something big enough to blow a hole where her face used to be. I tried to ignore the gaping hole in her head as best as I could, and grabbed the radio box. "Cat-F!" I yelled into the phone, "Ca-" I stopped in mid-sentence, hearing no connection. I looked at the box, and discovered that it had three bullet holes in it. I threw it away over the sea wall, it wouldn't operate ever again.
A baby dragon came running up and dived next to us.
"Private Spike, sir!" The baby dragon yelled at Whooves.
"Anyone else!?"
"Dash, but that's about it!"
"Apple Jack, here!" shouted an orange pony next to Spike. She had a western accent and a pony tail.
"Scootaloo!" yelled a small Pegasus next to her, "We've got Octivia back there with Rarity! She's hurt so bad she said she's sprung 100 leaks! Rarity says she's all used up!"
I looked behind us and saw about three medics on a grey pony, who was bleeding from five different areas.
"Get her attention!" I yelled to Scootaloo.
"Rarity!"
"Yo, doc!"
"Rarity!"
They were still operating on Octivia, who was twitching violently. Gun shots were still being fired by the Germanes. A few almost hit Rarity, but one of the medical doctors used a dead soldiers to shield them.
"All right, get them off the beach," I said, giving up on shouting. Apple Jack ran out to get Rarity, who was shouting, "We got it! We stopped the bleeding!" but a bullet hit Octivia straight through the helmet, and she stopped twitching. Rarity sat there for a second, and then ripped the blood-stained bandages violently from Octivia's corpse. "Buck! Just give us a bucking chance, you son of a mare! You bucking chicken eater!"
"Rarity!" Apple Jack yelled, pulling at Rarity's right hoof, "Rarity, come on, it's Apple Jack! We gotta go!" They raced back to the sea wall and dived back into cover.
I looked at all the ponies along the sea wall, and was pretty disappointed on the numbers.
"This is all?" I asked Whooves, "This is all that made it?"
"We got pretty scattered, ma'am!" Whooves said back, "There's bound to be more of us!"
"Not enough! This is not enough!"
"Dog One exit," Whooves said, looking around, "it's gotta be that cut on the right, or is it the one on the left? Crap!"
"No, no. Vierville is to the west of us! This is Dog One!" I said, indicating the exit and hill entrance in front of him.
"They're killing us!" shouted a pony next to me, who shook my shoulder as she yelled, "We don't have a bucking chance, and that ain't fair!"
I began to peel off the plastic wrapping on my gun. "Gather weapons and ammo!" I ordered, "Gather weapons and ammo!"
"Gather weapons and ammo!" Whooves repeated to the ponies next to him, who all rushed back into the battle field and stripped all weapons and ammunition off the wounded and corpses. I watched sadly as I saw soldiers, wounded and still alive, get their gear stripped and left to die. A grenade went off, blowing off the legs of a couple of ponies and sending them soaring through the air.
"Hey, Spike!" Whooves shouted, "Where's your B.A.R.?"
"Bottom of the channel, sir," Spike said, pointing to the ocean, "The mare tried to drown me!"
"Find a replacement," Whooves said, and Spike crawled away down the line of ponies.
"Bangalores!" I shouted, "Bring up some Bangalores!"
Two ponies came down the line, carrying long tubes that were just about as tall as they were.
"Bangalores, go up the line!" I shouted, "Bangalores, go up the line!"
"Heads up! Bangers coming your way!" said Whooves, passing one of the tubes down the line towards me.
Spike came running back with the Pegasus from earlier. They both dived back down next to us.
"Rainbow Dash here, ma'am!" shouted the Pegasus, who was carrying a sniper rifle.
"Spike back, ma'am!" shouted Spike, and he took out an ammo magazine, tapped it on his helmet, and reloaded his weapon.
Whooves and I were loading the Banger while Rarity was operating on another pony, who was shot in the shoulder, blood spraying from the wound while she was screaming, "Oh, my God, it hurts! I'm gonna die! Oh, my God! Oh, Celestia! Oh, my God!"
The Banger was loaded, and Whooves and I pushed half of it over the wall. One of the ponies next to us got shot in the head, but the bullet didn't penetrate the helmet she was wearing.
"Celestia!" Scootaloo exclaimed, "You're one lucky mare!"
The pony was so surprised by the ping that just sounded on her head that she took her helmet off and felt her head, feeling for a bullet wound, when another shot hit her square in the forehead. Her eyes rolled back, and she fell to the ground, dead as a door nail.
"You're not gonna die!" Rarity was shouting to the pony she was fixing, "You're not gonna die! You're fine, just don't look at it! Don't look at it!" she covered the ponies face with her free hoof.
The Bangers were set, and we started the fuse.
"Bangalores!" I shouted, "Clear the shingle!"
"Fire in the hole!" Whooves shouted, "Fire in the hole!"
"Fire in the hole!" Rarity shouted, and shielded her patient with her own body.
The Bangalore detonated, destroying every thing within a 10 meter radius in front of us, including the barbwire that was preventing us from proceeding with the objective. A path way cleared, we began to climb up the hill.
"We're in business!" shouted Whooves, "Move to the other side of the tower! Move!"
We rushed up the hill as quickly as we could to deal with the hill tower. But we got pinned down by another mounted machine gun on the other side of the tower, shielded by sandbags. That sandbag barrier was blocking the Dog One exit. I couldn't see how many Germanes were behind it, so I took Apple Jack's bayonet and Whooves's chewing gum. I stuck the gum on the blade of the knife, stuck a mirror to the gum, and made my own little mirror. I held it out the side of the tower, and I could see the sandbag cover. They came into view after a few seconds of adjusting.
"Two G-42s and two mortors," I said to Whooves, not dropping my gaze on the mirror, "Add 20, left 30."
