The channel voyage on D-Day

The 474^th’s half-tracks left Bridgwater early on the morning of May 8, 1944, and began the all-day ride to the invasion assembly area. They arrived about 5 p.m. and moved into tents that would be their homes for the next few weeks.

Preparation for the invasion stepped up at this point. The half-tracks were waterproofed for their cross-channel journey, guns were made ready, and cartridge belts that had been empty for a year and a half were finally filled. In addition to M-1 rifle ammunition, each man was given two bandoleers, a supply of hand grenades, puke bags, sea-sick pills and toilet paper. The food improved as well, as Jack recalls. “We knew it was getting close when they started giving us steak three meals a day.”

The outfit moved onto LST number 47 in the marshalling area near Dartmouth in the early days of June. For the assault on the beaches, they were attached to the VII Corps of the 1^st Army, under the immediate control of the 11^th AAA group.¹⁵ Capt. Herlihy, who hailed from Beechurst, Long Island, NY, recalled those last few pre-invasion hours:

The plan was for me to precede the battery (with A Battery, as I remember) and reconnoiter for positions before C Battery came in. We rode ot Darmouth with A Battery [Jack’s battery] June 3 and loaded into an English LCT [landing craft tank]…We went up the beautiful Dart River a mile or so and spent a beautiful night at anchor, wondering how much THEY knew. If you remember, for a few days before we left the camp in the marshalling area, Axis Sally kept telling us on the radio that they were waiting for us in France. Naturally, we figured that they already knew what we knew. The next morning we were in an endless column of craft, four wide, that went up and back as far as one could see. Then we spotted similar columns on both flanks. It was staggering and sobering—HOW could THEY miss all this activity?...We had each been issued $4 in French invasion currency, but as the cards and dice came out, the money went from many small piles of $4 each to one or two piles of many, many francs each…At 5:30 a.m. [now June 4] we slipped our moorings and eased down river, passing LST 281, with C Battery aboard but few awake…The countryside was beautiful and soon we met the swell of the channel. Laterthat day we rendezvoused in Torquay with many other craft. The next day [June 5] saw us in the channel, joined now by destroyers, cruisers and battleships…It clouded up rapidly, and a strong wind blew up. Now all the guns were covered up, and the spray reached back to the bridge, all the way astern, as waves broke over the bow. I huddled there with the English lieutenant and wondered what an artilleryman was doing in this clamshell which barely floated even with nobody shooting at us. As the waves grew, water sloshed back and forth on the deck, where the half-tracks were. As the men lined the rails, a trail of mails floated behind us. The thought struck me—if all the ships are like this one the subs need not see us, they could smell our trail. As the day worsened, I felt that practically nobody would be ready for action if it came. I guess the same thought hit others, for an American patrol ship hove to, and an officer yelled over, “D-Day has been postponed 24 hours until 0530 June 6^th.” Several at our rail who were then losing supper volunteered advice on what he could do with his bloody invasion, but he ignored them as if he handled all his invasions this way…At 0430 [June 6] I awoke, put on my shoes and went to the bridge. It was dark, and we were barely moving in a slight swell. But on the horizon, hordes of bombers droned, tremendous bursts of flame and tinted smoke were all over; flack burst and tracers arched all over the sky. It was staggering. Then all the naval craft opened up. You’d see the muzzle flare, the tracer round arch into the coast, a tremendous burst of flame, and finally the roar of the shots would roll across the water. It seemed impossible for life to survive ashore. As dawn came, our fighters strafed targets ashore. We began to head in now, and as we passed in front of a battleship, the old Texas [Ambrose identifies it as the Arizona but Jack remembers it as the Texas, too], she let go a broadside that must have pushed us sideways several feet. Screaming and cursing at their lack of consideration, we inched shoreward. Shore fire must have been effective, for suddenly one of our P-38 twin-hulled fighters dove down and began to lay smoke just off the beach. We could see the enemy tracer creeping up his tail while he held the steady course he had to, in order to make the smoke effective. Finally, he blew up in a tremendous ball of fire, as a second P-38 resumed, and other fighters handled the ack-ack units. We were speechless at the fate of the unknown hero.¹⁶

Col. William A. Stricklen Jr., commanding officer of the 474^th, was nearby in another LCT with his own set of thoughts and concerns as the bombardment continued. He saw a billow of smoke 100 yards away from an LCT that had been hit by German fire. Stricklen helped pull a wounded soldier from the craft out of the water and took him to the dispensary. At 6 a.m., Allied fire subsided and his LCT moved forward again.

