WWII: D-Day: Supplying the troops at Omaha Beach

Continued from Friday

The only other time we had berthing problems was one trip across when we carried about a dozen Red Cross nurses. Most of us gave up our quarters for them and I slept on the settee up in the chart-room just abaft the wheelhouse. Most berths aboard ship run fore and aft to minimize the effect of the ships rolling, but the chartroom settee ran thwart ships (side-to-side). This fact, plus all the traffic and chatter from the wheelhouse while under way meant not much sleep. We were all happy to get rid of the nurses! Our Chief Engineer, a very grouchy old Australian bachelor, was the only one who refused to give up his quarters, but we got even with him by telling the nurses that they could hang up their laundry on the railings in the Engine room. When the Chief went below for the first time and was greeted by panties, bras and hose, his screams could be heard for miles around. George Carlson was mad at me for some time, as the Chief was sure that it was George’s doing, but Scotty and I were the instigators!

We loaded for our first trip across in early June, and went out to the anchorage, leaving for the beach on D-Day, June 6 the evening and arriving off Omaha Beach at daylight on D+1. We traveled across the Channel in convoy, following minesweepers in a convoy of all Liberty Ships and LSTs. I’ll never forget the sight of the beaches at daylight. In addition to a lot of activity and wreckage on the beach itself, there were constant streams of Allied planes overhead. Both at low levels and high levels, coming South to bomb and strafe and returning to England to load up again. We saw no enemy air activity during the day. The LSTs were going right into the beach, unloading and heading back, while we had to wait for LCTs or Rhino Barges to come alongside so we could hoist our cargo onto them for transshipment to the beach. We were anchored very close to the Free French Battleship “Jean Bart”, and her 12-inch guns were firing deep inland (battleship guns have a range of about 15 miles) all day until almost dark. We were on British Double Summer Time, which meant that for the most of the summer it was light until almost midnight, which made for a long and very noisy day working cargo.

Continues Sunday

Frank Varga lives in River Bend. Send WWII diaries submissions to rfoster@freedomenc.com.