doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Where were YOU, "D-DAY" June 1944?

x chisels, 59 is too young to die. So sorry . This post has reminded me of lots of stuff when I was so so young. Having "lookouts or whatever you call them" in Iowa for German planes. We had charts to identify each type. My son, around 37 , still has a packet of those charts. Now, I can't even remember what we called the people who stood in towers, scanning the sky, and looking for enemy [sp?] planes. My family was mostly farmers-------mostly before mechanization and we picked corn with a team of horses. Others went in our places as we were more important at home, I guess. One did go. His name was Harlan and he was the idol of the family of seven children. He was a pilot and they never found him---------dead over France. Maybe his dog tag will show up as another did in these last few weeks. I was born in '42, so no real recollection of the sadness and the horror. Maybe like Bouvier, but my dad was at home--safe with rheumatic fevor that plagued him the rest of his life. He was Harlan's close friend and he told me about him and showed me pictures of how they took a trip in the "west" before the war. Those were high times before the bad ones. When I was young I remember the day all the veterans would gather together and honor the day. I think we had a parade in my small Iowa town. Then after the parade , the veterans, probably of multiple wars, got together in the cemetary. Old men, then, with buttons on their uniforms straining to hold them together. I was a child, but never had seen men, old men,cry. I saw it on those days when they looked at the flag being raised in the cemetary . As a child I thought it odd, and thought about how hot those uniforms must be . Now I think I understand that they were not uncomfortable in the heat. They were proud.

Daryl

I'm happy you liked "Tuti-Fruti" It's a family story we tell each other often when remembering my Dad. My mother told me many years later after his death that Dad had been miserable when they wouldn't take him ...... he was to old, had two kids and one bad eye. Somehow he pulled some strings (he was a labor organizer in the baking industry) and got assigned to a "project". My mother told me that Iceland was only a stop on the way back from Russia. He never talked about what he did and didn't let my mother tell us anything. But then it was his view of life that you just do your job, enjoy your family and get on with it with a minimum of fuss. A lesson I have tried to learn and pass on.

Before my time. Father was in the Pacific on a formerly Japanese held island. Lot of that went on according to him. He was and still is a big fan of "General MacAuthur". Felt losses would have been much greater with others in charge. Marines had to do the job they got and my father says Mac kept moving ahead and did not waste men on what he considered stupid moves. He was there so I will give him the right to say anything he wants about Mac, the marines and the navy.

Three uncles were in the European theater. Two on my mothers side and one on my father side. One was assigned as a driver to SHEAF in London and stayed there till the Battle of the Bulge. Then he was given a rifle and sent to the front. God he hated cold to his dying day. Guess he hoped the "soft duty" would last until the end of the war.

Second uncle went ashore at 11:00 on D-day. Saw action for two weeks until wounded and evacuated for about two months. Just got back to France about two months later and saw very limited duty after that. He was in Southern France area and missed almost the entire rest of the war to hear him tell it. But unless I miss my guess he was just a little closer to the front than he admits as his metals earned could not have all come from two weeks of duty. Most likely he, like a lot of others would like to forget a lot of what happened.

Third uncle went ashore in the first wave. He said his landing craft got in without any major problems but the next three waves were just about wiped out. Seems the Germans had them under constant fire, arty, heavy mortar and machine gun fire for hundred of yards before they hit the beach. A lot of men never got out of the landing craft alive. He did mention that he sure saw and heard enough action in the first few hours to last him for several lifetimes. Potato masher grenade cost him the hearing in his left ear, a part of his nose and some of the hearing in his right ear.

I never bothered asking these men for lots of battle stories. Ghost and dead buddies had been at rest for far to long for me to dredge them up. Now the uncles are all dead and with them go a lot of pain and what I suspect was shared terror from that day. Watching the movie Private Ryan was as real as any footage that my father had ever watched he said one night. Only things missing was smoke, the smell of blood and crap and men asking for their mothers or crying after being hit and the smell of fear. No one wanted to die.

To the men who endured all this Hell I can only say you have my lifetime respect and thanks. If the elected officials displayed on tenth of the guts and courage that these men had that day this nation would be a far better place.

Wasn't born yet either. But when I came along three years later I remember my parents looking at me and saying, "My God, look at the head on this thing!!"

I was born in '38 and lived in Chicago and 6 years old at the time. I remember seeing fighters flying in formation overhead - P51's,Lightnings, and bombers. We also had a temporary Army camp four blocks from where our house with hundreds of canvas tents placed neatly in rows. I also remember my father talking about gas rationing and the black market. It seems that with a war - or no war, there was and is always someone out there making an illegal buck. Gasoline pricing keeps rearing it's ugly head!

I also remember seeing small American flags in the windows of neighbors homes with a second small flag with stars noting the number of family members in the military who died in WW2.

I'm a "baby boomer", didn't arrive on the scene until '51.
My wife's father was a US Army infantry man in Italy & Germany, he would never talk about his experiences, I do know he received two purple hearts. My mother-in-law worked at the Curtis Wright propeller factory.
Dad was in the Navy in the Pacific, he was the only man on deck on ARB-9, USS Ulysses in the typhoon at Buckner Bay in the Philipines. He whitnessed a mine sweeper slice a 8' gash in the side of his ship.
Mom's younger brother was killed at the Battle of the Bulge.

I wasn't born untill '52. My uncle joined the Marines in 1939. He was captured at the fall of Correigedor in 1942. From there he spent the next 39 months in a Japanese prison camp in Manchuria. He did not return home untill 1946. This was the first time he had seen his home since leaving in 1939. My grandmother was the only person to refuse to believe he was dead. Untill his death a few years back he always felt that they were deserted by Macarthur. My uncle is a true hero in my book. Truly a part of the greatest generation.

I was seven and likely with my parents listening to the big event on a radio that was about four feet tall and three feet wide.

DT/CC -
June 6 1944 - I was 7 mos. old and learning to be a good listener according to my mom. It all came in very handy later in life as I found out what friends and family did before, during and after that fateful day: We had a neighbor just over our back fence who'd involuntarily flinch, tightening his shoulders when a car backfired or the kids up the block threw a cherry bomb too close on the 4th of July. Turns out he jumped into St. Mere Eglise with the 82nd Airborne the night before the Allies went ashore at Normandy. My dad had a cousin who took one through the knee on the beach at Anzio when Patton took Sicily. Had an uncle whose B-24 Liberator made it through 8 missions before flak and fighters took her down over Magdeburg in September of '43. He spent the remainder of the war at Stalag Luft 4 in Pomerania near Gross Tychow (now Poland)and was one of the very first to see the new ME 262 jet fighters being tested on an adjacent airfield. Liberated by the Russians advancing westward to Berlin in May of '45, they walked out with them to freedom. Worked for a time with a man who served on a gun crew on a destroyer in the Pacific that drew picket line position # 19 North the night before the massive kamikaze assault at Okinawa. All things I like to think about when I'm griping about a "tough day at the office." KBM