Then, about 6,000 yards offshore, Stricklen’s LCT, which carried about 75 people, was hit by enemy fire. Since the colonel had to get to the beach to establish his command post, he stopped a small Navy boat carrying only a crew of two and hitched a ride to shore. They let him out about 75 feet from dry land. At one point he stepped into a shell hole and was submerged, but got out of it. The water was no more than waist high the rest of the way.¹⁷ 


The video included below begins with the channel crossing and ends with the liberation of Paris:

The Utah Beach landing

This passage from The Maverick Outfit best describes what happened next:

A view of Utah Beach from a landing craft on D-Day 

The beach was littered with dead and wounded debris. Stricklen met another soldier and they were proceeding to the sea wall, a concrete structure about 200 yards from the beach. It was over five feet high and paralleled the beach. It was a natural place to establish headquarters. Stricklen and the soldier congratulated each other for getting to shore. The soldier was one and a half yards from the colonel when a piece of shrapnel tore off the soldier’s arm. Stricklen carried his unconscious comrade to an aid station. After, Stricklen set up his command post at the sea wall. He dug a three-and-a-half foot deep foxhole and then excavated an area underneath the sea wall. Stricklen’s units then began arriving. By 8 a.m., 32, or half of the battalion's half-tracks, arrived. The first elements of the battalion ashore on D-Day were reconnaissance parties from A and B Batteries, consisting of the battery commanders and platoon sergeants, who landed from LCVPs [landing craft, vehicle and personnel] At H plus 60 minutes. [The rest of] A and B Batteries landed at H-hour plus four behind the Fourth Infantry Division. They landed with airborne machine gun crews. One platoon of C Battery landed late on D-Day, while the other platoon of C Battery, D Battery and Headquarters Battery landed from LSTs on D plus one.

Jack’s memory varies from this slightly. H-hour was 6:30 a.m., according to Ambrose, so H plus four would have been 10:30 a.m. “I remember something about our particular half-track and 9 a.m.,” Jack says.

Capt. Herlihy picks up from here:

As we approached the shore, I could see GI trucks all over. One, full of jerricans of gasoline, was a roaring fire. It was about 9 a.m. when I saw three bursts in a line about three seconds apart, and admired the clearing of the minefield. But the next burst was in a truck, which went all over the area in pieces, and I had seen my first of many artillery actions in combat. To lighten the load of my jeep in the soft sand, I walked ashore, and although people were all around, I felt alone and naked. Utah Beach was about 300 yards wide, in front of a swamp at least a mile wide, with roads to the interior only eight inches above water.¹⁹

US troops arrive at Utah Beach on D-Day.

Jack adds, “There were some soldiers in foxholes on the beach as we passed by, although they were standing up and not moving, with their helmets tilted forward. There was no lack of incoming mail from the enemy, but it wasn’t landing on the beach next to the ocean. The gun crews kept hidden in the turrets to avoid being hit by enemy fire. To get off the beach, we had to wait until a tank equipped with a bulldozer blade pushed sand up against the wall so that another tank equipped with a 75mm canon could position itself and destroy an anti-tank position nearby; so much for the enemy gun.”

