THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406030272
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RAYMOND A. YEATTS
DATELINE: 940605 LENGTH: Long
There were six of us who had been together since basic training at Fort Bragg. It was good to be with friends because we had been assigned to a new unit, mostly strangers from the New Hampshire National Guard. We joined them as replacements to reinforce the unit in preparation for the invasion.
{REST} We were told that our mission was to attempt to hit the beaches of France at a point just across the channel.
I was a little nervous. I was already homesick and thinking of my wife and son, whom I had not heard from in a long time. We had been moving around so much, the mail never caught up with us.
In the countryside around Exeter, the Army had built duplicates of the defenses at Normandy that the Germans would use to try to stop us. We trained there for weeks, crawling day and night through the barbed wire, simulated mine fields and all the obstacles we were expected to encounter during the real thing.
We were sometimes called to formation, with full equipment, in the middle of the night for a three- or four-mile road march, not knowing whether it would be the real thing or just out to the field for more practice.
The training sessions went on for so long that everyone grew tired of them. We were anxious for the real battle to start. Whatever the consequences, we thought it couldn't be much worse than what we were going through.
During the training troops were actually deployed on ships in the channel, usually at night. On one of these missions, about 15 German speed boats equipped with machine guns and cannons attacked our training unit and sank three craft loaded with heavy equipment and trucks. Eight hundred of our troops were killed. Some of their bodies washed ashore the next day.
It was devastating. But the real story was kept secret. Gen. Eisenhower ordered that anyone who talked about it would be court-martialed. There were rumors that the bodies of the dead were buried on a nearby farm in order to keep it secret.
After the incident, all troops were restricted to the tent area under sealed orders. We were allowed to talk to no one. Incoming and outgoing mail was restricted.
Daily, we had to display our equipment on our Army cots for inspection. This included our side arms, a .30-caliber carbine all oiled and cleaned with plenty of ammo and a bayonet as sharp as a razor, our clothing, two pairs of boots, socks, underwear and shaving equipment and condoms.
The only time I ever had occasion to use a condom was to cover my rifle to keep rain out of the barrel or to wrap my dog tags so they wouldn't rattle and attract the attention of a German sniper at night.
On June 5, word spread among the men that the time for the invasion had arrived. Everyone kept repeating, ``This is it! This is it!''
We pulled out in a long convoy. In the little towns and villages we passed through, women and children and older men lined the sidewalks waving goodbye to the soldiers. All the way to Plymouth, the port where we would embark, all I could think of was my wife and son and other family members.
At the staging area we assembled and marched four-abreast down a long chicken-wire tunnel along the wharf to a large warehouse lined with tables. We were served the finest meal I have ever seen - T-bone steaks, baked potatoes and all kinds of vegetables, ice cream, cake, pie and fresh bread and rolls.
For many, this would be their last meal on this earth, but it was a good one.
After the meal we were given a final briefing and marched to loading areas, where we boarded LSTs in the dark. There were hundreds of LSTs waiting to be filled, tied up side by side as far as you could see.
There is no way to describe the feeling of going into combat except to say that I was scared, but I knew I was not alone. There was not much talk, and all was serious business. Occasionally some joker would say, ``This is it!''
There was already rumbling in the sky from planes and flashes in the distance from bombs hitting installations in our landing zone.
We were told at the briefing that we were under the command of Gen. Omar Bradley, commanding the American 1st Army, and attached to the V Corps with 30,000 troops. We were scheduled to land on Omaha Beach, at the southern end of the landing zone, north of Cherbourg, a heavily guarded port held by the Germans.
Because this article is being written for my grandchildren, I am not able to describe the brutality I saw that day. It is enough to say that the thought of it brings back many bad memories.
I lost one of my best friends from a direct hit just as we were coming off the LST. This changed my feelings from fright to anger. All I wanted to do was find a German and kill him any way I could.
The most intense battle imaginable went on and on. There were dead and wounded everywhere, and firepower was going both ways from ships in the channel and field guns on the German side.
The big 16-inch guns from our Navy offshore were firing continuously day and night. As the projectiles passed over our position they sounded like a train going through the air, with a loud explosion at the end.
After much crawling, scrambling and digging we finally set up our first big gun position on the beachhead on D-Day plus six (six days after the landing).
Our gun position was in a little farming area. I made a home in a foxhole I dug behind the gun under an apple tree. On one side was a narrow road leading toward our next objective, the city of St. Lo, which we were scheduled to take within 30 days.
The battle was so intense that St. Lo changed hands twice, and it was two months before we had complete control of it. Even then, it was not worth having because it was completely destroyed.
From my position by the roadway, I remember long lines of trucks and ambulances coming from the front and heading to hospital ships anchored offshore behind us. At one point, I witnessed a convoy of five or six 2 1/2-ton trucks with bodies piled like cordwood to the top of the stakes. Blood ran off the back like water.
I said many prayers and asked God to just let me live long enough to see my son once more.
Dead Germans and Japanese soldiers in German uniforms lay in the fields and hedgerows in the area, creating a terrible stench. We were compelled to call in the engineers with bulldozers to bury the enemy dead because it was impossible to live with the odor.
