
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994                   TAG: 9406070011
SECTION: THE GREAT CRUSADE                    PAGE: D-DAY6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOR THIS FLAME-THROWER IN THE BREACH, ONLY THE DRY LANDING WENT RIGHT

IN THE WEEKS before the invasion, Charles Neighbor of Roanoke remembers standing around a table with his boat section of 30-men listening to an officer explain that their first objective would be a German machine gun nest at the crest of a hill near the village of St. Laurent.

But when Neighbor's boat, part of the first assault wave, hit Omaha Beach, the men faced a totally unfamiliar landscape.

The pillbox and a house they were supposed to use as a landmark were nowhere to be found. Strong English Channel tides and the confusion of battle had carried their boat nearly two miles to the east of its intended landing spot.

Neighbor, a Kansas native, had joined Company E of the 29th Division's 116th Infantry Regiment in February 1944 in England. The 116th was a Virginia National Guard unit before the war, and Company E had been based in Chase City in Mecklenburg County.

Unlike other boats that dropped troops into water over their heads, Neighbor's landing craft put its men right on the beach, and only his shoe-tops got wet. A flame-thrower helper, he ran onto shore under German fire with a can of flamethrower fluid on his back. It never occurred to him that he was a human bomb.

Neighbor took over the flame-thrower after the operator was wounded. Just ahead, his sergeant waved his men on and was fatally wounded. Neighbor remembers that they'd been told to lie quietly if they were wounded and let their comrades move ahead. The sergeant was screaming for his life.

by CNB