Eyewitness to History by Stephen W. Sears

Author:Stephen W. Sears [Stephen W. Sears]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Military/World War II
ISBN: 9781612309231
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2015-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

I was a captain in the Stonewall Brigade when I first went into battle at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Our outfit was directly descended from the famed command of Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson and proud of it, and D-day was for me much as the First Manassas had been in 1861 for a Capt. Randolph Barton, C.S.A., of the Stonewall Brigade, who wrote: “I think I went into that action with less trepidation than into any subsequent one. Inexperience doubtless had much to do with it, and discipline told on me from first to last.”

For me, too, in those first twenty-four hours, innocence was lost, trepidation surfaced, and discipline and training somehow prevailed. In ways, D-day seems more distant from today than from 1861 and, overall, like a particularly long and chaotic dream.

My command was Headquarters Company, 2d Battalion, 116th Regiment, 29th Infantry Division. The division, composed originally of National Guardsmen from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, was in 1944, by reason of the draft, a cross section of American military manpower - the white part, that is; the army was still segregated. The commanding general, the three regimental commanders, and a few others, including our battalion commander, were professional soldiers; the rest of us were aggressively amateur in background and viewpoint.

For most of a year, the 29th trained for this operation, first in general amphibious tactics, and finally in great secrecy, all planning was focused upon a small stretch of Normandy coast at the base of the Cherbourg peninsula. No surprise assault, this - apart from exact time and place, all the warring world knew it loomed and that its outcome would determine the course of the war in Europe.

The 2d Battalion began its preparation from a camp on the edge of the waterlogged expanse of Dartmoor, Devonshire, England, in the spring of 1943. Our commander at the time was a slightly-built lieutenant colonel who addressed the battalion from a special stance - hands on hips, head tilted back and to the side. He had us formed in platoons of about thirty each, and then shouted that we were boat teams. From his posture, this cry appeared - not inappropriately - to be directed at Heaven.

Over the next few weeks, broad outlines of the plan emerged. We would cross the Channel in transports, transfer to landing craft near the coast, and storm into France, destroying all Germans and their works in the way. Practice of this grand design started off as vaguely as the first announcement of it. Outlines of landing craft were staked out between barrack huts, and cargo nets were swung from the eaves. We clambered up and down the nets and charged out of the mock-ups. Day and night, tactical exercises were held on the soggy expanse of Dartmoor, where the rain was constant; uniforms, blankets, and food seemed always damp and cold.

About this time, the 29th got a new commander, a demanding, uncompromising soldier. He was everywhere and into everything; his disapproval was forceful and usually final.

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