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By LOU BERNARD
For The Express
As the world watches President Obama and other world leaders visit Europe to commemorate today’s 70th anniversary of D-Day, one man, much closer to home, reminisces about his own experiences on that fateful day.
D-Day was one of the bloodiest, most crucial battles of World War II. The American military and its allies landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944, winding up with thousands of dead and wounded soldiers.
Here at home, the communities reacted to the news.
Local stores in Lock Haven announced they were accepting photos of soldiers to display for their War Bond drive.
A parade formed at Jones Street, marching down Bellefonte Avenue, led by the Mill Hall Drum and Bugle Corps.
Churches in Lock Haven, Mill Hall, and Flemington opened for special prayer sessions.
And one local man got to experience that day firsthand.
Paul Russell of Mill Hall was there.
Russell is now 89 years old.
He was 19 at the time. Russell graduated high school exactly one year before D-Day – June 6, 1943.
“When I graduated, I went to work for Piper,” he said. “I worked there for about two weeks until I went into the Navy. A guy from Sugar Valley said to me, ‘Come on, Paul, let’s push your number up.'”
Sixteen men from the area went with Russell into the Navy, and by July 21, they were in boot camp in Samson, New York. Once boot camp was finished, Russell was a Seaman First Class.
While those at home were buying War Bonds and conserving materials to support the troops, Russell was in Europe, fighting the war. On the afternoon of June 5, 1944, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the order to invade. Ships began to leave their ports in England by 10 o’clock that night – 20:00 by military time.
Just after midnight, three gliders carrying commandos landed near the Pegasus Bridge. The commandos captured the bridge under the orders of Major John Howard. Half an hour later, paratroopers began to land on the far western end of the beaches.
“We left England on the fifth, and a storm came up, and it was really a beaut,” he reminisces. “Smaller ships, they sent into the harbors over there. We were there to protect the small boats from aircraft. The next morning, we started for France. We bypassed Omaha Beach on our way to Utah… The fighting was pretty fierce there.”
Naval bombardment of the shore began as morning approached. By 6 a.m., the aerial bombing had begun on Omaha and Utah Beaches.
0630 was H-Hour: The moment the tanks first landed on Omaha Beach. American men landed on the beaches, meeting with heavy casualties in this deadly battle.
The action heated up as Russell’s ship approached the coast of France.
“Our sister ship was about 100 yards to our left, and it was sunk on the first wave going in,” he explains. “It hit a mine in the water. We went in, and turned around to meet the next wave. We continued that until everybody was ashore. We laid off a battleship … I don’t remember which one it was.”
What he does remember from 70 years ago, however, was the railroad gun that the enemy was using. A railroad gun is a large piece of artillery designed to be transported and fired from a railroad wagon built for that purpose.
“The Germans had a railroad gun, and every once in a while they’d let that thing go, and they were shooting between us and the battleship. We decided that wasn’t the greatest place to be, and we got out of there.”
Russell wound up going ashore about a mile from Omaha Beach. “They had an awful time on Omaha Beach,” he said. “There was a pillbox, it kept shooting our way, and they didn’t make good progress that first day in Omaha.”
The soldiers worked tirelessly to take the beach, he recalls, and describes an orchard on top of the cliffs. Russell said that the fighting continued until some of the Rangers got on top of the cliffs, and began capturing some of the enemy.
This would be Point Du Hoc, where the U.S. Army Second Ranger Battalion began their attack, making inroads into the land. By 9 a.m., the Rangers had taken over the point, where they were able to defend it for the rest of the day.
“Most of the Germans were hiding in that orchard,” he said,”And when we got there, they settled down a bit.”
Enemy aircraft were flying overhead, but Russell reports that they were a problem only after dark.
“As far as aircraft, a Messerschmitt went down the beach, followed by a Spitfire. I don’t know who killed the most soldiers on the beach, the Spitfire or the Messerschmitt. Aircraft would come and bomb us only at night. They dropped a bomb on our port side, lifted that English ship right up in the air, and turned us around, lifted everybody up out of their hammocks. That was a mess getting it back up. When daylight came, we had shrapnel over our whole ship. We only had one fellow shell-shot. The ones going in behind us lost quite a few men.”
By noon, the American forces, with some assistance from the British and Canadians, had begun to successfully advance up the beach. They established a relatively safe bridgehead within the next 10 hours, across Omaha and Utah Beaches.
“As far as shooting off the land at us, we didn’t have that much. The Seabees, they were going in, and you could see the flamethrowers.” Russell said. “They had them pretty well toasted by the time we got there,” he said with a chuckle.
In the movies, the action happens fast, and battles are won or lost in a few minutes. This was not the case for Russell and his fellow soldiers. They remained for several days.
“We were at general quarters for about three days,” Russell said, “and they would bring our meals up to the gun crews. I worked on the top ammunition loading platform. There’s one underneath, and we were on top working.”
He laughed as he recalled the orders of a superior officer: “There were only two shots fired by our crew. We had a skipper; I don’t think he wanted to lose too much ammunition.”
After the beach had been taken, the war was not over for Paul Russell.
“We came back and then they shipped us into the Pacific,” he said. “We trained soldiers on different landings out there.”
Russell served until the war was over. He was honorably discharged in early March 1946.
“They shipped us down to New Orleans, decommissioned us, and then sent me to Bainbridge, Md., and discharged me there,” he said. “I came home and worked for Piper until they had their big layoff in 1948.”
After that, he worked construction jobs out of Philadelphia with a friend, and in 1952, went to work for the local dye works. “I was one of the last ones retired when they shut it down,” he said.
Russell continued to work until 2003. About a decade ago. He fully retired at age 78.
Today, a monument to D-Day stands at Omaha Beach.
Thousands of tourists visit this slice of history each year.
And, 70 years later, Paul Russell still lives in Mill Hall, a living link between the present and that historic day in 1944.