http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ3F5FeF35Q

“I think adrenaline was such that you didn’t have the normal response to this kind of thing. You had an urgency…you had to start doing something and doing it quickly or you were in big trouble.” -Sergeant Bill Coleman

Paratroopers of the Easy “E” Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles,” describe their D-Day jump around Utah Beach. Members of the Easy Company talk about the precarious jump and the confrontation that followed with the Nazis.

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Learn About the Elite ‘Screaming Angels’ on D-Day appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Hx2zx0ZxE

Robert Baldridge, a corporal in the U.S. Army, describes what it was like to land on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944 and the days following the Normandy Landings. Baldridge explains what happened during the Battle of Mortain all the way to the Battle of the Falaise Pocket: “There were dead, wounded Germans all over the place…the stench of decomposing bodies that were laying all around you…” Tanks would have to go over these dead corpses in order to get around.

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From Utah Beach to Closing the Falaise Pocket appeared first on Witnify.

“The most horrible was when we landed at the beachhead that so many dead were still floating in the water. They had already turned black, and decay had set in. The stench was awful.”

Clarence William Dotson was a technical sergeant in the 343rd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. army. This is his personal narrative on his World War II experience:

Clarence Dotson. Joeuf, France. 1944.

The most horrible experience was the D-Day invasion. My beachhead was called Utah Beach. I went ashore with 357 infantry replacements.

Then I went for my outfit with 343 Field Artillery at Ste. Mere Eglise, France. This was June 11, 1944. I remained with that outfit for the duration.

The most horrible was when we landed at the beachhead that so many dead were still floating in the water. They had already turned black, and decay had set in. The stench was awful.

Clarence Dotson. Paris, France. 1945.

The next real experience that I remember mostly was Christmas Day 1944. We were stationed at Hammersdorf, Germany. We had just had a wonderful Christmas dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, green peas, gravy, cranberry sauce, and all the trimmings. After dinner, I was standing at the back door of the Rock House [?], watching some guys out back who were pitching horseshoes.

We believed the war was nearly over. We were not yet aware of the Battle of the Bulge, although it had started on the 16th of December. While I was standing in the door-I can’t explain it-but something just said, “You need to move.” It was not audible; I was just impressed that I needed to move. I moved back inside the building; I just got inside the building when an ME-109 (German fighter plane) came across the hill and strafed the building where we were.

I went back to the door where I was standing, and where I’d been standing, bullets had riddled the door frame. Some of the men in my outfit shot the plane down. We shot the plane down, and he crashed just a short distance from where we were standing. We went to see, and all that was left of him [the pilot] was the center section. All the rest was burned up.

Clarence Dotson. 2005.

Then, being in the motor section of our battery, I was interested in the mechanical part of the airplane. I was fascinated with the motor especially, because it was fuel-injected Mercedes Benz 24-cylinder engine. Little did I realize that in the years to come, I would be affiliated and working that type of engine. I worked for them for 35 years. I still love that type of engine, and I still drive that type of Mercedes car. I’ve been back to Germany in 1969; I was treated royally by the Mercedes Benz Company.

Find out more on Clarence William Dotson here.

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[Text] U.S. Soldier’s Narrative on Fighting the Germans appeared first on Witnify.

“It has always been my feeling that the Germans were so terrified of the sight of so many ships and so many planes that they weren’t sure who to shoot at.”

The following is an account of D-Day as told by Hubert Mark Altvater, a pilot for the U.S. Army Air Force. Altvater, who flew towards Utah Beach the morning of June 6, 1944, discusses both the orders he and his fellow pilots received, as well as the conditions and events that occurred while in the air.

By: Hubert Mark Altvater

The name is Hubert Mark Altvater. I was born on October 23, 1921 in a little town named Winfield, Kansas, a town about forty miles south of Wichita. When I was fourteen years old my father accepted a position in Greensborough, North Carolina and that has been my hometown since that time.

An American bomber raining death and destruction down on the Third Reich. Source: U.S. National Archives.

I was a junior at the University of Michigan when Pearl Harbor happened. I finished out my semester at Michigan and returned home to Greensborough, because I knew I would be invited to participate in the global conflict that was fast developing.

On April 28, 1942 I took the examinations for aviation cadet, passed them and was sworn into the U.S. Army Air Force. I was classified as a pilot at the classification center in Nashville, Tennessee. I did my pre-flight training at Maxwell Fields in Montgomery, Alabama, primary flight training at Avon Park, Florida, basic flight training at Bush Field in Augusta, Georgia, and advanced flight training at Turner Field in Albany, Georgia where I graduated as a second lieutenant pilot on June 30, 1943.

