Several days beyond the 75th commemoration I suddenly remember my cousin Dallasite Jerry Stover who went ashore on Omaha Beach on D+2. He was an Army signal officer with the advance HQ of the Ninth Air Force.
Jerry, who passed in 2012 at the age of 92, would go on to do such things as help liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. But on the beach at Normandy he helped set up combat communications—after connecting with his uncle William Edward Matchett, my maternal grandfather’s brother, a Navy communications officer who’d gone ashore on the first deadly day.
“It was much quieter when I waded in on D+2,” Jerry wrote, “but the grim carnage had me very concerned about Bill…I found him safe! When he was deployed back to USA a week later, Bill left me his Navy jeep. A great gift! I used it to carry our radio sets across France!”
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 