If you are thinking of the DDay scene in Saving Private Ryan when the landing craft “landed” then it had to go nose in as only the doors were armoured. If you are thinking of the advancing across the beach - that's what the infantry does. They do scary things under orders to achieve great things. read more
To be fair, most D-day soldiers were running out of machine gun fire, not into it. The beach was full of cover, in the form of tank traps, small dunes, and fresh corpses. The landing craft was a kill box. The first two landing craft on the first wave to land on Omaha contained no survivors as the doors opened and machine gun fire melted the occupants. read more
Most of the D-Day landing force did not run into machine gun fire, but had a relatively smooth landing. The Allies encountered heavy resistance only on a few beaches. The Germans had shown earlier in the war that the best way to overthrow a fortified defense line is a surprise attack with combined weapons (infantry including airborne troops, tanks, artillery and air forces). read more