I was trained in the B-26 Marauder bomber at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana and was sent overseas as a part of a replacement bomber crew on September, 1943. I ended up in the 386th Bomb Group in the 554th Bomb Squadron located at Great Dunmore in Essex County England where I began flying combat missions in February 1944. I was later promoted to first lieutenant and checked out as first pilot.

Our normal practice when I first began flying combat was to fly one mission per day for eight to ten days and then have some time off. Our targets were primarily pilotless aircraft launching sites in the _____ peninsula in ____ area, marshaling yards, aircraft installations, bridges, communication and transportation centers, and fuel dumps.

“Angels with dirty faces” –Airborne troops smile from their Horsa glider as they prepare to fly out as part of the second drop on Normandy on the night of D-Day. (June 6, 1944). Source: Imperial War Museums, H 39182.

Later, two missions a day became normal routine. Towards the end of May 1944, we began hearing rumors of an impending attack, but we put little credence into these rumors. We simply spent the first few days of June 1944 flying missions. On the night of June 5, 1944, inspecting officers came around to our huts and checked our pistols, ammunition and knives, we were told nothing except don’t plan on much sleep that night. At about 2:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944 we were rousted out of bed and told to dress and go to breakfast and then report to the briefing room ready to fly.

At the briefing, we were told that we would be hitting coastal gun emplacements on the Normandy beaches and that we would complete the mission regardless of cloud cover. At the time it was pitch dark and raining quite hard but we were dispatched at the aircraft and lined up for takeoff. None of us were used to flying at night, much less in hard rain and low ceiling. We had to assemble by means of colored flares and being unable to see any of the hundreds of B-26′s in the air at approximately the same altitude was a terrifying experience.

Nazi 88mm guns pound Utah Beach as American troops push into Normandy, France. (June 11, 1944). Source: U.S. National Archives, # 111-SC-190109.

Somehow we got assembled into formation just under the clouds at about 6000 feet over England. It was my 45th mission. We headed south and soon began to lose altitude in staying under the cloud cover. There were eight combat groups of B-26′s involved and we took it as a signal honor that we were chosen to go in last just before the troops hit the beach. Our first mission that day was the Utah beach and we were to bomb the coastal guns at St. Martin ______.

By the time we got to the target and squared away on the bomb run we were at between 800 and 900 feet altitude. My thought at the time was that they could hit us with slingshots and we did sustain considerable small arms and machine gun damage. As we approached our bomb run, two German FW-191 aircraft capped off our right wing at our altitude but never came in. They would not have made it. Each plane in our formation dropped two 1000 pound bombs and my best recollection of looking at my watch was 6:22 a.m.

After the bomb run, instead of turning left and going back over the Channel, which was packed with assault craft and which would have been our normal path, we turned right and flew over the Cherbourg Peninsula and came back to England from the southwest. Our group flew four missions that day and I flew the first and third. The third mission was to bomb the coastal guns at ________, which we did.

Utah Beach aerial photograph.

My particular group sustained damage but no losses that day and it has always been my feeling that the Germans were so terrified of the sight of so many ships and so many planes that they weren’t sure who to shoot at. I continued flying missions after D-Day and I was shot down on my 63rd mission by German anti-aircraft fire.

I was a prisoner of war of the Germans for about 9 ½ months at Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany. We were liberated by the Russians and it took us about a month, five weeks, to get back to the United States. After that I was separated from the air force in September of 1945.

After this I continued my education and graduated in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University in the class of 1949. I spent forty years in engineering and I’m now retired. Nothing before or since quite matches the thrill and excitement of that first D-Day mission.

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[Text] Air Force Pilot Describes Utah Beach on D-Day appeared first on Witnify.

“It was as though the curtain was about to go up on one of the biggest shows in history, and I was part of the cast! I knew it was going to be a small part, but the overriding sense of it all was that I was there!”

Raymond L. Acosta, part of the Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC) group of the U.S. Navy during the Normandy Campaign, gives his firsthand account of the wide range of emotions he felt as a young man getting the news that he and his fellow troops would be heading to Utah Beach on D-Day:

Raymond L. Acosta with fellow seaman in front of temporary dugout in Utah Beach. June 1944.

