D-Day

[Central Scrutinizer]

In remembrance of D-Day. 79 years ago. My Dad was there. He was a tank driver. Was in every battle from North Africa to D-Day.

Some genius designed a tank with a splitter transmission that would drive a shaft with a boat-type prop on it, that and canvas gunnels allowed the tanks to float and drive like a boat up on to the beach, then switch back to the tracks.

The design worked well in ponds and small lakes in England prior to D-Day. The surf was to choppy and the tanks took on water and sank like a rock.

You Brits and French are welcome!

I wanted to have the month of June set aside to honor the D-Day Veterans and their memories, but their month of bravery and honor has been usurped for an even braver crowd of folks.

Anyway, God Bless their memories, Memory Eternal.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

I was watching a little tribute/special this morning & they were saying how, the tide was lower than expected, so, they had to deal w/ a tide wall. They had to blow it up, but, in the mean time, they were floating targets, out in the water. In the video (supplied by British news), the water was real choppy.

A buddy of mine's Dad was in the Navy & in 5 of the big battles. North Africa, the Philipines & he witnessed the treaty signing in Japan...

He told me that, when he was on IIRC, the cruiser, the boat would do a belly flop on every wave. When he was on the destroyer, he said that the constant motion was forward, back, left, right, forward, back, left, right... I could see it, in the video.

Many of those kids were drafted, never been on a boat, or by air & were seasick when the boats landed. They got pushed out into the water anyway to progress on, only to be met by machine gun fire from snipers on the bluffs above the beach.

The whole 1st wave were pretty much the sacrificial group. Many died, not too many survived to move on. In their death, the 2nd, 3rd & 4th waves were able to finally get through.

 

[Mitchell Pearrow]

I have too many words to say.
But I am going to just be silent.
In memory of the Day of Days.

Thank You

 

[RCM 800]

The unit I was in (many years later lol) was part of the Utah landing. They had one guy get The Medal for using his little bulldozer to break thru when all the tanks sank. As a guy that has actually handled and participated in bangalor drills, taken out pill boxes and done landings in training, I think its a miracle that anyone walked off that beach alive. Same with anyone who ever fought in the jungle. I went thru jungle training and the whole time I was thinking "man if I ever have to fight in this shit Im fucked!". God bless all of them that had to go thru it.

 

[RCM 800]

This article popped up in my news feed on FB, apparently I remembered the details incorrectly. I had the beach wrong in the previous post I guess they were on Omaha and was wrong about The Medal. The unit is now part of the 82nd and is Airborne instead of amphibious.