Whooves took the mirror and checked the surroundings, "There's a little  over there, but it's perfect firing position if we get some dang armor on the beach."
"We gotta open up this draw. We gotta get this draw open!" I said, "Spike, Jack, let's get into the war! Grab some cover and put some fire on that crew." As they took position under some rocks by the wall, I called up four ponies and told them to get ready to move out toward the Dog One exit.
"Covering fire!" I shouted, and Whooves, Apple Jack, Spike and I started shooting at the Germanes in the sandbag bunker. The four ponies galloped off past the barrier. Spike kept shooting, hitting nothing but the bags.
"Darned firing squad," Whooves said.
"It's the only way we can get every pony the hay out of here," I said, reloading. I called four more into position.
"Why not just hand out blindfolds, Cap?" Whooves said sarcastically, getting back into firing position.
"All we can do here is die!" I said, "Covering fire!"
We shot at the Germanes again, finally hitting one, who fell over the bags and down the slope.
"Go, go, go!" I shouted, and the four ponies dashed off after the four before them.
"Dash," I said, looking at Rainbow.
"Ma'am!" she replied, facing me.
"Do you see that impact crater?" I asked her, showing her on the mirror.
"Kinda," she said, squinting, "It looks pretty big."
"That should give you complete  from that machine gun position. Get in there and give me some fire discipline. Wait for my command!"
We switch spots, Rainbow by the corner of the wall, and me next to her.
"Wait..." I said, and then I jumped out from behind the wall, right in the line of the machine gun. "Go!"
The gun started shooting at me right when I ducked under the cover of a few rocks, and Rainbow galloped faster than I've ever seen a pony gallop. She was from the wall to the crater in nearly ten seconds, give or take a few.
"Captain, if your mother ever saw you do that, she'd be very upset!" said Whooves to me, chuckling.
"I thought you were my mother," I said, and Whooves laughed.
Rainbow angled her rifle from the hole, aiming at the Germane operating the machine gun. She fired, and hit the Germane right in the neck, which sent a small chunk of flesh flying off the Germane, who grabbed her neck and fell, dead, to the ground. Rainbow fired another shot, which I enchanted with my magic to be a much stronger bullet, even though using magic is illegal in warfare. It hit one of the sandbags so hard it was shot right out, and all the sandbags on top of it tumbled down the slope, bringing a Germane with them. He was shot while rolling down, and stopped at the base of the slope with three bullet holes in the chest, coming out the back. He was bleeding from the mouth.
"Dog One exit!" I shouted, "Right here!"
"Let's go!" Whooves shouted, "Allons-y!"
We ran up the hill and went under a barb wired fence. The Germanes still weren't giving up, but they fell back to the trenches. One of our ponies got shot below the throat and fell to the ground, but the others of us shot at the Germanes on the other side of the trenches, killing two. A platoon of Germanes were running towards their trenches to reinforce, but we shot them down easily.
Spike, Apple Jack, Scootaloo, Whooves, a pyro, and I ran to the hill tower. We stopped just above the entrance. Spike pulled the pin out of a grenade, counted to three, and heaved it inside. An explosion went off that sent a hoof or two rocketing into the air, and we heard screams of pain. We trotted to the entrance to see how many we killed or wounded. Two Germanes were on the ground, dead, and missing limbs. A Germane ran out of the bunker, but I shot him down before he could do us any damage.
"Come on, Spitfire!" I called to the pyro, and she rushed to the entrance of the tower. "Flame, do it!" I ordered, and she pulled the trigger of her flame thrower.
A huge heat wave caught us, and we heard Germanes screaming at the top of their voices as Spitfire's flamethrower shot out a burst of flames for a good five seconds. When Spitfire let go of the trigger, the Germanes inside were burning to death. Some jumped out of the window to earn a quicker death, while the others were too weak to jump, and writhed on the floor until the loss of skin and muscle killed them, reducing them to flaming pony skeletons.
"Don't shoot!" I heard someone yelling outside, "Let 'em burn!"
We rushed back to the trenches to see that we had almost won. There was only a few of them left, while our reinforcements kept arriving. At last, they surrendered. The first Germane popped up so quickly out of the trench that of our ponies shot him, expecting him to shoot back. But the Germanes had their hoofs in the air, and we rushed forward and took them as prisoners.
"I'll give you 'comrade,' you son of a mare!" one of the ponies shouted as they rushed forward.
Some of the Germanes didn't surrender, though, and were running back to the base. We surrounded them, and shot them before they could return fire.
Whooves saw that we were going overboard with the ammo and wasting it as we shot the Germanes, and he shouted, "Cease fire! Cease fire! Cut it out!" If he hadn't done that, we would have wasted all our good ammo.
I grabbed a radio and spoke, "Sugar Cane. Sugar Charlie Horse 3. Dog one is open. Say again, Dog One is open. Send in the 'dozers. I'm waiting here to tie in my flanks. Over."
"Hey, Apple Jack," said Scootaloo, who was in the trenches, "Take a look at this one! A Haytler Youth knife!"
"And now it's a shabbat challah cutter, right?" Apple Jack laughed, but her mood changed from laughing to crying. That's when I found out that Apple Jack was Jewish, and as I watched the tears rolling down her freckled cheeks as she sat on an ammo crate, I pitied her.
Whooves took some dirt out of the ground and put it into a can marked "Prance". He put the can inside a small bag, filled with other cans, one marked "Fitaly" and another one marked "Africolt".
And so ended the Landing on Omaha Beach. My hoof started shaking again as I took another drink from my bottle.
"Quite a view, isn't it?" Whooves aid, looking at the shore, which was now littered with guns, body parts, corpses, blood, and explosion holes.
"Yes," I said, capping my bottle, my hoof still shaking, "Quite a view."