Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 90

Mid-Illinoi Newspaper F18 Saturday, September 2, 1995 'Will rr -Sf) rrti-fA A- 4 1 4fSjP II r-f 1 1 i car rr3' 1 LI J'- Editor's Note: Tlie following articles are condensed versions of stories that appeared in Mid Illinois Newspapers' D-Day special section in June 1994. Tom Floyd ven 50 years after the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Tom Floyd says he still feels luckv to lie alive. On June 6. 1944.

Staff Sgt. Floyd was a tailpmner serving with the 492nd Bomb On -uy. 2nd Air Division, 8th Air Force in Wr.n lVkenham, England. iling his assignment from April to Sep ember 1944, Floyd flew 31 missions his R-24 Liberator crew. He rememliers it was cloudy the night tvii the D-Day invasion.

the time three of the four squadrons ned at Noith Pickenham reported to 1 he: i planes at 3 a.m., which was about an hom before daylight in England, Floyd said the excitement and fear were growing "At the same time, we were relieved to lx? petting it over. We knew that we had to get. the continent somehow and this day had tieen coming for several weeks." Approximately 36 planes, each with 10 re members, from Floyd's base joined 1 2 '00 All ied and American aircraft, 5,000 ships and boats and more than 155,000 in ips participating in the invasion. "Once we got up at about 15,000 feet over the English Channel we could see all the landing ships, gliders, paratroopers a big shi ps filing and converging on Omaha Beach," Floyd said. His squadron of 12 planes, flying in format ion of three or four, was carrying clusters of small bombs, he explained, "to be used primarily against the enemy lines before our troops landed.

We dropped our bombs, we guessed, on the right targets and headed back to base to reload." His squadron's second mission was to ump 500 bombs at designated road intersection to slow the enejmy's flow to the beach. "This time we could see the countryside and crowded road intersections with a railroad running alongside flooded with troops and vehicles headed toward the coast. We dropped our load and headed back to base," Floyd said. It was almost dark as they crossed the coastline and the squadron was fired upon from the ground, but they made it back to base tired and relieved that this mission was over. Floyd said his crew was lucky not a crewman was lost during their 31 missions although once the plane was so badly shot up they had to pitch everything out to lighten the load and ditch it at a small airstrip.

"There were several times whenother crews in our barracks didn't comeback. They'd come around and gather up their things to send back home. I think it was harder on us when we were on the ground than when we were flying. Wewere so busy in the air that we didn't have time to think about much," Floyd recalled. Barely 20 in 1942, he had joined the Air-Force Reserves to "learn how to fly.

I was lucky to get in. You had to be a college graduate or pass an equivalent test. After high school, I had been working as a welder in Chicago. I never dreamed that I would eventually become an elementary education professor at Eastern Illinois University," where he retired in 1984. During his military duty, Floyd earned several medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, an air medal with three oak leaf clusters, and a Good Conduct Medal.

Glendon Gilbert Glendon Gilbert of Mattoon has two vivid memories as part of the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion. Had he made the wrong decision about either, it might have cost him his life. The first was when Gilbert, a member of the 82nd Airborne Army division, flew to Normandy on a glider with several other soldiers and fighting, equipment. The AP Photo Thousands Aug. 14, 1945, of cheering, shouting, flag-waving people jam Times Square in New York on after it was reported that Japan had surrendered, ending World War II.

Celebrating the surrender Food was in short supply but his unit was able to get a shipment of pancake batter. "We lived on pancakes for four weeks," he said. "To this day, I can't look at a pancake" During the final days of the war, Snyder's unit came across what appeared to be a beautiful modern factory near Weimar in Germany. It was Buchenwald, one of the Nazi death camps, he said. The soldiers discovered carts of dead bodies waiting to be cremated.

They also discovered hundreds of starving, near-dead people who appeared to be all skin and bones. was horrible," he said. "There were even lampshades made of human skin because of tattoos or other markings. I tried never to think about it. It was weeks and weeks before I could sleep." Snyder was in Germany when the Germans surrendered in May of 1945.

When discharged, he returned to Charleston and operated a furniture store on Sixth Street for 25 years. He also had an electrical business and farmed near Areola before retiring and moving back to Charleston. He and his wife, Jeannette, have three children. Edwin Solheim The Army unit in which Edwin Solheim served did not land on the beaches at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, but on June 8 "D-Day plus two." From the time his unit, the 200th Field Artillery Battalion, was deployed to Europe, Solheim explained, he and other members knew they would play a part in the D-Day invasion. "Sure, you were nervous.

You'd be crazy if you weren't We knew it was important, but we just wanted to get the damn thing over so we could go home," said Solheim, of Charleston. Landing near Colleville-Sur-Mir on the Normandy coast part of the section des-ignated as Omaha Beach two days after the first D-Day forces was probably still a little too early for the artillery battalion, Solheim said. The 155 mm "Long Tom" cannons the unit operated fired more than 60,000 shells during its campaign through the fol-' lowing May. One of the highlights of the campaign, Solheim said, was participating in the liberation of Paris. Solheim's unit also fought in the Battle of the Bulge in early 1945.

