THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406070147
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940608 LENGTH: Long
They had stormed German defenses amid the rattle of machine gun fire and the crump of high explosives with nary a casualty.
{REST} The action - a re-enactment - took place under sunny, bluebird skies on the shoreline of Fort Story, 50 years after the actual event.
The original assault took place on the Normandy coast of France and was the most massive of its kind in history. The first phase of the landing on five separate beachheads took an entire day and claimed the lives of an estimated 10,000 Allied servicemen.
Saturday's assault unfolded in a little more than 90 minutes and was witnessed by an estimated crowd of 10,000 onlookers who sat in bleachers and lined the dunes at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
The program included 1,000 re-enactors clothed in authentic '40s-era U.S. and German uniforms and armed with authentic weaponry and equipment.
Included in the vintage hardware were four P-51 Mustangs and a P-47 Thunderbolt, 1940s-era fighter planes that provided simulated air cover for the simulated Allied landing.
Backing up the fighters were a C-47 transport plane and a B-25 light bomber, two World War II workhorse aircraft.
Representing the German air arm of the day was a restored ME-109 fighter plane, the only one of its kind in the United States. It buzzed the beach menacingly before the landing.
On the sidelines in VIP bleacher seats were nearly 200 graying D-Day veterans, most of whom took part in the actual Normandy landing on June 6, 1944.
Among them was Gerard ``Jerry'' Miller, 70, of Bel Air, Md., who five decades ago was a member of M Company of the 116th Infantry, part of the 29th Infantry Division. The unit was composed of soldiers from Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia and was the first to land at Omaha Beach.
Miller, a mortarman, hit the beach at ``H-plus-5,'' five hours after the initial wave waded ashore through heavy German fire.
``Riflemen were still behind the seawall,'' Miller recalled quietly. ``All up and down the beach you could see 'em behind the wall. Enemy artillery fire killed rows of our troops.''
Vid Clopton, 72, of Newport News, his once fiery red hair now a silvery mane, was there as well. He was a colonel in the 2nd Ranger Battalion, which stormed Pointe Du Hoc, scaling the cliffs to silence German guns that had already been silenced to some degree by heavy Allied bombing and shelling. Only about 90 of the original 200 Rangers who made the assault reached the top of the cliff, Clopton said.
Florida newspaperman B.J. Oram also was there. He was a 19-year-old Navy Signalman III aboard an LCT, a landing craft carrying tanks ashore for the assault.
German artillery on the bluffs above blew the vessel from under Oram, his shipmates and Army personnel aboard. He was forced to go over the side and wade ashore under fire. Oram was stranded on Omaha Beach for the next 31 days. He was wounded and shipped back to a military hospital in England.
``I was hit in the arm and the leg but fortunately I didn't get killed, as you can plainly see,'' he told inquisitive reporters covering the re-enactment at Fort Story.
Roanoker Ken Davis, 72, a project engineer at Fort Story, was in a quartermaster, or supply, unit with the 90th Division of the Army's 7th Corps, which landed on Omaha Beach.
``We were under fire,'' he said. ``The landing craft next to us got a direct hit and sank. I didn't see one survivor.''
Once ashore Davis's unit was prevented by intense German resistance from reaching its intended objective, the nearby French village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
``We didn't get there until two days later and the 82nd Airborne (Division) had already taken it,'' he said.
Almost to a man, the veterans interviewed before the re-enactment remember the fear they felt during the real action. For the most part they kept to themselves the trauma and the memories of seeing fellow soldiers slaughtered in Normandy so long ago.
On Saturday the beachfront show at Fort Story was expertly choreographed, with rigged charges simulating strafing runs by the American fighter planes, bombs and artillery rounds and charges set by the Navy underwater demolition teams.
It began with members of the Navy's SEAL Team 4, from Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, simulating the demolition of beach obstacles. It ended with ``Taps,'' played by retired Army Sgt. Paul L. McPherson, a bugler who performs at local military ceremonies.
Once the smoke cleared, D-Day veterans were escorted from the beach by members of the crack Third Regiment of the French Foreign Legion, which was sent to Fort Story to honor Americans who fought and died on their homeland.
The mock battle at Fort Story was the highlight of a three-day weekend commemorating the D-Day landing at Normandy.
On Friday night event organizers staged a '40s era Operation Overlord Victory Dance - a USO-type affair at an Oceana Naval Air Station hangar. There a small crowd danced to the big band music of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, led by Buddy Morrow.
On Saturday, the observance continued shortly after 9 a.m. with a parade that featured the D-Day re-enactors and military hardware that was to appear on the Fort Story beach later in the day.
Among the vintage artifacts in the procession, which started on Atlantic Avenue at 16th Street, was parade marshal Van Johnson, 78, a '40s era movie star and heartthrob.
As the parade reached the Tidewater Veterans Memorial at 19th Street the P-51s, the P-47 and the C-47 made a low pass over the reviewing stand in an aerial salute.
Concluding the D-Day weekend observance was a wreath-laying ceremony Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Cape Henry Monument at Fort Story.
by CNB