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PatchWork |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
D-Day
June 6, 1944
The
United States and her allies were waging war around the globe with heavy
fighting and loss of life. World War 11, which began for the United States with the
attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941, had rolled across the planet
until there were very few places not touched.
As
1944 opened on the European continent, everyone guessed what was coming.
This was to be the year of the long-awaited invasion by the allied
forces.
American
forces that had been stationed in England, along with Canadians, British, and
French troops were prepped to attack. These
men were united in one purpose, to attack the German army and free Europe from
five years of oppressive occupation. Wilburn
Gaines, Erath County country boy turned soldier, remembers that night 58 years
ago.
“We
went to bed and tried to sleep but there was too much to think about,” Gaines
said. “We knew the danger of
invading Europe and the bad weather would make it worse. I looked at my buddy.
‘Virgil, let’s give ‘em hell tomorrow’, I said.
H-Hour
came at 6:30 a.m. In weather that
made many men sea-sick in the choppy waters during the channel crossing, 150,000
men attempted to land on the Normandy beaches of
Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.
Cpl. Gaines’ landing craft was headed for Omaha.
Unknown to the Allied intelligence, a crack German outfit had been moved
onto the bluffs overlooking the beach. Those
veteran enemy gunners really shelled the landing forces there.
“When
we landed, we hit a shell hole on the beach and the water came up waist high,”
Gaines remembers. “Our lieutenant
shouted, ‘Boys, we’re not going to make it!’ But I shouted back, Yes we
are, we’re gonna win this thing! They were pulling out the trucks that were
stuck but somehow I got mine out. I saw the guy that was driving the bulldozer pulling out the
trucks get shot and another soldier jumped up and took over.
“There
were overturned Jeeps and dead soldiers and smoldering fires everywhere on the
beach. Our 240’s were hammering at the concrete walls the Germans had
built,” Gaines said. “These were big guns, big enough for a man to crawl through
and they were blowing holes in the walls so we could get in.
My machine gunner, we called him Papa, was standing up in the back of the
ammo truck shooting at the enemy planes as they circled and aimed at my truck.
Papa was good. He never
missed. He’d wait ‘til that
plane made a turn to come back over and strafe us and then he’d pop ‘em. He saved my life and all our lives over and over.
“The
bodies of the dead, both theirs and ours, were so thick that bulldozers had to
push them aside so we could drive our trucks through,” Gaines said.
“I’ll always remember the terrible smell of death on that beach. There were dead bodies, dead cattle, dead chickens, dead
horses and dead soldiers so bad you
had to cover your nose with a handkerchief to filter out the smell in order to
sleep.”
5,000 ships and 12,000 allied planes set out across the English Channel
on that morning 58 years ago. Of those soldiers, 10,000 were lost before the sun
went down. Paratroopers and glider
troops came down badly scattered and took heavy casualties.
Nevertheless the day ended in victory for the Allied Forces and was the
beginning of the end for the war in Europe as the men of the First Division
pushed on inland.
Cherbourg
was taken before the end of June and on July 26th the American First
Army aided by heavy bombing ahead of it, punched a hole through the German lines
and General Patton’s tanks went roaring through.
The American Seventh Army landed on the French Riviera on August 15 and
France was free after 4 long years. Remaining
battles included the Battle of the Bulge where 90,000 Germans were killed and
Hitler could no longer feel safe. On
April 30, eleven months after D-Day he locked his mistress and himself in a
bunker and committed suicide.