I was five days into my 19th birthday as we approached the Normandy coast on June 5, 1944 – and completely unaware of what was to happen on the beaches…Just before dawn, in the cool air of the pitch black night, I was suddenly numbed by the enormity of what was about to happen. It was as though the curtain was about to go up on one of the biggest shows in history, and I was part of the cast! I knew it was going to be a small part, but the overriding sense of it all was that I was there!

Infantry transferring from LCVP onto larger LCI, prior to Normandy Beachhead assault on D-Day.

It all started seven months earlier, when I arrived near Roseneath, Scotland, aboard QE1, as a Navy radioman, assigned to the Commander of the Eleventh Amphibious Force (later annexed to the Naval-Officer-in-Charge, Utah Beach – (NOIC- Utah Beach). On May 16, 1944, after six months of duty in Wales and England, we were all assigned aboard Liberty Ship S/S Robertson. For three weeks we remained on board as a ‘sealed ship’, sailing back and forth between Penarth (Wales) and Plymouth (England). A most boring tour of duty, if you ask me. But then we heard, that we were to be part of a vast mobilization of allied forces getting ready to invade the European continent…we knew it was going to happen soon, but the big question remained: where.

Infantry troops, on board transport ship, preparing for the Normandy landing.

Meanwhile, almost every week, six or seven operators (of our original group of 35) got assigned to other ships, until there were only 12 of us left on the S/S Robertson. We all felt sad, since we had been together since our radio training at Northwestern University. On June 5, 1944, we set sail for Barry (Wales). During the afternoon, our skipper, Commander Dunn, called for attention and read a message from Rear-Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commanding US Naval Assault Forces. It was a grim message, about what was to be expected from the enemy, in the coming battle. I could feel the adrenalin surging through my whole body (recalling the tragic incidents during ‘Operation Tiger’), but still managed to say to one of my shipmates, with a dry throat, “I guess, this is it !” From that moment on, until two weeks later, I went into a kind of trance, though I was aware of everything that was happening around me, I guess I was unconsciously creating a mental fog to act as a kind of protecting shield. Yet, I was able to write about these historic events in the little diary I carried with me.

American soldiers landing on Utah Beach. (June 6, 1944). Source: Regional Council of Lower Normandy, U.S. National Archives.

This was D-Day, June 6, 1944 – the big day has come! And here we are cruising along to France to set up a Comcenter on the Utah Beachhead (NOIC-Utah Beach). We’re all pretty nervous and jittery, wonder what it will be like when we get there? We’ll sure know within a few hours. So far, only one enemy E-boat contact…everything was black and quiet as we sat top side on the hatch covers preparing our individual gear, when suddenly a battleship opened up nearby with its 12-inch guns, the noise was incredible. Sound waves literally entered our mouth and nose, and hit right into the pit of your stomach. Next, the sky lit up with millions of tracer fire, both sound and sight were truly awesome. It looked, no it was, the world’s greatest fireworks! I remember, feeling uncomfortable, because I thought it was so damn beautiful, how can anything so destructive, be so beautiful? As I was going down the cargo nets on the S/S Robertson’s portside, the chinstrap of my helmet became unhooked and dropped down into the waiting  Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP), it landed on another guy’s helmet who was sitting in the stern. There was a lot of cursing and yelling, but I was lucky at least to get my helmet back, for sure!

Utah Beach aerial photograph.

We landed on Utah Beach, at 10:30 hours from an LCVP. Two officers, RM 3/C John Besemer and myself, got lost from the bunch, when some German shells started whizzing by, some of which landed too damn close! I got a terrible bruise on my right knee when I fell on one of the steel mats laid out for the tanks, it hurt like hell, but I don’t think they’d award Purple Hearts for tripping over your own feet! We must have hit the sand 12 times before we found the rest of our guys near a German blockhouse. On D-Day 1 we dug our foxholes and started setting up communications and standing radio watch in the enemy bunker, now free from its former occupants. I wish they would get that kraut gun that keeps shelling the beach, he’s getting to be a real pain…the following days were kind of hectic; too many damn enemy guns going off and too many German planes, what a hell of a racket. Impossible to sleep, all you can do is lie in your foxhole and shake all night. This morning I must have jumped into my foxhole for cover 75 times.

