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D-Day vet recalls terrible battle


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Perhaps time dulls the memory but the 83rd Division did not come ashore on D-Day. They arrived in Normandy on June 18th. Maybe the reporter got it wrong. <_<

 

I'm reminded of how Andy Rooney always used to mention wading ashore at Omaha Beach. Till somebody found out it was 3 days after the invasion.

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Could be a reporter getting confuzzled. Maybe he went ashore on D-Day, was wounded, treated, then assigned to another unit on release.

 

I'd like to think so. But some of the other things like being asked to go to going to DC for the French medal and having it mailed, and the War Department keeping records secret for years.

He said he re-joined his unit in Dec not assigned to another.

There were no airfields to evacuate the wounded on D-Day so the surgeon telling him he was going to be flown back.

I've never heard of a Legion of Honor medal being mailed. The French love a good ceremony. WWII vets who have been awarded rhe medal are given the Chevalier rank. The one he is holding is the Officier rank, the same rank as Lindbergh's.

 

Could be he's totally legit. I hope so but I contacted an 83rd Div vet organization and they can determine.

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Story

 

Perhaps time dulls the memory but the 83rd Division did not come ashore on D-Day. They arrived in Normandy on June 18th. Maybe the reporter got it wrong. <_<

 

I'm reminded of how Andy Rooney always used to mention wading ashore at Omaha Beach. Till somebody found out it was 3 days after the invasion.

 

My father was with the 83rd and did not come ashore on June 6th. According to him lead elements started coming in on the 7th with the bulk of the division not landing for a week or so later. The 83rd was made up of a lot of different units that in the race across Europe might have been a hundred miles apart and there is a possibility that a unit did come in on the 6th as part of some special assignment.

As I have said he would never talk about the war and the only time I ever saw the man cry was when he took me to the theater to see the Longest Day. I was a young child but I remember that day vividly.

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As I said, I hope he's legit. I hate it when people turn out to be frauds.

But I have seen enough posers over the years to see a lot of similar patterns here.

 

There are a lot of families who have applied for their departed relatives medals after they passed, only to be told that they were never awarded them.

 

Some folks think that these types are a just phenomenon of Vietnam but that's not the case. They've been around after just about every war we've ever fought.

But I have seen enough posers over the years to see a lot of similar patterns here.

 

The Order of Battle for the Normandy Campaign indicates the 83rd Inf was first engaged in combat on June 27.

 

From the 83rd Division history:

It was to have been short, that voyage across the Channel. Rushed through the staging areas near Stonehenge, the Thunderbolt Division had top priority in everything. The Thunderbolts were needed badly, in Normandy. The voyage was short in point of crossing. But we did not disembark. A storm rose out of nowhere and slashed at Omaha Beach and made life miserable for a week. We sat and stood and laid around on our ships. We sang songs, cleaned our weapons, used our vomit bags, ate our landing rations. We went down into the holds of the ships and drew more ten-in-ones. We steam-cooked and ate ten-in-ones until they were coming out our ears. Still the days and nights passed.

 

And there were the sheer, forbidding cliffs of France, smack in front of us. Not two miles away. We wondered how in hell the D-day boys had managed them. All around us, to the horizon and beyond, were hundreds of other ships of the massive landing fleet. Scores of barrage balloons tugged with the wind, sometimes broke loose and floundered away. When the wind died down the muffled sound of gunfire could be heard. Some said it was fighting around Cherbourg. Others said it was around Caen. No one knew, really. None of us knew anything about battle. If you were positive about it during the day, like as not you'd change your mind at night. For then the sounds grew louder, and there were fires everywhere along the horizon, east and west. And Jerry was always overhead, raising hell with someone.

 

The Fourth of July, 1944 is a day the Thunderbolts will never forget. This was the day we launched our first attack against the enemy. We were young, then. Innocent. In spite of all the talking we hadn't learned particularly to hate anyone. We had yet to see our buddies messed up bad. But we did know fear in those days between Carentan and Sainteny and Periers. The kind that hits you sharp in the groin and brings sweat to your face and hands.
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5 or 6 million served, half a million gave their all. Many did nothing more important than cook for trainees in training camps or dig graves. Some cannot live with such a small accomplishment and don't realize how important that small contribution was.

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