"You far exceeded our expectations. We're delighted."
Ellen Ruggiano, Market Development Manager, Bank of America, RI
 
 
 


Rhode Island Monthly's May Issue has a feature on our film:
"D-Day: The Price of Freedom"

 

 

  
 

Veterans' Oral Histories from World War II 

Topic: D-Day, June 6, 1944

Chris Heisler-U.S. Army Paratrooper, 507th PIR, 82nd Airborne

“People talk about fear, I guess there was fear, but mostly it was concern about doing what you’re supposed to be doin’ and doin’ it right.”

Philip O’Connell-U.S. Army Heavy Machine Gunner

“I wasn’t as scared as I thought I’d be but I had a funny feeling in my stomach. At that time I didn’t know what it was, but later on I found out they call them Butterflies. I did have Butterflies in my stomach.”

Wilson Delasanta-U.S. Army Truck Driver

“You’re scared all the time you do something. I was anyway. I imagine all the others were too.”

Frank Chomka-U.S. Navy Tugboat Crew (Brought over Mulberry Harbors)

“I honestly never thought of oh God ya know? No. I was. Like as numb as I was but I never witnessed or felt any fear of going into battle or anything like that.”

Leo Heroux-U.S. Army Amphibious Engineer

“Everybody was scared. Hey, we were only a bunch of kids, 20, 21, 19..Nobody knew what the hell war was at that time, but now I know.”

Richard Fazzio-US Navy Higgins Boat Coxswain, 1st Wave, Omaha Beach

“We went to see Saving Private Ryan. I think that was the last war picture I saw. I mean that picture was, the landing on the beach that day was almost like they were there filming, exactly like that, even worse.”

Leo Heroux, US Army

Something big was coming, that we knew. When we were told that we would be leaving and to go to Southhampton, I said Southampton, that’s right on the coast to go to France . So we knew we were gonna go to France .”

Frank Chomka-US Navy

“The whole sky was filled with airplanes just about everywhere you could look and the whole sea as far as you could look was incoming ships and boats and what-not.”

Philip O’Connell-US Army

“I said to myself there isn’t that many ships in the world, there’s that many of them there. There isn’t that mnay ships in the world. I saw so many planes. I actually felt sorry for the Germans because I didn’t see any German planes.”

Leo Heroux-US Army

“It was awful. Blood was all over. Blood was all over. We saw the bodies, but we couldn’t do nothing about that.”

Chris Hesiler/US Army Paratrooper

“When we finally got over the shore, I looked down and saw the beach of France and I thought beautiful beach down there. Before it got very much further, maybe a minute, maybe five minutes, I don’t know, I started seeing flak coming up at the plane. It wasn’t very long after that that somebody said Stout has been hit. I got back there and put him on the bucket seat and laid him down. At that point somebody yelled at me, the green light is on Lt.. Now, I’d already had the boys half stand-up and hook-up because the red light had been on earlier and at that point I turned and hollered to the group Geronimo! Lets go! And I turned and went out.”

“I don’t remember anything until I hit the ground, it was the softest landing I ever had. My feet just touched the ground as I went down...I was hung up in a tree.”

“I had no inkling of where I was.”

“I was all alone, the only thing I got scared of really, ran into because I avoided roads and so-forth was cows. I was sneaking up on cows because I thought they may be some of our men.”

“I could hear the guns on the shore opening up with the bombardment. I could hear that all the time, every morning noon and night during that period.”

“I was looking over the hedgerow, over the hedgeway to see what was going on there and as I sat down, a German walked right in front of me that I hadn’t seen and he hadn’t seen me. Fortunately, I had my Tommy Gun cocked and when he came around the tree, I’m trying to remember if he had his gun slung over, I think so, but I just stitched him all the way up with the machine gun. That was the most difficult period I had in all my career because I thought he was the point of a squad and I was standing there expecting any minute to get shot, saying to myself I wonder if I know when I die, if I feel the bullets when they go in me or anything. Pretty soon I realized, I better get the hell out of here so I moved to another hide and it was at that hide that I was captured.”

“I just can’t explain, there are no words that can describe it, how much gratitude the people have for what we did. The one guy that I thought expressed it best said, he said, I never could understand, when he sent some pictures, why good American men would give up their families to come over and come to France and sacrifice, but I want you to know that we really appreciate it.”

Richard Fazzio/US Navy

“We headed into the beach, it was still dark but then as we headed into the beach, all the ships start firing, it was one awesome sight. All of a sudden, bullets were hitting on the side of the ship and the water and I looked into the well of the boat and there was 35 soldiers in there and I don’t think there was an atheist in there because every one of them was making the sign of the cross as we were going in and I happened to look….I looked to the right and I seen a boat get hit…and that’s when I realized what we were going into. As I hit the beach, Wally Lawton lowered the ramp and the soldiers start pouring out and I seen them droppin’, I seen them getting shot, I seen their faces blown off, God, it’s a sight I’ll never forget, it’s been in my mind since. This is the first time I ever talked about it, I hope its my last…As they were going off, there was one soldier there who didn’t want to leave, I guess he froze, he seen what happened in front of him and we were instructed not to take anybody back unless they were wounded or dead. As I lifted up my arm to tell him to get off, I was shot over here and it came out my back.”

“Two days before Normandy , all coxswains and captains of the ships, we had a meeting in what they called this pavilion, it was an airplane hangar. That hangar must have been about a half a mile long and it was wide anyway and they had the whole replica of Normandy beachhead…exactly like it was…and my position was..I had to head right straight.. gotta watch for a church.. and head right straight for that church. That day they assigned us our boats, the boat number and the wave. I won the lottery I was first boat, fifth wa…, first wave, fifth boat…”

“I can remember the soldiers telling me, “go all the way in I don’t want to get wet, I don’t want to get wet, you know? They didn’t get wet, they got killed.”

Frank Chomka/US Navy

“I can remember it was kind of stormy and of course there’s no lights anywhere showing. We’re all in the darkness and the only thing ahead of me was another tug pulling another big monstrosity.”

Wilson Delasanta/US Army

“The tide was coming in so fast, the people were holding hands, I guess a lot of them couldn’t swim but they were holding hands till they got out of the boat. You had these half tracks that were goin’ up and they were poppin’ them off like crazy even the people, we were all together there and a lot of them got hit. You could see em’ goin’ over.”

“There were bodies all over the place, blood, arms, legs, the water was pretty red. You felt pretty bad when you see one of your own dead, it was pretty hard to take it.”

“ I never said much about it, because I don’t want to keep remembering it. The less I talk about it, the better it is.”

Philip O’Connell/US Army

“I always had the feeling somebody was looking after me.”

“ I’d watch the assault boats, the Higgins boats disappear into the smoke as they got closer to shore, there’d be a lot of smoke…We were waitin’ and waitin’ we didn’t know when we were supposed to join them, go ashore and I was disappointed. I was young then and I was disappointed. I wanted to be among the fir…I’m glad I wasn’t among the first or second, because most of the people who landed that landed before me laid there on the beach, they were dead.”

“I was surprised about how many dead people there were and they’re all young. The sad thing when I think about it now, at the time, you feel sorry for them, but you’re glad it’s not you, that’s how I felt, I feel sorry for these people, but I’m glad it’s not me and I think everybody felt that way.”

Jackie Gauthier Auclair (Brother Killed just after D-Day in St. Lo)

“They had informed us of what had happened, I think like the rest of the family it was difficult to accept because we hadn’t been with him. It was just a piece of paper that said he had been killed in action and it took awhile for it to set it and we really realized that once some of the letters that we had written him came back undelivered.”

“It was something I had always wanted to do, but I didn’t think I’d ever get to go to his grave in Normandy . It was quite an emotional experience for me to be there on his grave after nearly 50 years. It was like a connection, a reunion of souls maybe. I’ve often wondered what life would have been like for him?

What you’ll hear from most World War II veterans when you ask them if they’re heroes:

“I was actually proud of being part of it.” “I’m not a hero, I’m not hero. I’m just a survivor.”

“I always felt bad and I do today for all the servicemen that got killed in action. I think about it all the time.”

“I remember that day after I got wounded. The four of us was there and we were all crying.”

“Anybody would have done what I did I suppose. So I didn’t think of it as being a great hero. It had to be done and everybody did what they had to do.”

“A Hero? What does it mean, a hero? Can you tell me? Just because he did something which is very important? He had a job to do and that’s what I did. I had a job to do and I did it. I’m not a hero, I wouldn’t call myself a hero.”

World War II 1939-1945-The Home Front

by Donald  A. McCall/Rhode Island

"On December 7, 1941 my mother, father, brother and I were at my uncle’s home in East Freetown, MA on a pre Christmas visit. As our usual Sunday early evening family time we were listening to one of our favorite radio show programs when President Franklin D. Roosevelt interrupted the program to announce that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that we were now at war. I had turned 10 years of age in May of that year and the full impact of a war wasn’t fully understood at that time. It wasn’t very long afterward that the whole of America was in union with each other to get involved and take care of the situation.

We were not only at war with Japan but also with Nazi Germany in Europe being allied with England . The response to the call to war was intense; our young men were lining up at the recruiting centers all over the country to enlist into the armed forces. Many that were not quite the legal age to enlist lied about their age just to get enlisted. America was in a very high defense mode.

As school children we were encouraged to purchase 10 cent stamps at our schools which were then placed into a booklet that once filled to $18.70, would purchase a “Victory Bond” in your name which would gain interest to a value of $25.00 at maturity. (I still have a partially filled book from that era.) This allowed even the children become involved with the war effort by helping with the funding for our military through these bonds.

In the later years of the war there was concern for the possibility of an air raid attack on our country, so a Civilian Defense system was created. There were several lookout posts established in Rhode Island where volunteers would stand watch in shifts around the clock reporting all sightings of aircraft and its description. A picture chart was available at the posts to assist in recognizing the type of aircraft sighted.

Once sighted a call was placed by phone to a central location. Along with this effort there were several air raid sirens in many locations on top of a telephone pole to be used as an alert in the event of an air raid. One of these sirens was located on a pole at the corner of Trimtown Rd. and Rockland Rd. (Finding a way to turn it on was a typical Halloween prank by us kids.) In order to reduce location identification at night by aircraft we were encouraged to have blackout curtains on our home windows, and have the top halves of auto headlights painted out with black paint to prevent the light from shining upwards.

To help with clothing, printed patterns were made on bags of laying mash for chickens, and other farm grains. When emptied and washed the bags were used to create shirts and blouses for wear. My cousin’s husband worked at a chicken farm and she made good use of the bag materials that he brought home. Back then the bags were made of good cotton material.

The news of the progress of the war was slow in reaching the people. Unlike today with our instant coverage, we had to wait days or weeks to get news of what happening on the war fronts. News reels were shown at the movie theaters once a week. Newspapers provided the most recent news in print.

I still remember one of the leading war correspondences who wrote excellent articles. He was Ernie Pyle, Number 30 who was killed in the line of duty. (I still have newspaper clippings of him in my collection.) I was much impressed with his coverage because his articles related to many of the troops individually. To sum it up, the one thing that helped us all is that we were truly united behind what had to be done to save our America against the threat."

Email us timgray@timgraymedia.com your Veterans' oral history or a family member's oral history of WWII.


 


Tim Gray Media, Inc. | 92 Sharon Street, Suite One | Providence, RI 02908 | 401-862-3422