Then, they shot down an enemy plane, it was June 8, it was strafing the beach, and the pilot had to evacuate, he parachuted down about 60 yards from us. Some jerk in the bivouac area started shooting at him while he was coming down, and we all yelled to him to quit shooting. The boys from the 2d Naval Beach Battalion got hold of the enemy pilot and hustled him off without much ceremony to the prisoner of war (POW) cage. We then later met the incoming troops and reinforcements, and tank crews rolling by our bunker. We were however still subjected to random attacks by German aircrafts which bombed the beaches at night, since we had no searchlights, we couldn’t see them. An enemy ‘88’ still opens up now and then, and about 40 yards from us, a soldier stepped on a mine and up he went in the air, you still have to watch where you walk around here…German prisoners keep pouring into the cages, they certainly don’t look like supermen anymore.

German prisoners being searched on Utah Beach. June 8-9, 1944.

My ‘private’ foxhole is now four feet deep, and I have stuffed a cot in it, while over it I placed a pup tent. It’s not exactly home, but at least it keeps me dry. The Army boys are always shocked when we tell them we are Navy. We dress like them, eat with them, and who ever heard of sailors living in a foxhole? we’re supposed to be on a ship, sleeping in nice dry and clean bunks! I remember the 4th of July, when we had a grand display of flares with tracers and guns blasting all over the place, without an enemy in sight. I wonder what the German POWs must have thought about us lighting up the whole sky. On July 10, the 2d NBB left us for England…and we all expected to go too, one day or another. I was granted my first leave after approximately nine weeks spent on Utah Beach. Early September 1944, I received my papers, for transferring back to the United States, where I got back September 10, 1944. I managed to survive D-Day.

Find out more about Raymond L. Acosta’s D-Day experience here.

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[Text] ‘Some German Shells Started Whizzing By’ appeared first on Witnify.

Roger L. Chagnon, a Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC) during D-Day, gives his firsthand account of setting up radio and communication centers on the beaches of Normandy:

Roger L. Chagnon, at his pup tent foxhole in Utah Beach. June 1944.

It was D-Day, June 6, 1944 – at approximately 10:30 a.m., the Communications Group, comprising about 7 officers and 40 enlisted men (mainly radiomen, yeomen and seamen) landed on the beach at an entry point, close to the present location of the Utah Beach Museum, and not far from the current Le Roosevelt Restaurant. They immediately set themselves up as an operational Communications Center, using three trucks containing all necessary radio equipment to perform their mission. Their job was to support the Naval-Officer-in-Charge (NOIC) of Utah Beach who, along with the Beachmaster of the 2d Naval Beach Battalion (2d NBB), was responsible for the landing of men and equipment on the beach during the day of the invasion and also, beyond that time. The NOIC of this group was Captain James E. Arnold.

The very concept of NOIC was new and applied for the first time at both Utah and Omaha Beaches. For Utah Beach, i.e. our case, personnel who were to form the NOIC Communications Group came from different units; some were taken from the 2d NBB, the 7th NBB, from various ships, and other naval amphibious organizations, only a short time before the invasion itself, and with a few exceptions, most of the men did not know each other. I remember we had three men, who were previously attached to the 7th Beach Battalion before joining our group, I think, that I was part of the 2d Beach Battalion while stationed at a New York Amphibious Base. Some seamen in fact came directly from New York, some just fresh out of Radio School, and others from Navy ships…I know for a fact, that our group was only integrated as a unit, no more than one month prior to D-Day….and I just joined this Group on May 19, 1944.

NOIC personnel on Utah Beach. Front row: A. Guamond and C. Tumasz; Back row: unknown, D. Croy, R. Chagnon. June 1944.

As members of Naval Amphibious land forces, NOIC personnel were dressed in standard Army Herringbone Twill (HBT) combat fatigues, with leggings, the only difference being our helmets which had a blue-gray band across their base, but we had no white-stenciled USN on them! We did not wear any shoulder insignia on our M41 field jackets (the yellow/red SSI was not yet authorized) and our individual equipment included basic items, such as cartridge belt, canteen, first-aid packet, shovel, knife, rifle, shelter tent, and of course some K-Rations, we carried no sidearms. According to Navy archives, our Group, sealed on board ship for about three whole weeks prior to landing (though, we were allowed to go to shore bases for fresh meals and showers) was part of Commander Task Group 12.4 (CTG 127.4), and after landing we became part of Commander Task Unit 127.2.4 (CTU 127.2.4), which was located on Naval Advance Base No. 12 (NAB 12). We were not the only radio people, credit should also be given to 2d NBB and Army 1st Engineer Special Brigade (1st ESB) communication groups who also landed on Utah Beach, June 6, 1944, and shared responsibilities similar to those of the NOIC Group.