Back to Herlihy:

Although the 4^th Division was by now several miles inland, we were getting considerable artillery fire. We raced for a four-foot sea wall at the crown of the beach, and found that the medics were already lining up dead Americans. I lay beside a tall, dead American and wondered what it was like when he came in. While we enlarged a hole we found, an ammo truck went up near us. We separated then, to look for the 16 gun positions and command posts. Since we had been landed about 1,000 yards south of the intended position, all our beautiful detailed sketches and maps (1 to 5,000 as I remember) were useless. As I roved I found myself all alone, and from the constant diving into holes, I found my carbine jammed with sand. Finally as I passed a tremendous pillbox which had been knocked out by naval gunfire, I heard a noise behind me. It turned out to be a German corpse, dislodged by a burst or by my footsteps, rolling down the side of the pillbox. Collecting my entrails, I moved on.²⁰

Herlihy goes on to say that four Focke-Wulf 190s, German aircraft, strafed them that day. Jack remembers “four came down low and four ended up even lower. One of the pilots bailed out and the paratroopers took out after him.”

If you weren’t a casualty that day, you were witness to many, as Herlihy attests:

On D-Day, about noon, we saw a flight of C-47s head inland a mile or two, and as they slowed for a drop, much 20mm fire burst all over the wings and fuselages of the big, low, lumbering planes. We saw several burn and blow up. Flaming parachutes trailed down as the paratroops tried to escape the massacre. We all cried. As we explored the area inland just behind the swamp, looking for better positions, we followed a dirt road, and at a turn faced a farmhouse. An American squad of 10 or more from the 4^th Division had done the same thing before, but had apparently been mowed down by a machine gun in a window, for they lay in a pile in a ditch next to the road. While I was by the sea wall waiting for Lt. Nevins, a P-47 sputtered overhead in trouble, then flames came from the motor and the pilot bailed out, but his chute never opened. The plane crashed with a great roar and explosion, 75 yards from our command post after turning away at the last minute.²⁰

“I clearly remember the P-47 pilot who was flying very low, his plane’s engine making a very loud noise,” Jack recalls. “He ejected but his chute didn’t open, and both crashed into the swampy flooded area.”

Along about 11 p.m., all of Stricklen’s units had arrived, and not one had been killed. Battalion records for June 7—D-Day Plus One—show another busy day for the boys:

• 9:30 a.m.—B Battery destroyed an enemy plane.
• 10 a.m.—A and B engaged about a half-dozen FW 190s, with A destroying one and B another.
• 6:50 p.m.—A destroyed two Me 109s.
• 6:55 p.m.—B engaged three more and destroyed one.
• 8:35 p.m.—C engaged eight FW 190s in a battle.
• 8:40 p.m.—A hit two out of six FW 190s, while B fought off two more.
• 10 p.m.—A and C engaged eight FW 190s, hitting two of them.

Already the 474^th was gaining a reputation, which would later be confirmed in the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for soldiers, as “the First in the First.”²¹ 

This video juxtaposes how Utah Beach looks today (including memorials) with actual photos taken on D-Day:

Homeward bound

In the midst of the shelling of Duren, Mookie went into heat and had a 
bit of a mating mishap. She and her partner got stuck together, and their 
squealing in the middle of the night woke up the gun crew, who had to pour 
cold water on the hapless pair to part them. Nine weeks later, Boots and 
Joker were born. All three dogs went home with members of the gun crew.

At the cessation of hostilities on May 8, 1945, it was D-Day plus 336. Three days later, the 474^th’s various batteries were assigned to new areas, with A Battery and Jack going to Hettstedt.

At midnight June 11, the VII Corps became nonoperational and was relieved of its command by the XXI Corps of the 9^th Army. Not long afterward, the 4^th Cavalry relieved the 474^th, and the outfit started on a long trek back to an area south of Frankfurt.

On July 2, the 474^th moved again, this time to Burstadt, and then 10 days later to Sandbach. Even though part of the Army of Occupation, there was little soldiering to be done. “For the next month or so we played a lot of ball,” Jack says.

It was in Sandbach that Gen. George C. Marshall announced every soldier with 85 points was eligible for discharge—one point for each month of service, with an extra point for each month overseas and five points for battle stars and medals. Soldiers with 80-84 points were sent to replacement centers, and new recruits with no experience would be brought in to replace the “old” guys.