We could not move our guns or get trucks through the hedgerows, so we had to blast openings to enter new firing positions and to haul in supplies and ammunition.
During this time, it rained. We were cold and wet and hungry. The Germans had captured our kitchen crew when it took the wrong road and went north into German-held territory. Food supplies were air-dropped in a few days, and we lived on emergency rations until a new unit arrived and replacements came in.
There were still 200,000 Germans defending their territory, and we were receiving much return fire from their guns. The Luftwaffe bombed our position at night.
When we finally received a new kitchen crew, it was not much pleasure to go to meals because that was when we always got bad news about who got hit the night before.
Near our gun position was a large ditch lined on both sides by undergrowth and a small stream that ran all the way to the channel.
I was pulled from the gun crew for security duty along this ditch, along with another soldier who was of Indian descent from Oklahoma. During the night, he sat on one side of a big tree on the edge of the bank and, being a well trained soldier, I do not think he ever moved during the night. My position was on the other side of the ditch.
While on watch at night, I placed my gun belt and a canteen attached to it on a fence post. I did this because my wet clothing made it uncomfortable around my body.
At daylight we left the area and went to the kitchen area a few hundred yards away for hot coffee and breakfast. When I arrived there, I realized I had left my belt and canteen hanging on the fence post.
After finishing my coffee I headed back to the guard post to retrieve my equipment. The post and fence I had been leaning against all night had disappeared. There was a large crater where a German artillery shell had landed. The whole area was blown up and not a piece of my equipment could be found. If I had been there, not much of my body would have been left either.
I know that my mother's prayers saved me, not only at this time but many other times during the war. I thought of my mother often and wrote to her as often as I could, but I never dared to let her know where I was and what I was doing there. I know she prayed for me and that her prayers were answered.
After more than 45 days we still had not captured the city of St. Lo.
We were held up many days by a large cement dome fortification. There were small holes in the dome and Germans were firing from the holes, causing many casualties. They had plenty of ammunition and there was no way to get to it.
We thought about moving one of our guns up during the night and firing a shell into the dome through one of the holes. If we missed it would have been suicide. I told my commanding officer that if ordered to do so I would attempt it, but I would never volunteer for such a suicide mission. It never became an order. We decided to call on the Royal Air Force to drop a 5,000-pound blockbuster on the dome.
The next day the sun was shining and the sky was clear. Everyone was ordered to stop firing and take cover. In about an hour bombers appeared over the area and a bomb dropped right on target. For a few minutes pieces of cement, rocks, guns, bodies and everything else was falling from the sky. The whole area was demolished and there were no survivors. Everyone cheered to have this obstacle out of our path so that our infantry could maneuver much more effectively.
For about 45 days I wore the same clothes I had on when I left England. They were muddy, greasy and ragged, having been wet most of the time from the muddy foxhole where I had to sleep.
Finally, the Army Engineers and Quartermaster Corps erected shower facilities in our area and we were hauled in on trucks, a few at a time, for baths. The shower was built like a tent, about 100 feet long with four or five sprinkler pipes running through it. It could accommodate 50 to 100 men at one time. We took off our clothes at one end and tossed them into containers. When we had walked through the shower and out the other end, we received all new clothing, including boots.
I felt like a new man when I returned to my gun position, but it didn't last long. The mud, smoke and grease mixed with gunpowder soon had the new clothing as dirty as the old had been.
Soon we received orders to man all guns and bring up extra ammo for a major attack to capture and hold St. Lo. The next morning bombers began to appear over the area, thousands of them. The sky looked like a sheet of nothing but bombers floating over the whole sky.
We received orders to fire all guns non-stop until we received word that our mission had been accomplished.
When the bombs started to fall you could actually feel the earth tremble under your feet. We fired until the gun barrel got so hot it almost split at the end. We had to assign a cannoneer to pour water down the barrel after each round to cool it down.
The purpose was to keep the German gunners down while the bombers were over their area. We did not cease firing until the planes had cleared the area and the order came down to cease firing - ``mission accomplished.''
The same day, we received orders to move up, after 59 days in the same position.
Dismantling the guns and loading the ammo only took a few minutes, and we moved out. We didn't stop until we were through and far beyond the city of St. Lo. There was not a building standing and not even a chicken alive anywhere near the city. The road in and out of the city was lined with dead Germans, cattle, parts of tanks and all kinds of vehicles, blown to pieces.
We finally pulled into a new area and proceeded to dig in and set up the guns for a new mission and new targets.
I dug another foxhole for my home. That night a heavy storm hit the area and we were back in the mud again. My body had been wet for so long that my fingers and toes were wrinkled like prunes.
The Germans never stopped coming. When our service battery truck went back to our old position to pick up ammo that had been left behind, they found nothing there. The apple tree I had slept under for 59 days was now a big bomb crater. They had spotted our position, but were just one day late hitting it.
Again, my mother's prayers were answered and God saved me again.
I had spent my 21st birthday, July 7, in that foxhole. It could have been my last.
by CNB