Voices of D-Day: The Story of the Allied Invasion Told by Those Who Were There

329 Pages·1994·17.52 MB·English

by  Ronald J. Drez

VOICES OF D-DAY
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V O I C ES OF
~D-DAY~
THE STORY OF THE ALLIED INVASION
TOLD BY THOSE WHO WERE THERE
EDITED BY
RONALD J. DREZ
LOUISIANA STATK UNIVERSITY PRESS / BATON ROUGE
Copyright © 1994 by Eisenhower Center for Leadership Studies
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Louisiana Paperback Edition, 1996
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
10 9 8 7
Designer: Amanda McDonald Key
Typeface: Palatino
Typesetter: G & S Typesetters, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Voices of D-Day : the story of the Allied invasion, told by those who
were there / edited by Ronald J. Drez.
p. cm. — (Eisenhower Center studies on war and peace)
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
ISBN 0-8071-1902-4 (cloth) ISBN 0-8071-2081-2 (pbk.)
1. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—France—Normandy. 2. World
War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives. 3. Normandy (France)—History,
Military. I. Drez, Ronald J., 1940- . II. Series.
D756.5.N6V65 1994
940.5471442—dc20 93-41311
CIP
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources. (<3
CONTENTS
Foreword, by Stephen E. Ambrose xi
Preface xv
Editor's Note xvii
Introduction 1
1 Signing Up 8
2 The Gathering Forces 19
3 Training and Quarantine 28
4 Plans and Execution 52
5 The Screaming Eagles 71
6 The Bridge Prangers 98
7 Troarn and Robehomme 119
8 The All-Americans 127
9 The Air War 161
10 Utah Beach 171
11 The Guns of Brecourt 189
12 The 116th at Omaha Beach 198
13 Easy Red and the 1st Division 229
14 Guns and Rangers 258,
15 Satterlee, Harding, and McCook 280
16 Gold and Juno Beaches 287
17 Sword Beach 295
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Photographs
following page 150
Eisenhower and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal
Field Marshal Rommel
German mine explodes near a landing craft
American troops head toward Normandy
Franz Gockel
Hans von Luck
105mm gun emplacement in France
Robert Sales
Attore Zappacosta
Robert Miller
Leonard Lomell
Bob Slaughter
Bill Tucker
Stanley Dudka
Gil Murdoch
John Howard
The crew of the LCC 60
John Robertson
Jerry Eades
Don Malarkey
Steve Kellman
Sam Grundfast
x / ILLUSTRATIONS
Charles Thomas
Edward Jeziorski
Malvin Pike
William Moriarity
Stanley Stypulkowski
Leo Rychleski, Murphy Scott, and Joe Cowan
Robert Kemeny, George Stalla, Rudolph Schneider,
and William Dagley
Maps
1. English Channel Crossing Lanes 5
2. German Forces near Omaha Beach 21
3. Invasion Area 43
4. German Defenses at Omaha Beach 50
5. Cotentin Peninsula 56
6. Pegasus Bridge 108
7. Airborne Plan 134
8. Omaha Beach Terrain 199
9. Widerstandsnest 62 at Colleville-sur-Mer 236
10. Pointe du Hoc 272
11. Highway to Vierville 277
FOREWORD
This book is the culmination of a decade-long project of the Eisen-
hower Center, at the University of New Orleans, to collect, tran-
scribe, and preserve in an archives as many oral histories as possible
from the men of D-Day. From the beginning, we aimed to publish as
many of the most representative and most vivid stories as possible.
Here are some 150 of them.
The Eisenhower Center's D-Day Project began in 1983. We wrote
letters to newspapers and magazines, asking veterans of D-Day to
contact us. When they did, slowly at first, we sent them a brief set of
instructions on making an oral history on tape. We asked them to tell
us about their birth, education, when they got into the army or navy,
where they trained, when they arrived in the United Kingdom, their
relations with the British people, their training, and so forth—and
then to walk us, minute by minute, from midnight to midnight on
June 6, 1944.
As the tapes began to come in, it was quickly obvious that we had
a big success. The stories we were hearing were stories of courage, of
slaughter, of pathos, of breakdown. There were funny stories. There
was a high emotional content. And there were wonderfully revealing
anecdotes.
So we knew our system worked. We could get these men to sit
down with just a tape recorder and a single sheet of not very detailed
instructions and take their minds back and hear the cannon fire and
feel the fear and share the elation of the victory, and tell us about it
in a detailed and moving way.
Our system prospered. Word got out. More tapes came in. Our
student workers got better at spelling French place names as pro-
nounced by American GIs.
It was time to expand. We wanted to reach out, get more veterans
involved. In 1987 we brought Ron Drez on as assistant director. It was
a marriage made in heaven.
Drez was a 1962 graduate of Tulane University. He went imme-
diately into the Marine Corps and served as a rifle company com-