Jack didn’t have 85 points, but he was one of the first to be sent to a replacement center. “I ended up in Chateau Thierry, just outside of Paris,” he recalls. “Those months were the nicest months I ever spent in the Army: no discipline, no ‘chicken,’ all kinds of passes to Paris and other nearby towns, etc. I worked sometimes for a master sergeant, usually doing some typing, especially when the regular clerk got drunk.”

Early in August, word came over the radio that the United States had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. And on Aug. 14, Japan surrendered. “The war ended and wow!” Jack says. “We knew we’d be going back to the states pronto. Everyone was on their good behavior now and had everything packed and ready to go. The Army has its own speed, though. But looking back, they did pretty good.”

The group Jack had been placed in at the replacement center had 30 to 35 men and was sent to Camp Lucky Strike in LeHavre. “We boarded the train in the evening and arrived at our destination the next day,” he recalls. “I had to sleep on a steep stairway in the caboose but didn’t care because I was going home.”

Jack outside his tent at Camp Lucky Strike

The camps set up for soldiers in transit were named after cigarettes, and German prisoners of war were used to staff the chow lines. “One day one of the German servers flicked the mashed potatoes into the mess gear of one of the guys in our group,” Jack says. “The American soldier hit him in the face with the mess kit and then took off. Later, the major in charge of us called us together to inform us that the German would be going amongst us to see if he could point out the soldier who hit him. We were told that if we snitched, we would never get back to the states, ‘Is that understood?’ ‘Yes sir!’ The German soldier never pointed to anybody! I wonder why?”

A 23-year-old Jack left for the states from LeHavre on a Liberty ship on Oct. 24, 1945. The ocean voyage back to the states brought yet another storm at sea, pushing the boat off course and down near Spain. “But after that it was smooth sailing,” Jack says.

He met a soldier on the ship who was an accountant, and the talks they had got Jack interested in pursuing accounting as well. Also on board were guys who had been MPs in Paris, breaking up the black market rings and hanging deserters. They talked about how they treated American deserters worse than any enemy prisoner. “They used to put them in dug-out pits and spray water on them in cold weather,” Jack recalls.

The ship arrived in New York City Nov. 5, and the soldiers went on a troop train to Camp Kilmore, NJ. "After a few days there, we went by train to Indiantown Gap, PA, near Harrisburg,” he says. “It took about five days before we got our discharge and pay.” The maximum discharge pay allowed was $500, and Jack received a claim statement for $445--$10 for each of 13 months of domestic service and $15 for each of 21 months of foreign service. He wouldn’t receive the actual check until six weeks later. His discharge papers are dated Nov. 9, 1945.

Not sure where this
was taken, but judging
by the big smile, maybe
he just learned when
he was going home.

“They gave the Pittsburgh area soldiers a train ticket, put us on a civilian train, and we were homeward bound,” Jack recalls. “The train stopped in Greensburg, PA, so I got off, thumbed a ride to New Kensington, and walked several blocks to my home at 316 Fourth Ave. Dad was in the kitchen, so I knocked on the window and told him to unlock the front door. I’ll never forget that moment: Home at last! There are moments in your life when you know that your family really does love you, and this was one of mine!”

It was love of family, along with faith, that kept most of the men—including Jack—going during their months overseas. “I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the personal reliance on the many silent prayers made by myself and many other soldiers,” Jack recalls. “At one time, there were three faiths represented among the seven guys in our own gun crew. I don’t remember having any deep or extended discussions on religion, but I assure you that none of us missed a chance to attend services with the chaplain when such services were available.

“There were many times that faith alone seemed to be the only reliable protection available. I mention all of this because God was a constant thought of each of us, especially under severe combat conditions. This story would be incomplete without noting that.”

This "home movie" clip shows conditions at Camp Lucky Strike near LeHavre, including an unbelievable chow line: