"Murder Hole"

Prior to their landing on Omaha Beach, Captain Miller urged his men to avoid "murder holes," a term used to describe the opening formed by the dropping of the landing craft's ramp. This relatively small area, through which all the craft's men were supposed to pass through, presented German gunners with an excellent opportunity to hit many Allied soldiers in a very short period of time. Because of this, many of the soldiers at Omaha Beach were forced to jump over the sides of their landing craft in order to avoid this deadly concentration of fire. In a few cases the entire complement of a landing craft was killed by machine gun fire before any of the soldiers hit the beach.