I let the anniversary pass, so I could include both relatives, both from Dallas, who went ashore on Omaha Beach on the first and second days. One, a great uncle who landed on the first day as a Navy communications officer, died a few years ago. The other, his nephew who was an Army officer in the signal corps who came in on the second day, is in his eighties. I like Belmont Club’s take:
"Sixty three years after D-Day the ghostly 8th Airforce bomber fields are silent, unvisited by men now too old to make the pilgrimage. Across the green counties, ‘Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year’…"
Changes, indeed. My great uncle’s nephew went back to Omaha in 1999. I turn the little bottle of sand he gave me in my hand. It looks like ordinary beach sand. But it isn’t.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Dick, here is a very fine article by S.L.A. Marshall about two companies from the 116th US Infantry (Stonewall Brigade) that were in the First Wave at Omaha Beach. Article is from the Atlantic Magazine, Nov. 1960.
It is online at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196011/omaha
Dick, here is a very fine article by S.L.A. Marshall about two companies from the 116th US Infantry (Stonewall Brigade) that were in the First Wave at Omaha Beach. Article is from the Atlantic Magazine, Nov. 1960.
It is online at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196011/omaha
Thanks, David. I’d seen it before but enjoyed reading it again. I don’t think my great uncle was one of “the forty-seven immortals” that Marshall mentions. But he did survive the sinking of his LST by an artillery shell. He swam ashore carrying the radio he used to set up communications between the beach and the ships offshore. When his nephew, whose job was to set up communications with the Army Air Corps, found him on the second day, he was surprised to find him still alive.
Thanks, David. I’d seen it before but enjoyed reading it again. I don’t think my great uncle was one of “the forty-seven immortals” that Marshall mentions. But he did survive the sinking of his LST by an artillery shell. He swam ashore carrying the radio he used to set up communications between the beach and the ships offshore. When his nephew, whose job was to set up communications with the Army Air Corps, found him on the second day, he was surprised to find him still alive.