Formed at Roanoke, Virginia, Company D of the 116th Infantry Regiment, under Captain Walter O. Schilling, was one of four infantry companies in the 116th Regiment Combat Team's second-wave assault on Normandy. It was to land facing the Vierville exit in the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach and reinforce Company A, which German defenders had already neutralized. As Company D approached through rough seas, seasick troopers bailed with their helmets to keep six assault landing craft afloat. More than a kilometer from land, one craft took on so much water that it was abandoned, and its survivors came ashore about five hours later unable to fight. A half-kilometer from shore, a second craft struck a mine or was hit by German artillery, and fewer than half of that boat team reached the beach, with fewer still making the seawall. A third craft put its troops off more than a hundred meters from the tidal flat, and it took them two hours to reach shore, broadly scattered, depleted, and without weapons or ammunition. Virtually all the heavy weapons carried in those three craft were lost. As the flooding tide obscured obstacles and mines on the tidal flat, the surviving craft left their assault formation and headed for any apparent opening to land. All three came under effective fire before lowering ramps into water three to six feet deep. Men who escaped the blows of tide-tossed ramps often disappeared underwater, weighed down by their equipment. Those who reached the beach did so as individuals, relying on their own wits and training. Casualties were heavy, and the exhausted survivors who reached the seawall no longer resembled the force that had set out from HMS Empire Javelin before dawn on D-Day. Troopers who still had weapons cleaned them behind the seawall and, under whatever surviving PFC or corporal could direct them, formed ad hoc fire teams and squads. Part of one machine gun crew joined with part of a Company H crew to assemble a serviceable weapon, and, joined by other stragglers, various elements of Company D moved inland toward the Vierville exit.