World War II Stories

On December 7th, 1941, after hearing the announcement of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, I was walking up the street in my hometown, Lakeview, Long Island, and ran into my cousin. We said simultaneously, “I hope it lasts long enough for me to get into it.” I was 15 years old; he was 16. I remember songs like Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor and Were Going to Have to Slap…

As a young lad in my teens in the late 1930’s, I was well aware of world events taking shape in Europe. Before going to bed at night Mother and I listened to the late night news on the radio. I listened out of curiosity and went right to sleep. Mother listened because she had three sons and perhaps did not sleep so well as I. The rise of the…

As I prepared to return to Normandy in the spring of ’96, my thoughts of D-Day surfaced once again. I remembered the two-day crossing of the Channel; the starts and stops, the pitch darkness, the seasick troops. We reached the coastal waters off Normandy at dawn, 6 June. Our deployment for Utah Beach came on Wave 13 – on LCT 456. One hundred feet of steel, a crew of…

Sunrise came around 0600 that day, but I remember it as a still, dark, dismal, dank morning on the tossing English Channel. But we could have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. Sopping wet and cold from our exposure on the deck of our LTC, we devoured a hot frothy cream of celery soup from our British field rations. This ingenious self-heating can included a wick…