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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994                   TAG: 9406070012
SECTION: THE GREAT CRUSADE                    PAGE: D-DAY7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

DUTY ABOARD LST FOR PAIR FROM VINTON AND SALEM WAS MIND BENDING

YOU LOOKED LIKE you could walk from one ship to the other," Jim Gladden of Salem says of the armada of nearly 5,000 ships that took Allied troops from Britain to the French coast on D-Day.

Gladden was aboard a Landing Ship Tank (LST), a 330-foot long craft with two large doors in its bow for discharging cargo onto a beach or into the sea. Gladden's D-Day job was damage control, and he was stationed in the ship's steering engine room. Clifton Scott of Vinton was on a gun crew on the same LST.

On deck, Scott thought "the world's coming to an end." The Germans fired machine guns and artillery at the ship but made no hits.

After the LST delivered tanks and armored cars to Juno Beach at 8 a.m., Gladden's job was to move through the tank deck and fold down hundreds of beds that were attached to the hull. A surgical unit was aboard to care for the wounded who would soon fill the beds.

The injured included British, Canadian and German soldiers. Gladden remembers the shocked reaction of one German when he was told the pharmacist's mate who was tending him was Jewish.

Gladden feared he'd lose his mind from the things he saw.

"I really did some serious praying about this," Gladden said.

by CNB