Information below was related to Hop Collier from Leo Collier on several occasions. Once sometime in the late 1980s, mom actually typed some of this out. Additional information given in my interviews with dad in 1998 and 1999.
Attended University of Alabama Fall of 1939 to Spring of 1941.
Drafted in July 1941, but they let him finish the semester.
Fort Niagara 4 or 5 months
In Signal Corps — communications between units
With his electrician background was sent to Fort Monmouth, N.J. Was there for about 13 weeks.
Mom visited dad at Fort Niagara and at Fort Monmouth. Then they sent dad to 29th Division headquarters for Signal Corps. He operated the switchboard for Signal Corps. At A. P. Hill for a time. Put in telephone lines there. Only 30 of us there, but they sent food rations for a whole company.
Was at Fort Meade at some point.
December 1941 I went AWOL to see Kathryn at Hartwick College. I hitch hiked back. Truck driver giving me a ride said: “It looks like we’re at war.” We stopped for coffee. It was all over radio. I was only drafted for a year. I earned $21 a month as a private in the service.
Shipped overseas on the Queen Elizabeth. Went to gates to see, but could not find Kathryn. We got on ship. All portholes closed. As we were leaving NYC, a service friend, Cavalucci (or Catalucci) remarked: “See that street? That’s my street. I’ll never see that again.” He was the first one of my group killed in Normandy. Another army friend, “Cowboy” Laneer, was confident. “I will make it back and teach my boy how to ride a horse. Laneer was the second killed. After out in ocean a ways, kept zig-zagging to confuse enemy.
Queen Elizabeth landed in Scotland. They sent little barges out to pick us up 30 or 40 at a time. Then I went to Banbury England. Lady Gadiva fame and home of Shakespeare. To Stratford on Avon, right outside Banbury. 18 months training in England, moving from Tidworth to Perrinporth to Plymouth. During this time, we endured a rigorous training program, ranger training, 15-mile speed marches, 25-mile hikes, etc. For a good many months, half of every unit would get a 48-hour pass to London where we danced and drank and endured air raids right along with those stalwart Londoners. Everyone had to go to air raid shelters. Some were very deep.
All our maneuvers and training in England were in preparation for Operation Overlord (Overload?), the landing at Normandy.
Normandy — landed with 29th Division on Omaha Beach
When we got on barges in English Channel, we still didn’t know where we were going to land. We knew it was the invasion, but didn’t know where. I never saw so many ships in my life. The small landing barge called an LSVP piloted by a four or five man British crew. Every landing barge had a barrage balloon (looked like a small dirigible) hovering overhead attached to the barge by a long cable. This was done to keep enemy aircraft from getting down too close to the vessels.
All of our landing craft arrived late at night and remained about 1,000 yards off shore. At daylight a semicircle of British and American battleships (seemed like a thousand or so) surrounded us and kept up a constant artillery barrage against the coastline while our landing barges approached the beach, three barges at a time. Enemy artillery or enemy aircraft, I don’t know which, had made direct hit on one of our ammunition barges. It sat on the water ablaze, lighting up the horizon and exposing the shadows of hundreds of craft and barrage balloons. We were scheduled to have landed at 6 a.m., but the resistance we so heavy that we didn’t get on Omaha Beach until about 9 a.m.
As we approached the beach, we could see the bodies of dead GI’s floating in the water. We saw our rangers scaling the cliffs along the beach and at the top of those cliffs we could see and hear the German machine gun firing. I, along with many GI’s, was perched on the right hand side of the barge watching the spectacle when enemy bullets spattered the water right up to our barge; whereupon we all jumped down from our perches to the floor of the barge. In a few seconds the ramp dropped and we scrambled out in about one and a half feet of water and ran towards the beach. The four trucks with the howitzers attached followed us. There were white streamers about 6 yards apart on the sand and we were told to stay between the streamers. To right and left of the streamers, the land mines had not been cleared. We ran forward up a steep sandy road that cut straight up with the cliffs and on both sides. I can remember little except deafening noises of rifle and machine-gun fire until we came to a stone church at the top of the hill. Almost immediately we broke into open country and a bivouac area, where there was a long ditch that had been dug apparently by the enemy. German artillery shells began bursting at tree-top level, whereupon we all flung ourselves into the ready-made ditch. Actually when shells burst that high in the trees, the shrapnel is not very effective against ground troops, but none of us learned that until later.
As we moved inland amidst the small arms and shell fire, the feeling of excitement and adventure was replaced with a deadly fear that went right to the pit of your stomach and the dead bodies of the GI’s and Germans alike added to the misery. Just a few minutes before they we as alive as we were.
