Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 23

ci-IUinois Newspapers Monday, June 6, 19.31 pi umt (stouner It m. Some of the area men who were part of 'Tile I longest day theD-Day invasion and ultimate liberation Europe have vivid memories of that day 50 years ago. Others have scars that haven't healed. if were in the airborne units, the was biggest gamble of Allleld war effort 1 Navy, the seabees, the infantry, the air corps, armored divisions and in supplies. all were part of the assault that meant the end of World War II.

"-)Ve have profiled some of them in this section so that all can remember D-bay -i Gilbert Hussey By SID MOODY AP Nevysfeatures Writer Glendon Gilbert has two vivid memories about his time in Nor-, mandy as part of the D-Day invasion. Had he made the wrong decision about either, it might have cost him his life. Gilbert, a Mattoon resident, wrote a book about his experiences. SeeD2. From the time Edwin Solheim's 200th Field Artillery Battalion was deployed to Europe, they knew they would play a part in the D-Day invasion.

The importance and danger were certainly on the unit's minds, but that was not the biggest thought they had. See D8. had to quickly learn how to fly a two-engine plane. "They were preparing for D-Day that far in advance," he said at his. home in Charleston.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Hussey took the pilot's seat of a C-47 plane. See D6. Harlan Cottingham carried ammunition for the 184th Triple A Gun Battalion anti-aircraft unit that landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. "It was just like watching a fireworks display," he said.

"There were tracers going all over the sky that night," he said. See D7, eyes i jm 4 jsbbwedthe hurt and re-jrbembrance of the day hjs ship, which was sup-iposed to transport military equipment, was in-sslead filled with the sdead soldiers who had Ibfeen using it 'Tins man D-Day as a bloody 'aSne. SeeD8. "Tf would be the place. Yet he kept his best divisions in the Pas de Calais.opposite England's Kentish coast.

His commander in Normandy, Erwin Rommel, an enemy of genius in North Africa and the conquest of France in 1940, suspected Calais. Wherever, he said the Germans must repulse the Allies at water's edge or eventually lose the war. It would be, he predicted, "the longest day." In a sense, D-Day began when Pfd Milburn Henke, ironically the son of a naturalized German, was greeted Jan. 26, 1942, in Belfast as the first American soldier to step ashore in Great Britain. By May 1944, he had been followed by 1,526,964 more Americans.

Southern England had turned from'a picturesque pastorale into an armed camp, kept from sinking, locals joked, only by the barrage balloons tethered to it. (They also said, only half-jokingl, that the Yanks were "overpaid, oversexed and over GIs crammed into manor schools, barns, Quonset huts from Straight Stolley, Crooked Stolley and Middle Wallop to Lower Slaughter and Ogbourne St. George. Fields and warfr- Solheim Tinsman Cottingham Discordantly, a poem languor tipped the Germans that the drumfire of the Allied invasion was coming. Nightly, the BBC broadcast eryptic messages to the underground resistance in Hitler's Europe: "The Trojan War will not be held" "Sabine has just had, mumps." On June 1, 1944, Hitler's 15th army on the English Channel heard a line by the French poet Paul Verlaine: "The long sobs of the violins of autumn." From a captured Frenchman, they knew this was an alert.

The next line "Wounding my heart with a monotonous languor" meant invasion within 48 hours. On June 5, they heard it. But where was the invasion coming? Maj. Werner Pluskat found out at dawn the next day when from his bunker on the Normandy coat he saw nothing but ships from horizon to horizon. His superiors inland asked where they were headed.

"Straight for me!" Pluskat cried. In a war of incessant Allied amphibious landings, D-Day was the biggest. The biggest gamble. The longest awaited. The most brilliantly disguised.

Hitler's intuition told him Normandy Charles Breeze of Mattoon saw tragedy too many times to count during his 10 days of fighting along" Omaha Beach in June 1944. Breeze came home after being shot in the upper right arm. He has a Purple Heart and Bronze Star to remember his service. See D4. The day the allies stormed Normandy, Jack Smith was under enemy fire.

"I was lying on the sand while the Germans shot at us," said Smith. "I was kissing rocks." That was the day the Windsor man lost two of his fingers. See D5. sJay Knott survived B-1 7 flights, plus two iDNDay missions and a 'iiit from a fragment of Jenemy artillery. On July 13, 1944, the -Charleston man who fwas a staff sergeant in 8th Air Force received the Flying Cross award.

SeeD6. Breeze Smith Knott Continued on D9.