Edward Foley

🇬🇧 50th Infantry Division, No. 47 Royal Marine Commando 🎯 Capture Port-En-Bessin 📅 06-Jun-44 -> 09-Jun-44 Imagine setting off an explosive charge to blow through enemy barbed wire, only for the blast to throw you ninety feet backward down a sheer cliff. That is exactly what happened to Lieutenant Isaac Goldstein outside Port-en-Bessin on June 7, 1944. Tasked with cracking open strongpoint Wn 57, the British Royal Marine Commando officer sent his men to cover and detonated the Bangalore torpedoes himself. The massive explosion cleared the wire, but the shockwave launched Goldstein airborne, tumbling thirty meters down the steep bluff. Battered and dazed, Goldstein refused to stay down. He scrambled straight back up the slope into the breach, leading Troop A into a vicious maze of trenches. German gunboats in the harbor suddenly opened up with automatic flak cannons, pinning down the assault while German stick grenades exploded across the works, leaving Goldstein heavily concussed. Ordered to break contact and withdraw toward the village, Goldstein crawled through the dirt until he realized one of his men was stranded and immobilized under fire. He quickly rounded up five commandos, fought his way back into the crossfire, and pulled his wounded comrade to safety. Goldstein passed out from exhaustion and multiple injuries soon after, but his tenacity opened the path to capturing the harbor and earned him the Military Cross.