AskHistorians

At the battle of Stalingrad in Russia both sides sent waves of infantry charging toward fortified machine gunner positions, resulting in total or near total losses, again and again. Don't look for logic and efficient use of human resources in war.

Just because they tend to get shot first doesn’t mean their risk is inherently greater—assuming the defenders aren’t actually eliminated before the boats are emptied, the invaders are all equally exposed at the time they exit. In fact the risk may increase over time, as the defenders are able to better adjust their aim and the last invaders to leave the boat are stationary targets the longest.

The movie depicted the landings on Omaha beach, which turned out to be the deadliest landing site on D-Day. There were approximately 2400 casualties, out of roughly 34,000 that landed there.

Compare that to the beach with the fewest casualties. The landings at Utah beach suffered only about 200 casualties due to a number of favorable conditions, which included far fewer German defenders. That’s out of over 20,000 troops that landed at Utah that day.

The allies knew there were German defenses, but they had very limited information immediately ahead of time about the location & strength of those defenses. 160,000 troops landed along 5 beaches that day. There were approximately 10,000 casualties in total.

They had some idea, although it was less certain than seen in the context of Saving Private Ryan.

First of all, there was efforts to weaken the defenses. Both bombardment from naval ships and dropped bombs from planes were meant to significantly soften the defenses for the landing. According to the plans, this should have significantly reduced the defenses. In reality, the naval bombardment was nowhere near large enough, and the bombers missed their targets due to bad weather. This was only discovered as they reached the beach.

Once the infantry was landing, there was also supposed to be quite a bit more support for them. Specialized amphibious tanks were created, and meant to be driven up onto the beaches to provide cover for the infantry. This almost immediately went ary as the rough water swamped or sunk dozens of the initial tanks, and lead to the use of landing craft for the remaining tanks, slowing down their deployment. Even of those that were launched by landing craft, many were lost.

Also worth noting is that the Normandy beaches, don't actually look that much like the movie. When they land in Saving Private Ryan, it looks like they're only 20 meters or so from the cliff. In actuality, it was much, much further. If you look at the famous photo from the landing, Into the Jaws of Death by Robert F. Sargent, if gives you an idea of what the beach actually looks like and the conditions on the morning - visibility was low, and they were likely a hundred meters or more from the cliff face. Less likely to get shot the moment the gates open then how it looks in the movie, although horrifically even worse in nearly every other way.

If you're really interested in more detail, TimeGhost has an excellent documentary (split into pieces to make it watchable as a series) on the subject on their D-Day 24hrs channel that covers the background, the events of the day, and the details and context surrounding it in extreme detail. That said, its a multi-day watch, given that its 24 hours long.

When you are infantry, pretty much the hardest thing in your training will be to learn to suck it up and advance under fire.

Genuinely. The training for marching and shooting takes a few weeks, but getting the idea through someones head that they must not allow their body to take control and freeze when advancing into enemy positions is much harder than learning to walk in lockstep.

That's why you drill, drill, drill, because you're literally drilling those movements into your body, so it does them automatically instead of freezing under fire.

Oh wow, I was gonna say that's where the saying comes from, but "you must not stay still under enemy fire" is not a saying in English.

It is in Finnish.

Ei saa jäädä tuleen makaamaan, is something at least males hear from a very early age on. Like even outside any sort of military context. Basically where Churchill said "keep buggering on", we do things from the negative and instead of saying "keep pushing forwards" it's "don't stop pushing".

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/j%C3%A4%C3%A4d%C3%A4_tuleen_makaamaan

jäädä tuleen makaamaan (literally, “to stay lying in gunfire”)

(intransitive, idiomatic, chiefly in the negative) to not keep pushing forward, to give up trying

Ei saa jäädä tuleen makaamaan.

   >     One must keep pushing forward

Tldr the point here being it's literally the most logical option at that point, so even when you know you're gonna get dowsed with MG fire, you just hope they'll be aiming for someone else for that split second when you move.

Maybe you die when the ramp opens, maybe you die charging the bunkers, maybe the boat dips just right and you're shot when you're at the end of the boat, maybe you die on the beach from artillery. It's out of your hands, really.

Also, the idea was that dozens of Higgins Boats would be dropping their ramps at the same time, flooding the beach with soldiers all at once.

Maybe they did. Probably. Doesn't matter when you don't choose where you stand and the alternative is 100% certain death jumping overboard with 70lbs of gear.