Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 24

13 i)2 Monday, June 6, ay tasis5ini sin vwM i i i V. ii i i i 1 I I i I i 1 Mld-Iiiino'is Nes'tpf By DEBBIE CARLSON StaffWriter Memories of battle fatigue from Gilbert's D-Day book "I do not know the symptoms that precede battle fatigue, or shell-shock, as it is sometimes called. I never saw but one case of what I thought was battle fatigue but Lt. Rohrbacher said it wasn't battle fatigue, but a professional job of gold-bricking. "Anyway, after long hours both day and night for three weeks on the observation post, I reached the point where I did not give a damn anymore.

"I came into the bivouac area late one afternoon and decided that I was going to have a cup of coffee even if I died doing it. Mortar rounds were coming in. I could hear the buzzing of the shrapnel. Everyone was in their holes. "I calmly sat down out in the open, made my cup of coffee and drank it.

My friends were yelling at me to get in a hole. But right at that moment I did not care much if I got hit. "It is a good thing that a little sleep and some rest changes one's mind about not caring." 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." Unlike a lot of soldiers, Gilbert knew the June 6 invasion was to be very important. "It was supposed to be June 5, but Eisenhower's meteorologist said the weather was too bad," he said. "That day wasn't any better, but we had to go with the tides." Reliving the Normandy invasion and his entire World War career (he also served in Korea) is not painful for him to remember. 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 3 1, and he was one of the older soldiers in his division. If anything, he believes his heightened maturity gave him a slight 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 wrote about his injuries: "It took a few seconds for me to realize that I had what I did not particularly want a Purple Heart." 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 genetics 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 cussed the Germans whenever I had a good Glendon Gilbert has two vivid memories about his time in Normandy as part of the 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 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 ofits 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 patches of dead grass where the German army buried mines to destroy the incoming aircraft. After he landed in Normandy, 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 sur- chance, but it was more of a sport a gamble as to whether the guard understood English or not I met too many Germans who were as kind and considerate to me as they could be under the circumstances for me to hate them," he wrote.

"I never thought I would be killed, but I was mentally prepared for capture. I considered it an occupational hazard," he joked. For Gilbert, June 6, 1994, will be just another day. He has no plans to return to the places he was stationed: North Africa, Italy, Britain, France or Holland, except maybe as a vacation trip to Italy. "I was just doing what I had to do," he said: D-Day veteran Glendon Gilbert rounded.

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 as a corporal, Gilbert said, he had an eerie feeling about the French woman's story. "I had been briefed about three times 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, i i wii mm mui up i ww up' ip" ap mw mtm 'm 'W Hand was part of 'D-Day Dozen' crew among first to launch assault By AMY CARNES Staff Intern First Federal Joins with PEACE LOVING People Everywhere In Observance Of "We started a hell of a fight and went off and left them." Hand said he is proud to have been a part of such an historic event as D-Day. "It was interesting to do, but I wouldn't want to do it again," Hand said. "And I wouldn't take the world for the experience." The pathfinder squadron to which he belonged only flew missions that went at least 50 miles inside Germany. On those missions, at times he saw as many as 200 German fighters at one time. Hand is a native of Charleston.

He was drafted in August 1942 and finished his tour of duty in July 1945. After returning home, he moved to Paris and started work at a lumberyard. He and his wife Lois have two children, one of whom was born while Hand was away in the service. Hand has been retired for 11 years and enjoys making custom furniture. were completed in the dark, his plane and two others flew into Normandy about a mile ahead of the rest of the planes and marked the target.

t- The bomb-dropping occurred through heavy cloud-cover at 6:05 a.m. June 6. Hand was also part of a mission that flew on the evening of June 6 to bomb a railroad yard. On D-Day, Hand served as a wastegunner whose duty was protecting his plane and shooting at the Germans. On some other missions, he served as a radio mechanic.

Hand said he saw American fighter planes all over the sky on D-Day but saw no German planes on either of the two missions he flew June 6. He said on D-Day he flew for 12V6 hours and his plane alone consumed 3,500 gallons of gasoline. Hand quoted a line said by one ofhis plane's engineers that he has remembered for 50 years: Arthur Hand has a distinction few can lay claim to he was a member of a group dubbed the "D- Day Dozen." The "D-Day Dozen" referred to the crew of one of the first B-24 Liberators to enter the scene at Normandy on June 6, 1944. The plane, piloted by Capt. Charles Armstrong, was equipped with radar to bomb through the clouds.

It carried a crew of 12qr 13, which earned it the nickname "D-Day Dozen." Hand, a Paris resident, said his squadron was awakened at 10: 15 p.m. on June 5 to be briefed for the following morning's inva-. sion. He recalls that when he saw the planes on the morning of June 6, each had three stripes painted around the wings and the fuse-lage for identification. The planes had not previously been marked this fashion.

Hand said after formations i j- i i 7V 1 General Eisenhower's Call to Arms I If N. I If I 5 1 i urn in i i v- By The Associated Press The text of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's call to the troops on D-Day: Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.

The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy Your enemy is well trained, Veil equipped and battle-hard ened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year of 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41.

The United Natioris have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty Gpd upon this great and noble undertaking.

"Gramps, How Did You Get These?" "For Doing My Share, Son." Gen. Eisenhower department. Plus day-to-day conveniences like our Drive-Up Window and Automatic Teller Machine. We may not win any medals to show our we're proud to play a part Taking pride in a distinguished service record. That's something we can identify with.

You see, we're Sharing The American Dream by offering a full program of financial services for you and your community. We've got savings and investment plans, checking accounts, business and home equity loans, a discount brokerage service, and a trust First civilian war correspondent, lulled during Normandy invasion your nnanciai achievements. Stop in and enlist our services today I The Associated Press mm i i rci i i mxn emu EQUAL N0USIN8 LENDER Irvin was buried with full military honors at a U.S. military cemetery in France on July 27 what would have been his 34th birthday. Lee McCardell of the Baltimore Sun, who was with Irvin when he died, offered this tribute: "Like other correspondents here, I have tried for two days to write a tribute to him, one of the finest men any of us ever knew.

But words are inarticulate. "We all loved him too deeply and admired him too much for what he was an honest, gentle, genuine man, whose soft voice and sweet ingratiating smile we will never forget. Bede was even dearer to those who had known him better and loved him longer. "And so many other good men and true died here, equally loved and far from those who love them, that our griefinhiscaseisa poor and tiny thing indeed in a world awash with others' tears. We can only record it humbly, from the bottom of our hearts." Bede Irvin had just photographed the mighty barrage that signaled the start of the Allied drive out of the Normandy peninsula when the warning shout came: "Watch out, bombs from the Marauders are falling short!" A fragment of a bomb from a B-26 Marauder caught him as he dived from his jeep into a roadside ditch.

He was killed instantly. He was 33. Irvin, a photographer for The Associated Press, is to be the first American civilian war killed in the Normandy campaign. He died July 25, 1944. 't; After more than a year of photographing invasion preparations, Irvin had sailed on a D-Day assign-v.

ment with the war picture pool. He was attached to I -the air forces and made numerous airvie ws of the invasion fleet when the Normandy beachhead was es-- tablished. SAVINGS LOAN ASSOCIATION OF MATTOON acaC Sleaple Sewiny JUacal Sieaplc 1500 WABASH AVE. PHONE 235-5411 i I.