37th Engineer Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division​

June 6, 2020 ·
#DoveandShoemaker
37th’s #DDay history as told through PVT Vinton Dove.
“We thought we were training on June 6, when we crossed the English Channel, heading for Normandy. We were in small craft, with two Jeeps ahead of our dozer and several infantry squads and engineers from the 37th. There was a Sergeant who told everyone on board that we would all have to 'go ashore and continue across the beach and up the hills, or you will die.' He said the quicker we made it to the hills, the greater our chances for survival. The boat driver told us ‘I will be the last one off this boat, and anyone left on board when I leave will be dead. And if you refuse to go, I will kill you.’ Shoemaker and I had orders to stay on the beach until we were told to leave. We landed on Omaha Beach, 'Bloody Omaha,' they later called it, around 6:45 or 7:00 AM. The boat stopped before it got very close to shore. One of the Army officers yelled to the Navy driver, 'get closer to shore!' The driver yelled back, 'This is as close as I go!' The operator in charge of the boat had taken a direct mortar hit, and was killed, so the second in command was not anxious to stick around. Besides, I could see that there were too many boats trying to land at the same time. When the front gate of the boat dropped, machine gun fire swept in and killed most of those on board. I had to push the jeeps off the boat so that we could get off, because the operators were dead. The boat couldn't get very close to shore because of the Hedgehogs (obstacles) the Germans had put in the water.
The water was over six feet deep when we left the boat. Sitting on the seat, I was chest deep in water. I knew that the bulldozer would have no trouble getting through the water to shore. Shoemaker was a top-rate mechanic and we had taken all the time we needed before we left England to waterproof it, including extending the air intake up to the level of the superstructure. We had also stacked as many sandbags on the sides of it as we could, for protection. We named the bulldozer 'Hellcat’, since it was made by Caterpillar. We had painted the name on the back and sides of it. Everyone still alive started across the beach. My first duty was to pull the Hedgehogs and stalled vehicles out of the water so the ships could reach the shore; then rid the beach of mines and make a road to exit the beach. Shoemaker hooked the winch on the the bulldozer to the stalled vehicles and Hedgehogs, and I did the driving. The ships couldn’t go past the obstacles, but the bulldozer could, so we hooked the cable on the obstacles and pulled them until the ships could make it to shore. The hedgehogs were long strings of steel "I" beams, welded together. You didn't have to pull them out of the water, just drag them until there was an opening between them big enough for the ships to reach the shore. Then we took to the beach and began to clear it of mines.
There were 16 bulldozers that assaulted Omaha beach that morning, but only three of them made it ashore. I saw one immediately blown up by an 88MM artillery shell, with both operators killed. The second was quickly hit and disabled. Both operators grabbed their rifles and headed for the hills with the infantry. That left us. I realized that we must be the Germans next target. Since I was driving straight down the beach, we would be easy to hit, so I turned left. A few seconds later, an 88 shell hit right where we would have been, so I turned right. Again, right where we would have been, a shell hit. Next I backed up, and another shell hit right where we had been. At that point, they stopped aiming for us. I never did figure out why. I think there must have been something bigger than us coming in from the channel. So we continued. I drove Hellcat flat on my back sitting on the seat, leaning back almost level with the ground. I had to keep my rear end on the seat so that I could push the foot pedals. We had to keep moving at all times. The machine gun fire was incessant and kept sweeping across the bulldozer just inches above my head, and the mortars and the '88 millimeter' artillery guns really cut everyone to pieces. I learned that our battalion commander, LTC Smith, was killed by a mortar; they named the beach after him. At some point in time, I got separated from Shoemaker, so I just kept driving and clearing the beach. There were mine fields all over the beach, so I let the blade roll about two feet of sand in front of Hellcat, so that the sand would set off the mines ahead of us. The blade protected us from the exploding mines and some of the enemy machine gun fire.
A soldier asked me to help him knock out a machine gun nest, so I got a couple of soldiers behind the blade, and drove up in front of the nest. The soldiers threw grenades over and around the blade until they killed the Germans in the nest. I left the nest intact for the Allies to use. My next task was to clear Rxit E-3 It was a narrow road carved out of the side of a cliff, which the Germans had blocked with old cars, trucks and even a cement mixer. I let the blade shove the obstacles off the side of the road, down to the beach below. When I got up to the top, I looked back and discovered that nothing was following me. No trucks, tanks or soldiers. Looking around, I saw a German soldier come out of what appeared to be a guard shack. He looked me over and turned away. I think the sandbags acted as a disguise and made him think I was a German. 6§ soon as he turned away, I grabbed my M-1 rifle and shot him. And still there was nothing coming up the road.
So I backed down the road and resumed my beach duties. I then reunited with Shoemaker. The scar on my forehead from the shrapnel has always been a reminder of D-Day. About three days after D-day we were waiting outside a little town for the Army airplanes to bomb the town so we could go in and take it over. Suddenly General Omar Bradley pulled up alongside the bulldozer and stopped. I was shocked to see such a high ranking General. I didn't know exactly what to do, but I did remember to salute! The General asked 'Were you the one running the Caterpillar bulldozer on Omaha Beach on D-Day?' I said I was on Omaha Beach, but I didn't realize I was the only one. He assured me that I was, so I asked him how he knew that. The General said he had watched me through binoculars from on board a ship in the English Channel and he recognized the "Hellcat" name on the dozer. General Bradley was the commander of the 1st Army, and had been on board the USS Augusta, a Cruiser, on D-Day. "He took our names and service numbers and drove off. I never saw the General again until after the war, at one of the Army reunions."
I left Germany on Oct 4, 1945 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Despite being wounded 3 times, I didnt receive the Purple Heart because the Medics said I would have to sign a paper to receive it. The paper was authorization for the Army to notify my next-of-kin that I had been wounded. I was afraid that the shock receiving a telegram from the War Department might kill my mother before she realized that he was only wounded, so I refused to sign. My Captain recommended me for the Silver Star for heroism on D-Day, but when the paperwork got to Supreme Allied Command, General Bradley elevated it to the Congressional Medal of Honor. General Eisenhower was the approving authority. Ike said that since there was no Purple Heart accompanying it, he would not approve anything higher than the DSC. I hated Ike from that day forward. I was still eligible for membership in the Order of Lafayette, which I joined when I returned from the war. When my wife and I attended an Order of Lafayette dinner in 1947, I again met General Bradley, who told me about about Ike. He said he had really pushed and argued with Ike he saw our D-Day actions and that Shoemaker and I should receive the Medal of Honor, but to no avail.

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

Please watch this moving narration by Sam Elliott

 

[Dogs of Doom]

fixed the video...

 

[XTRXTR]

It is wild to think about all that was accomplished by all the WWII Allied Forces and compare that to now in the world.

I appreciate the legacy I inherited.

 

[Scumback Speakers]

My Dad was in the Navy as an engineer at the Puget Sound yard in Bremerton, WA. He designed the heating/cooling systems on the battleships raised from Pearl Harbor. The military wouldn't let him fight in WWII, he was more useful to the Navy fixing ships.
But he had friends who were at D-Day, some came back, but not all. I heard a lot of hair raising tales growing up about them and his experiences with the raised battleships from Pearl Harbor.

Respect to all the veterans of our military from this guy.

Jim