It was near there, he recalled, that German soldiers killed several Allied prisoners of war and left them, the cold winter weather preserving the bodies. The unit went on through Germany, fighting at Leipzig, south of Berlin, before ending up in Czechoslovakia when the Nazis surrendered. After the victory in Europe, he saw signs of the Holocaust, though the death camps he came upon were largely dismantled before he arrived. "There was a building with row after row of shelves with numbers on them," he said. "They had been cremating a lot of them and had urns with numbers on them and each one was kept in that building." After the war, Solheim returned to 1 Charleston, where he had moved from North Dakota in 1938.

He retired several years ago after working as an electrician at his own shop and the former Brown Shoe Co. because the allies had control of the air, but they did encounter enemy fire. The tracers reminded him of a Fourth of July celebration. When nearing the peninsula, the plane ahead of Hussey was supposed to notify him that they were close to the landing zone by flippingon a red light. Then a green light was supposed to come on, giving the signal to drop the paratroopers.

He never got the red light. "Just before the red light came on we lost communication with the first plane. We dropped them because we saw troopers dropping from the plane in front of us," Hussey said, his eyes wide, using his hands to show troopers coming out of the planes. Everything seemed to work out, although Hussey was concerned about the miscommuni cation. "We didn't know the paratroopers.

We didn't train with them. I feel we were late in our drop, but they were all hooked up (to the plane) by a static line. They weren't sitting targets in their parachutes," said Hussey, who then returned to his base in England. He said now he is not sure if he flew a second mission on D-Day or a few days later. "It seems it was two days later to me, but the log book says it was (the same day)," he said.

Hussey encountered a dreadful mission months later on Christmas Day. The crew made a drop at the besieged city of Bas-togne, Belgium. It was the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. After duty, Hussey went to college on the GI bill and became a teacher. He eventually wound up at Eastern Illinois University, where he was a member of the physical education department for 34 years.

Alfred Mayer Brave men at Juno Beach overcame enemy resistance to capture St. Aubin, Bernieres and Courseulles during World WarU. Alfred Mayer of Windsor was at Juno Beach on D-Day. He was 18 when he began serving in the Navy on an LST landing ship tank which remains in shallow water until the tide comes in and carries it onto the beach. "We went in with the Canadians in Juno Beach.

We were also equipped with an English Army doctor," Mayer said. During the war, Mayer served as a radar man, helping Navy Amphibians to navigate. But on D-Day, his duty was different. On that day in June, Mayer helped transport casualties and wounded to England. He also helped transport supplies to and from the beach.

"I made 59 trips across the English Channel," Mayer said. He remembers D-Day as "dreary, hectic." "It seemed like the channel was full of ships that day," Mayer said. Besides D-Day, Mayer remembers a lot of "close calls" he faced during the war. "We were torpedoed one night. We put the ship in reverse, and it hit the side of it," Mayer said.

"On Christmas Eve we were behind another ship that got torpedoed." He said he also remembers the day thousands of war dead were buried on top of a cliff overlooking famous Omaha Beach, which was the site of the largest amphibious troop landing in history. At that site, now known as the Normandy American Cemetery, 9,386 Ameri can war dead are buried, with 307 head stones marking the graves of "unknowns." The remains of about 14,000 others originally buried there were returned home at the request of their next of kin. The memorial consists of a semi-circular colonnade with a gallery at each end. The platform reads, "Spirit of American Youth," and the base has an inscription reading, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." Mayer and his wife, Rose, recently visited Europe and returned to Juno Beach. They toured war museums and cemeteries as well as the other various beaches along the channel.

They also saw a church in St. Mere Eglise that has a stuffed paratrooper hanging from the top. The paratrooper depicts John Steele, an American paratrooper who jumped from a plane during the war and hung over the side of the church. There he played dead for 24 hours so the Germans who controlled theareawouldnot take him prisoner or kill him. When American soldiers came to the area, they rescued him.

Harold Snyder The D-Day invasion no longer seems real to Harold Snyder of Charleston. Snyder, who will be 86 in September, was in a supply unit on June 6, 1944, when the allies landed at Normandy. His unit remained at Normandy for three months before joining Gen. George Patton and marching through Europe to Germany. "It's like a dream," Snyder said ofhis World War II experience.

If I try to put it in perspective, I can do it, but I have to work at it. "Sometimes, I just think it was just one of the dreams I had when I was sleeping." Snyder was a member of the Army's 453rd Amphibious Truck Co. with the 1st Army. His group traveled in Dukws, vehicles that traveled on land and in water, carrying supplies. On D-Day, Snyder's unit hauled small arms ammunition for the allies.

