Eyewitness to D-Day: no ‘bravado’
Among the first interviews Forrest Pogue conducted following the Allied invasion of Europe 75 years ago this week was with a 21-year old Texan, a corporal, who had been badly wounded.
With a wife and three-month-old baby at home, the soldier grinned at the prospect of returning to the United States, now that a German mine on Omaha Beach had left a painful, gaping hole in his side.
Pogue, assigned by the Army to cover the war as an eyewitness historian, later wrote that the wounded Texan told him “how the German pillboxes took a heavy toll on his group” on D-Day.
“He related how he had seen two boats with 35 men each burn as they neared the beach, while other men died in agony or dropped overboard screaming into the sea.
“Others were heavily hit as they moved across the beaches, but they had reached the top of the bluff in an hour. Captured Germans told them that an attack had been expected on 20 May, but they were totally surprised” by the June 6 assault.
Days before, Pogue, waiting on a boat off the French coast of Normandy, made an observation of the men who were to carry the war against the German enemy into the heartland of western Europe.
“Although the men … are to be committed to action almost as soon as they went beyond the range of the first hills, they exhibited no special qualms, no bravado, no ‘well, boys, let’s give it the old try’ spirit.
“In the boats they may have been have been given a stirring message … or they may have had visions of home … but they certainly kept any such sentiments secret when they left” for shore and the war.
“Perhaps great crises have their own drug for the emotions so that people under heavy stress act more nonchalantly than people going to work, but these men, as I noticed over a period of days, acted as if nothing unusual was amiss.”
Combat historian Sergeant Pogue refused to glamorize the war, the Americans who fought it, or himself. Pre-invasion, the chief topics of conversation among the men were “women, whiskey and home in that order. … There is an absolute lack of heroics about these soldiers. … There is no great hatred of the German, although most of the men … think that hatred will follow our first casualties.”
Just before going ashore, he observed the men showing, for the first time, “signs of animation. A group near our truck began a song session, which … included ‘Clementine,” ” Working on the Railroad,” “Over There” … and several bawdy numbers. “
As for himself, he said he got “completely sick” on the choppy waters of the English Channel off the French coast. He filled two vomit bags, he wrote, “but that was due in part to the 4 a.m. reveille and the greasy 4:30 breakfast” served by the Navy.
I had the honor of getting to know Forrest Pogue. I met him in his capacity as George Marshall’s authorized biographer. He was a great champion of honoring Marshall in his hometown. He visited Uniontown on several occasions in conjunction with Marshall Plaza.
We ate a private dinner one evening at the Summit Hotel, where he was staying prior to an event the next day at the Uniontown Country Club. I visited him at his Arlington, Virginia, apartment, not far from the Pentagon.
He wrote an invaluable letter as we were trying to raise the cash to build the Plaza. Among other things, he noted Marshall, Army chief of staff and the first five-star general of the war, “got a thorough grounding in the American heritage” as a boy in Uniontown.
In his letter of June 4, 1989, Pogue noted he was off to “Omaha Beach for the 45th anniversary of D-Day.”
Except for Roosevelt, Stalin and several others, he interviewed all the great figures of World War II, including, of course, Marshall, and General Eisenhower, who directed the invasion force of June 6, 1944.
One wonders what Pogue would think of this year’s 75th anniversary of the invasion, coinciding with the possible unraveling of the great structures of European unity and peace which victory in the war paved the way for. He was aware that the great constant in human affairs is that things change.
Several days after the invasion, Pogue writes, “we could see the heavily encumbered beach below, and could look out to sea where the Mulberry – code name for the artificial harbor – was taking shape.
“Ships were being sunk as breakers, piers were being constructed, and steel piers were rapidly being put in place. Roads were being broadened and improved. Even now this was not the beach we had seen two days before, and another month would change it completely.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.