The Independent-News, Volume 120, Number 3, Walkerton, St. Joseph County, 2 June 1994 — Page 25

Normandy . . . From Our Own Men’s Memories (continued from Page 1) rations to 739 Tank Battalion. Our company evacuated 78 Infantry Division from Mons to the forward ir ea (Secret Mission). Our company also helped evacuate 130 General Hospital which was in danger by the Germans already in the nearby town of Ciney. “Buzz Bombs” were a constant scary nuisance, one came close to attacking our convoy, but fortunately we did not sustain any casualties. We hauled ammunitions up to the Field Artillery Unit that had six big 240 Howitzer guns. While we were being unloaded, each gun would shoot off six rounds. One of the guns was very close to a building and each time and they shot, the roof the building raised up and then went back down; makes one wonder if the roof ever fell in! We are having our 11th 3594 Truck Company Reunion on June 3,

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4 and Sth of this year at Evansville, Indiana. Submitted by “Buster” Earl L. Lindsley JOHN ULLERY 4th Infantry Division After waiting seven days aboard ship in the choppy waters of the English Channel, the 4th Infantry Division landed on Utah Beach at 5:15 a.m. on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Spent 11 long months in the front lines during World War 11. Submitted by John Ullery EUGENE BAUGHMAN Bth Air Force Flight Engineer We flew out of England in the 487th Bomber Group. We flew in a B-17 with a 10 man crew, and made two flight missions on D-Day. We left Lavenham, England and flew into France and bombed a railroad marshalling yard to disrupt railroad traffic. On the second mission, we flew in to knock out some railroad bridges. Both missions were successful. We had left the U.S. several weeks prior to D-Day as a brand new bomber group headed for Natel, Brazil. Then over the Atlantic which took 11 hours and then to Dekr, Africa, before flying on to England. After arriving in England in April 1944, we made numerous bombing missions to French and German cities such as Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and Wiesbaden. Submitted by Eugene Baughman JAMES W. VERKLER NCDU Naval Combat Demolition Unit MM 1 Machinist's Mate (First Gass)

U.S. Navy — Seabees He joined the NCDU in November 1943. His unit consisted of 100 men who were trained to “clear the beachheads”. This unit joined a 600-ship armada headed for England and eventually the beaches of Normandy for the D-Day Invasion. When they neared Gibraltor, his unit of 100 was divided 60 to 40. The 60 were sent north to England to participate in the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Os the 60 sent to “clear the beachheads” at Normandy, only seven survived. Fortunately Jim was in the group of 40 sent to North Africa, then Salerno, Italy, and later to invade the coasts of southern France. One night as the convoy entered the Mediterrean, they had a close call. They were called to “battle stations” as German aircraft were suddenly attacking the convoy. The ship’s gun crew saw a torpedo slide harmlessly under the bow of the ship and out the other side. The next morning the captain of the ship said that they were probably mistaken for an aircraft carrier because of the silhouette of piggyback LCT they were carrying. Having survived such a “close call prompted new orders for the ship to lag behind five miles from the rest of the convoy to what is commonly known as the “coffin’s comer” as this was an ammunitions ship carrying 600 tons of TNT and 100,000 gallons of aircraft fuel. Later as they invaded the southern shores of France, they encountered no resistance at all, as the French Underground had, probably just hours before, wiped out all German forces, as was evidenced by dead Germans still manning machine guns all aimed at the beachers. Submitted by Helen D. Verkier on behalf of James W. Verkier (deceased)

ROBERT W. SCHAEFFER Battalion Courier Served in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) from September 1943 to November 1945. I spent two months in England outside of Portsmouth, England in tents along the English Channel in preparation for the invasion. We spent time putting the finishing touches on the waterproofing of all our vehicles. We observed all of the gliders being towed across the English Channel early in the morning of June 6,1944. On attempting to land at Omaha Beach on the coast of Normandy aboard an LST, we were unable to disembark due to large shell craters and had to wait for a high tide to pull back and make another run at the beach. We finally landed on Omaha Beach (D-Day Plus 10) with the 262 Ordnance Battalion, 691st ■ Ordnance Company Ammunition attached to the Ist Army under General Omar Bradley. After the I breakout at St. Lo we were attached to the 3rd Army under General I George Patton. I served as Battalion Courier for 262 Ordnance Battalion Headquarters through I France, Belgium, Holland, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland, I and Central Europe. In General “Ike” Eisenhower’s own words: “Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force — you are about to embark I upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are ■ upon you.” Summing up the action on D-Day is best chronicled by a qr^te from

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JUNE 2, 1994 - THE INDEPENDENT-NEWS -

The Stars And Stripes, a daily newspaper of the U.S. Army the day after D-Day June 7, 1944 edition: “Allied armies, supported by more than 4,000 ships and 11,000 warplanes, stormed the northern coast of France in the dark hours of yesterday morning to the decisive battle for the liberation of Europe, and by nightfall Nazicontrolled radios were admitting penetrations ‘several miles’ deep and predicting still other landings at any hour. . . . Along a front described by the Germans as 80 miles long — from the mouth of the Seine River at La Harve to the tip of the Cherbourg peniunsula — American, British, and Canadian troops landed on French soil from the choppy waters of the English Channel and from the storm-stud-ded skies. From 600 naval guns.

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ranging from 4 to 16 inches, and from massive fleets of supporting planes ton upon ton of high explosives thundered into the concrete and steel of the West Wall which Hitler erected to guard his conquered countries. The mightiest air and sea armadas ever assembled paved the way for the successful landings. American warships participating included battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, as well as hundreds of smaller craft and troopships. Thirty-one thousand Allied airmen, not counting airborne troops, made a continuous road through the night in the skies over France. Between midnight and 8:00 a.m. more than 10,000 tons of high explosives were hurled upon the Normandy invasion area by the Allied aircraft.” Submitted by Robert Schaeffer

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