Allied assault sea and air routes including the beaches for the Normandy Invasion.

D-Day 1, we received word from Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU) or the Army Engineer Special Brigade (ESB) units that an enemy bunker (probably used as a telephone control center, and attached to a damaged fisherman’s cottage) was clear of occupants and of booby-traps, so the NOIC people moved in. All radio equipment was removed from the trucks and relocated in the bunker. Outside antennas were installed, cables buried in the sand with help of German prisoners of war (POWs), and on June 8 the bunker became fully operational as a Radio Comcenter . Radio operations were based on three shifts per day, with men working two 4-hour shifts every day of the week, for close to five months. The center generally communicated with the other landing beaches (e.g. Omaha), off-shore vessels, and command ships . Operations continued until October 31, 1944, at which time all the men went off into different directions, depending on their assignments. I became a member of a Forward Intelligence Unit (FIU) comprising of one officer and five enlisted men (EM), engaged in operations against bypassed German pockets of resistance, this was mainly in the Gironde estuary . It was probably during their last days on Utah Beach, that 18 NOIC radio men wrote their names on the walls of the bunker, not knowing they would be discovered 50 years later.

Home of NOIC personnel just off Utah Beach with individual shelter tents and foxholes. June 1944.

During the first weeks of D-Day, we lived in shallow foxholes or in 3-foot deep holes with pup tents set up directly over the holes. Basic food was K-Rations during the first week, later on this improved to some C-Rations and even 10-in-1s over many weeks, and finally, hot food in mess-hall tents provided by the CBs. As soon as the danger of possible enemy encounter had passed, most of the men, built large dugouts, for three or four men, big enough to hold cots, tables, chairs, and a little space for clothes. Our men lived in those dugouts for several months and enjoyed occasional visits from neighboring French civilians, some of whom provided us with calvados to drink and to use as light fuel for cooking outside. A little football here and there, and letter writing, accompanied with talk about going home ‘soon’ often took place. Eventually, the unit was to leave the dugouts and move into 4-man tents, set up by the Seabees.

Find out more about Roger L. Chagnon’s D-Day experience here.

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[Text] Setting Up Radio & Communication Centers on Utah Beach appeared first on Witnify.

Bernard Horowitz, a technician in the U.S. Army’s 553rd Military Police Escort Guard (MPEG) Company during World War II, is interviewed by Jonathan Salomone. In this interview, Horowitz talks about what jobs he was assigned to do when he first got to Normandy, nine days after D-Day. Horowitz explains the horrors of having to see dead soldiers everywhere as he arrived. He also recalls a time when he was almost shot  because he didn’t take cover with his company as the Germans opened fire:

Bernard Horowitz: On D+1, I was walking down the street and I was accosted by an elderly woman that said, “The British are dying while you American soldiers are staying in England.” What she didn’t know is that we landed on two beaches and they landed on one with the Canadians on another.

Jonathan Salomone: Yeah. Did you say anything?

Bernard Horowitz: No, you know, because you pick up an English paper, it was all about the British, nothing about the — she didn’t know that we were –

Jonathan Salomone: And then from Birmingham, England, where did you go after that?

Bernard Horowitz: In Birmingham, England, we had time to travel.

Jonathan Salomone: Okay.

Bernard Horowitz: But we weren’t able to get to London because we had — there was a 50-mile radius that you could travel, and London was out of our — so I didn’t get to London. Then from there, we went to Plymouth. It was on D+4. We — I’ll tell you we were being trained how to come off boats into landing crafts, climb down rope ladders into the — so for a week, we were up and down ladders and all that, and then we boarded the ship. It was the British — Royal British — I don’t know what — called the Amble. It was a victory ship, and we sailed there. And on D+5 we were offshore. We had the balloons above us to protect us if airplanes came, but there was no — D+9 we — instead of us climbing down the ropes, because we were the last ones on the ship, they put us into the landing craft, loaded us in the water, then we came ashore on landing craft. And our Captain wanted to show that the 553rd was a good outfit. He was lining us up to march us off the beach when General Roosevelt who was killed about four or five days later in friendly fire came running down the beach and he says, “Get these men off the beach. There’s men being killed here,” because we were still in range of artillery fire. And he was going to march us off, you know, parade us off the — so we had to zigzag up a cliff through a minefield into the hedgerow. Do you know what the hedgerows were?

Jonathan Salomone: Yeah.

