Now as commemorations to mark the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings are finalised, the official version of events can be challenged by testimony about the earlier tragedy at Slapton Sands. Statements collected by The Observer over several years reveal a truth almost too awful to contemplate, perhaps explaining why the Pentagon suppressed the details.
The accounts of those present that day indicate that, as thousands of GIs swarmed ashore from landing craft, they were cut down by bullets fired by comrades playing the role of German defenders, who had for some reason been given live ammunition.
Letters reveal how Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Wolf, from Baltimore, heard several shots 'zinging' past his ear as he observed the exercise from a vantage point nearby, and saw 'infantrymen on the beach fall down and remain motionless'. Under a hail of fire, Wolf quickly retreated.
Bullets also whizzed past Hank Aaron from West Virginia, driver to a general observing the exercises. Aaron scrambled from the line of fire, then looked up and saw five men dead.
Royal Engineer Jim Cory watched dumbfounded from an observation post as soldiers streaming from landing craft were 'mown down like ninepins'.
'We later found out it was a mistake. They should have had dummy ammunition, but they just carried on shooting, said Cory, who counted 150 bodies before he fled.
