My father was with the combat engineers and a sniper with the 101st airborne throughout WWII. His platoon took out the guns on the top of the hill overlooking the beach in that first scene.
I watched the Private Ryan movie with him. It wasn’t a pretty sight seeing my father get as emotional as he did (he’s a tough old feller). I asked him if was really as bad as the movie showed, he gave a very quiet reply “worse, much worse”. “looking back down on the bay, bodies looked like cord wood in a log jam and the water was red”.