Bernard Horowitz: The farmlands governed. And we had to dig in on the sides, and the first thing we saw when we — was a helmet just like ours with the MP with the white stripe around it with a bullet hole through it. So that was — and we would dig in. They didn’t really have any jobs for us.

Jonathan Salomone: No?

Bernard Horowitz: You know, because it was too early, so we — one of our jobs was taking prisoners out to bury the dead in St. Mere Eglise. One of the jobs I had was taking prisoners out on the field and burying the dead cattle that were bloated. Then we got the job of watching French collaborators that were being interviewed by CID people, and then we got — our first job was with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Jonathan Salomone: Uh-huh.

Bernard Horowitz: They lost most of their MPs in the jump, and we did traffic control for them when they cut the Cherbourg Peninsula.

Jonathan Salomone: What was that like when you were working -

Bernard Horowitz: Well, we had our first casualties. We lost two of our fellows and one was wounded. And I did a stupid thing, and I keep thinking about it now.

Jonathan Salomone: What did you do?

Bernard Horowitz: Our company was up on top of a cliff, on the top of a hill, and about two or three miles away was the German 88 guns, and they could see us whenever we sat down and they would open up with their guns. We had C-rations which was canned food, and in the canned food there was always two or three cans of franks and beans, and you never — it was rarely that you got it. And I was heating the can on the thing when the Germans opened up fire, and I says I’m going to stay here and eat my franks and beans because everybody was going to their foxhole when a shell hit in the next foxhole and a piece of shrapnel landed next to me.

Jonathan Salomone: That was a wake-up call.

Bernard Horowitz: A wake up to go and left everything. But to this day, I think what would have happened if that shell — I wouldn’t be here.

Jonathan Salomone: Yeah.

Bernard Horowitz: I was lucky the shell hit in the hedgerow next to us.

Jonathan Salomone: Did you guys end up returning fire or just kind of seek shelter?

Bernard Horowitz: Well, we were doing control — you know, most of the things — the Air Force, we would watch them dive bomb the area, and they didn’t do the job, and then they finally heard that the 82nd went up there and cleaned it out. After we were finished with that, we were back with nothing much to do and when the break-through of Saint-Lo — before Saint-Lo, if you know the story of Saint-Lo, there was a bombing. We were right outside of Saint-Lo. They moved us back about ten miles. The B-17s came over in waves and just bombed the city and every time they would go by, the 240 Howitzers opened up. After they, the B-17s and the B-24s came over and bombed. And when they passed over, then the 240 Howitzers opened up again and then the dive bombers came in. This is on just this town.

Jonathan Salomone: Yeah.

Bernard Horowitz: Well, after that, the prisoners that came in were so shaken up they couldn’t talk, and that was the breakthrough. And then we headed to Versailles, to the Versailles Gardens, for a reassignment.

See the full transcript of the interview here.

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[Text] Interview of Vet Who Arrived in Normandy on D+9 appeared first on Witnify.

“This is the first time there was racial discrimination. We had black troops in the area and we were separated from them.”

 

“One day, Hitler made an announcement that he would drive us back into the sea. We were told to sleep with our gas mask. They thought, the Germans might possibly gas us.”

 

“All the fellows ran to their fox holes but I sat there. I had a little fire going and I was heating up the can of hotdogs & beans. I wasn’t going to leave it, it was my favorite meal…”

The following is an excerpt from Bernard Horowitz’s memoir, “My Career in the Army,” who served as a technician in the U.S. Army’s 553rd Military Police Escort Guard (MPEG) Company. In this excerpt, Horowitz details his training in England and his arrival in France on June 15, 1994, nine days after D-Day at Utah Beach.

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[Text] Arriving 9 Days After D-Day At Utah Beach appeared first on Witnify.

 

“I landed under heavy small arms fire in a dry field near a farmhouse. I cut my way out of my harness and dashed for the nearest hedgegrow…”

Frank E. McKee was a Sergeant in the 2nd Battalion, 508th Paratroop Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division during World War II. In the letter below, he writes to General Gavin in order to find out the location of where he landed on D-Day:

Frank McKee. Photo taken January 31, 2003.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBAt4egoKo

Sergio Moirano was part of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division during World War II, and participated in the Allied landing of Utah Beach. Moirano describes his thoughts during the journey across the English Channel and the turbid events that followed after he got off his landing craft–including the decisions he made on that day that he believes helped him survive.

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‘I Got to the Shore. I Just Laid Down…I Was Scared’ appeared first on Witnify.