On the morning of June 6, Army Rangers cleared the beaches of mines and bulldozers cleared boulders from the beaches and roads so the troops could land. The boat that carried Snyder was struck while still at sea, but he managed to get in his Dukw and land. Later that night, someone hollered that the Germans were releasing poisonous gas, so the allied troops donned their gas masks. "I'm claustrophobic, and I couldn't stand wearing that mask," he said. "So I took mine off.

I figured, TfTm going to die, I'm going to die without that mask on." But there was no gas. Snyder was older than many ofhis comrades. He had worked for Prudential Insurance in Charleston for 10 years before he was drafted at age 34 at Christmas 1943. Inbootcamp.hebefriendedayoungsol-dier from Massachusetts. "We were going to open a clothing store together," Snyder said.

"He was as level-headed a guy as I had ever known. We just got along real well." But his level-headed friend did some-thing foolish during the D-Day landing. You got to get down," Snyder said But his friend was up too high and was killed by enemy fire. "You get to where you had to accept death all around you," Snyder said. about the (D-Day) invasion," he recalled.

"(At) one of the briefings the officers said, 'Don't trust the The Germans had been there several years, and some are just like family. They're not French." Gilbert said he believes the officer and the soldiers at the house wanted to stop fighting, though. "They didn't want to fight too much because the ones we captured came out too easily," he said. "The prisoners were marched to a pasture and the processing began. We envied them a little because they were starting their trip to the States." Reliving the D-Day invasion and his entire World War II career (he also served in Korea) is not painful for him.

In fact, he wrote a 200-plus-page book about his time in World War II so he would not forget what happened. "I thought I was part of history so I might as well make a record of it," he said. "I started in June 1945 and borrowed a typewriter and typed the highlights over the years. I went back and filled out the rest of it so it's pretty much true." Gilbert was drafted into the war in March 1942 at age 31, and he was one of the older soldiers in his division. If anything, he believes his heightened maturity gave him a si ight edge over the average soldier, who usually was in his early 20s.

In the book he also recounts his time as a prisoner of war in the German camps. More than three months after the D-Day invasion, Gilbert was flying over Holland when the glider was shot and he was hit in the foot. He sustained a broken pelvis in the landing. He was taken to a field hospital to recuperate and became friendly with some of the German medics. He believes part ofhis good treatment came from his blond hair and blue eyes genetic traits highly regarded in Nazi Germany.

He was sent to a POW camp and stayed there until the war's end in May 1945 about eight months. Gilbert never harbored any ill will toward his former captors. "I never thought I would be killed, but I was mentally prepared for capture. I considered it an occupational hazard," he joked. Bob Hussey In cadet flying school in 1942, Bob Hussey learned how to fly a single-engine advanced fighter plane.

After graduating, he was sent to Austin, Texas, where he realized he had to learn quickly how to fly a two-engine plane. They were preparing for D-Day that far in advance," he said in a 1994 interview. He enlisted in the Army just after Pearl Harbor near his hometown of Appleton, where he was a telephone repair man. At the age of 22, Hussey was stationed in England as part of the 91st Troop Carrier Command of the Army. Shortly after 2 a.m.

on June 6, 1944, Hussey took the pilot's seatof a C-47 plane. Carrying 12 loaded troopers, he took his place in a nine-plane formation and flew across the English Channel to the Cherbourg Peninsula. "It was the most frightening experience of my life," Hussey explained. "Naturally, there wasn't an un-nervous person in the crew." It was so cloudy in the early morning hours of D-Day that when Hussey began descending the plane, at one point he lost sight of the left wing. They encountered no German planes British had Horsa gliders in action along with the Americans.

His glider landed unscathed in a field, but not too far from him, a Horsa glider landed and was ripped apart by trees. "One tree broke off the left wing and another broke off the right," he said. "But one tree split the fuselage in half and bodies were laid out with broken arms and legs. "Out of its 30 passengers, 15 had varying degrees of injuries from brain concussion to shock. I think most of us silently gave thanks that we had not been compelled to make the trip in a Horsa." Not only did Gilbert see the annihilated Horsa, but only a few feet to the right of where his gilder landed he could see the patehes of dead grass where the German army buried mines to destroy the mcoming aircraft.

After he landed in France, Gilbert and a few other men, including the lieutenant from his platoon journeyed around the French countryside to see if they could draw fire. Everything was rather quiet until they stopped in a small town where a French woman ran to one of the soldiers and told him of three German soldiers, two wounded, staying in a house nearby. She told the men the Germans wanted to surrender to receive medical attention, but the healthy one refused to let them leave. After conferring among themselves, Gilbert's group suggested going in to retrieve the men, figuring the odds would be on their side. Gilbert, however, recommended returning with more men to surround the house.

The lieutenant agreed, and the house was surrounded. Yet when they fired on the house, nothing happened. After the dust cleared, out of the orchard came 42 enlisted men and one German officer. Being involved in intelligence and recognizance, Gilbert said, he had an eerie feeling about the French woman's story. "I had been briefed about three times.