June 6th, 1944

The 299th Engineer Combat Battalion was activated at Camp White (Medford) Oregon on March1 1943 and I received basic training there, and amphibious training at the U.S. Naval Amphibious Training Base, Fort Pierce, Florida and on April 14th 1944, we landed at Cardiff, Whales with the mission of leading the invasion of the European Continent on both Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day, the 6th of June 1944.

In the early morning hours of June 6th, my platoon, the 3rd Platoon of B Company, assembled on the deck of our large transport ship and along with some other engineer personnel went down the side of the transport, using cargo nets as a rope ladder, into a waiting LCM (Landing Craft Mechanized).

We were jammed into the LCM, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, hardly able to move. In addition, we had approximately two tons of explosives of various kinds, mine detectors and other equipment.

We headed for the beach and soon came upon a small boat that had apparently struck a mine or had been hit by artillery fire. At the time, I thought it was a minesweeper, but later, in reading about the D-Day operation, I discovered it probably was one of four "location" boats, stationed to mark the boundaries of the Utah Beach approach sector.

The boat was still afloat but only the bow was protruding from the water. Some men were in the water, with life jackets keeping them afloat and two or three were clinging to the side of the boat. They pleaded with us to take them aboard, but we were so heavily loaded we had to leave them behind, with the promise by the Navy crew that they would be picked up on the return trip from the beach - a promise I felt would be very difficult to fulfill. We did take on board a couple of the most severely injured, which were placed on the platform at the stern, by the Navy crew.

This was our first introduction to combat, an introduction that was to be greatly expanded shortly.

With this diversion completed, we set sail for the Beach. As we approached, we noticed a landing craft had just unloaded ahead of us, the only one on our sector of Utah Beach. The men ran across the beach and disappeared over the sand dunes, on a mission somewhere, to do something, but we had no idea what it was.

It was now broad daylight and the beach was beautiful. As it was low tide, there was a broad expanse of flat, cream-colored sand stretching from the sand dunes to the waters edge, broken only by ugly obstacles, scattered randomly across the beach. They consisted of several types; vertical log posts, with another log sloping down to the ground, with perhaps a mine on top: Steel Tetrahedrons constructed of steel rails and perhaps other steel shapes, welded together into a rough "ball" sticking up in all directions, ready to rip the bottom out of a landing craft or boat at high tide: a few single posts with a mine placed on top of it.

As we got to shallow waters, I noticed a line of slender round poles protruding from the surface. My first reaction was that it was some kind of booby-trap but when we waded thru the line nothing happened and we were greatly relieved. Not wanting to take a chance of being stranded by venturing too close to the waters edge, the navy crew dropped the ramp so we could disembark far enough from the waters' edge that it was about waist deep.

I had expected a lot of noise; artillery shells exploding, rifle and machine gun fire, etc., but it was so quiet I had an eerie feeling, hardly knowing what to expect next.

We waded ashore and came upon one of the men who had landed with the LCM ahead of us but had apparently been hit by small arms fire and was lying on the sand near the water's edge. He pleaded with us to take him inland and not leave him on exposed on the beach, which we did.

Each man in the platoon had as much of the explosives as he could carry; Sgt. Hogan and I carried the blasting caps in order to keep them separated from the explosives. Sgt. Hogan organized and supervised the placing of the charges on the obstacles in order to clear them from the section of the beach where we landed.

While this process was going on, I looked inland and saw Corporal Al kurgawski had gathered his group of ten or twelve men together, with their mine detectors, into a tight group, which violated one of the major rules of combat to keep them dispersed. I took two or three steps toward them to tell them to disperse, when a shell of some kind fell right in the middle to them and knocked them all to the ground. Some of them were still moving, so I started toward them again but then another shell landed among them but this time there was no further movement so I gave up.

Soon, all the explosives were in place and purple smoke grenades were ignited to warn the incoming forces that the explosives were about to be detonated. We retreated to the dune line and set off the charges. When the smoke cleared, we found the beach to be clear of obstacles in our sector, ready for the first wave to come ashore at H-Hour.

At the base of the dunes, a group had gathered to plan the next step - the movement off the beach. A small concrete wall was discovered just above the base of the sand dunes. I thought it was to function as a sea wall to protect the sand dunes from washing away but later in reading about D-Day, found it was actually an anti tank obstacle, designed to prevent tanks from going over the dunes as they could not get sufficient traction in the sand to go over the wall.

The question was asked, "Do you have and explosives left that we can use to blow a hold through the concrete wall?" We searched the beach but mostly found some Bangalore Torpedoes, which are long steel pipes, filled with explosives and are usually used for clearing openings through barbed wire entanglements. We piled what we had against the concrete wall and detonated it, which produced a nice hole through the concrete wall sufficient for a tank to pass through.

