The machine gun nests opened fire as soon as the doors opened. Only chance to live was to jump over the side and move forward. As Sun Tzu said, if you put your soldiers on "death ground" (where the choice is fight for your life or die), they will fight their hardest.

You should go back and watch World War 2 in HD from History Channel and see what Jack (Hans) Werner said about the "Greatest Generation." This is an immigrant, who saw what was happening in Austria and left, then joined the US Army.I tend to believe Werner's take on it.