The next question was "Do you have any mine detectors?" as there was a minefield at the top of the sand dunes. I walked across the beach to the water's edge but failed to find any sign of mine detectors but I did come across the body of one of the men that was attached to Capt. Kurgawski's crew. He had his head nearly severed neatly from his body - a gruesome and heart-rending sight. There were also pathetic little piles of the possessions and equipment of men who had died or been wounded during the landing - thankfully, not many bodies though.

On the way back across the beach, it dawned on me that there was a lot of artillery fire on the beach and I started hitting the ground with increasing frequency - thus you learn by practical experience the arts of combat. If you are a quick learner you survive, if you are not, you may not gain much by experience. When I arrived back at the sand dunes, the decision was made to start probing the mines with our bayonets since we had no mine detectors. We had barely started the probing when another Engineering unit arrived with the proper equipment for detecting mines, so we turned the job over to them.

So ended our assigned involvement in the D-Day landings.

I withdrew the few men I had left and we assembled nearby to decide what to do next. I felt that since we had finished our participation in the D-Day Landings that we had better find the rest of our Company so we could be united before the end of the day.

I told the men to stay where they were and I would go down the beach and see if I could locate Company Headquarters. As I walked down the beach I met two Colonels who wanted to know what I was doing. I told them we had finished our job and I was looking for my Company. They asked what I had been doing. When I told them we had just finished probing for mines in order to clear a road inland, but had been relieved by another unit that had mine detectors and were better able to do the work.

They told me to go back where I had been and see if I could help with the mine clearing. So I returned to where the mine clearing was going on.

As I returned, a light tank was parked at the top of a dune and I didn't notice that everyone was lying on the ground, but as I stepped in front of the tank I heard a bullet go by in front of me. It bounced off the helmet of one man and went through the leg of another. The tank fired simultaneously at the sniper in a windmill about 200-300 yards away and either hit him or scared him to death as there was no more trouble from that sector.

I talked to the Officer in charge of the mine clearing and asked if we could be any help. He said he had plenty of manpower to clear the road but it might be useful to have an assembly area on the south side of the road where it was relatively flat.

I joined the remnant of my platoon and the first thing they told me was that shortly after I had left a large crater I was in, before going down the beach, a shell of some kind had landed in the area. By this time, traffic was rolling along the road in a steady stream, so there appeared to be no reason to continue our probing work at the side of the road so I called the men together. They were lying on the ground and only Sgt. Tobin and I were standing, when I stepped on a "Bouncing Betty."

Normally it shoots up into the air and at about six feet above the ground, explodes, sending small ball-bearing shaped projectiles in all directions with devastating effect upon everyone in the vicinity, especially the one that steps on it. This one had been in the ground so long it was corroded sufficiently that it did not shoot into the air and explode but the ball-bearings shot out of the ground and sprayed the area slightly above the surface of the ground. The ball bearings missed my feet and legs but hit two or three men lying on the ground.

Sgt. Tobin was sure he had been hit as he could feel the blood running down his leg but on examination he found a missile had hit his canteen and it was water running down his leg. We got those who had been hit to a field hospital that had been set up where the road had intersected with an existing road inland.

Again, the question of finding and re-joining the Company arose. So I sent Pvt. O'Melia out to look for them, while we waited for him to come back. He returned in about an hour and said he had located Company Headquarters on the main road leading inland. Capt. Manion wanted us to re-join the Company but he wanted me to contact the Beach Master first to see if any supplies or equipment for B Company had arrived on the beach and if so, where it was.

I went down to the beach and walked along just in front or the concrete wall. There was much German artillery fire landing on the beach now and the reinforcements arriving during the afternoon and evening were getting a different reception than we had gotten earlier that morning. Many troops had dug in behind the concrete wall, However, I kept going and soon found the Beach master, but he knew nothing about anything for the 299th Engineers, so I backtracked to where I had left the men. Pvt. O'Melia led us south along the beach and we had a joyous reunion with Capt. Manion and the rest of the Company.

We were located in a large open field which was occupied by the first waves as it had many fox holes scattered across the terrain, so rather than having to dig a new one we just picked out one that took our fancy and moved in. It was still and hour or two before sunset so we explored the area, including a nearby concrete bunker, with a good view of the beach, so good that, we were amazed that we were able to land before being blown out of the water.

It was during this time that I sustained my only injury during WWII. None of us had eaten since the previous day when we found a case of British soup in a wooded box, we visualized a virtual feast. While opening the box, I scratched my hand with one of the protruding nails. For that I didn't receive a Purple Heart. As the sun went down and darkness fell we all fell into our favorite foxhole to spend a cold and restless night. We had all been told to leave our jackets in the LCM, so we had not protection from the rather cold temperature and we were apprehensive about what might happen to us in the night.

And so ended the most exciting and hazardous day that any of us had ever endured: D-Day landing in Normandy, France, June 6th, 1944.

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