Posted on 06/06/2012 10:53:12 AM PDT by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA — Like tens of thousands of American soldiers, Allen Waller did not land on either Utah or Omaha beaches on June 6, 1944.
But like tens of thousands of GIs he would enter France as the slugfest to defeat the Germans, first in the country across from Great Britain and later other parts of western Europe became the battlefields of freedom, ending with Nazi Germany’s surrender nearly 11 months after the D-day invasion.
Sitting in his Sierra Vista kitchen, the 87-year-old Waller talked about his entry into France, his wounding in that nation, his recuperation in England, his return to combat, his capture during the Battle of the Bulge and his eventual freedom as a Nazi captive after walking for miles in what he described as a death march in the last three months of the European part of World War II.
Coming ashore in Normandy, about three weeks after D-day, Waller said his unit came into France on Omaha Beach.
Much of the debris of the initial invasion on that beach was still visible, he said.
While the June 6, 1944, invasion is a major historical aspect of that war, for Waller and others it was just one of many battles in the fight against Germany until final victory in 1945.
“We were there to chase the Germans,” Waller said of the battles which followed the Normandy invasion.
Drafted when he turned 18, he was given a break and did not have to report for military duty until he graduated from high school in 1943.
Basic training was followed by specialty training — in Waller’s case as a paratrooper.
While many believe most airborne training was done in North Carolina, his was at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
“We got on a train and headed west to California then the train went south and we ended up in El Paso,” Waller said, adding “We were excited about going to California.”
His unit was being trained to go to North Africa, meaning the deserts in western Texas and eastern New Mexico were good to prepare the paratroopers, Waller said.
But the war in Africa ended and even as he described his fellow paratroopers as “airborne cocky little guys,” there was a decision to be made by he and the other soldiers.
They had a decide if they wanted to be infantrymen or glider soldiers.
Almost unanimously it was to go into the infantry because “there were already a lot of stories about how dangerous gliders were,” he said.
So, it was another train ride, this time to someplace “in the hot and sticky south,” Waller said.
Eventually he and others were shipped to England, arriving before D-day.
Of course there were rumors of the pending invasion but when it would happen was highly secret.
What also was known was that it would not just be the invasion forces — American, British, Canadians, French and elements from other nations — who would do all the fighting, as others would have to arrive to defeat the large German armies in France and push them back into Germany until they surrendered, he said.
A member of the 80th Infantry, Waller was part of a machine gun team, working his way from ammo carrier, to belt feeder to gunner.
Arriving in France, he and others of his unit were directed to head east.
That meant going through centuries-old hedgerows, which were nearly impervious to tanks and which the Germans used as traps, destroying tanks as if they were mere sitting targets and shooting down the infantry as if they were, too.
Eventually an enlisted tanker came up with the idea of attaching bulldozer-like blades on the front of tanks which could rip through the hedgerows instead of having armored vehicles go over the top of the mass of trees and other vegetation displaying their vulnerable undersides to the enemy.
Waller said there was no doubt the fight was going to be difficult.
The duffle bags he and others carried around since basic training were left on the beaches.
There was no way to transport them and besides, most of the items in them would not be needed.
“We tore the insides of our gas masks out and put our toiletries in the mask, that’s all we could take,” he said.
One thing he found out about the enemy was “they were good with mortars,” Waller said, adding they could put one down a chimney of a home.
As he and his buddies fought through the hedgerows and beyond, he was to find himself on he receiving end of a mortar.
Hearing the sound, knowing it was heading his way, Waller turned and ran hoping to make it around the corner to put a building between him and the incoming round.
Before he could make the turn the shell hit and his back was showered with shrapnel.
First taken to a hospital in Paris, he was transferred to one in England where he spent more than two months recuperating.
In early December he was released and was sent back to the 80th and found himself in a small hilltop village in Luxembourg.
Then came the surprise attack by the Germans, which has become known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Again he and his compatriots were to find themselves under siege by the enemy, and again mortar fire was accurate, as was the use of tanks and artillery by the Germans.
Two young soldiers, new replacements for the unit, were by him when again he heard a mortar shell heading their way.
“I yelled ‘hit the dirt’,” Waller said.
All three did, with Waller in the middle and the two young replacements on either side of him.
The round burst nearby and the two replacement soldiers were killed and Waller said this time he didn’t even get a scratch.
The battle for the village continued, seriously wounding his lieutenant.
Helping the officer to medical treatment meant going through German-controlled lines but the enemy allowed Waller and the lieutenant to go through.
“I had to sneak back, though,” he said.
The small American contingent in the village was continuously hit and eventually all that was left were six soldiers, who were taken prisoners.
“That happened on Christmas Eve,” Waller said.
Then came marches and train rides in crowded box cars.
Eventually many of the Americans taken prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Prussia, he said.
In February 1945, the prisoners in Stalag IIA were forced to march for three months, until they were liberated in April.
“We started out with about 800 of us, when it ended there were less than 300,” Waller said.
Although his actual combat experience was about six months long, and his captivity four months, Waller, who has been awarded a Purple Heart Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge and Expert Rifleman Badge, who left the Army as a corporal, has never said he saw no reason to serve.
Perhaps the most unhappy time for him was after being liberated from the Germans.
At 6 foot tall, he lost so much weight, the military wanted to put weight on him before he was allowed to go home to visit family in Wisconsin.
“They said I would scare my mother,” Waller remarked
Normandy Speech: Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day
We don’t expect anything from Obama.
2 things on the post
1 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway has been largly ignored it was more significent than DDay IMO.
The Soldier is right. Actually the Russians were really the ones who defeated the Germans, they had already shattered the Grman Military by the time of the invasion.
We sped thing up but the Russians were going to defeat the Germans in any event.
If we had not invaded, the Germans could have withdrawn to a defensible line and held off the Russians for years. Plus their air force would not have been able to savage the German economy the way we did. Russians who reached Germany were astonished by the devastation of the German cities.
Here’s a beautiful tribute to D-day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdrvtiSmP1w&feature=em-share_video_user
My God, such a beautiful tribute.
We say “we will remember” and that “we will never forget”, but all too many do forget, all too many don’t even care.
If that tribute doesn’t make one pause and reflect on those that sacrificed, then they are not truly an American.
If that tribute doesn’t bring a tear to their eye, then they are not human.
That was incredibly beautiful... thank you for posting.
Thanks for posting
Casualties were actually comparatively light on D-Day. In the breakout campaign afterwards, most infantry companies suffered 100% plus casualties—some even exceeded 300%.
The fighting in the hedgerows afterwards was the real struggle, where the toughness of the Allied—and German (especially Waffen SS)—soldiers was truly tested. They came out pretty much evenly. The Germans ran out of infantry first.
And for the life of me, I can’t see the video-game and sports befuddled pansies of this rising generation taking on the equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Just no way.
This is a wonderful video you posted and the music and words are so touching. It even included 9/11.
I made a slideshow of D-Day a couple of years ago. The sky was black with aircraft and dark clouds, and the beach was covered with the wounded - and worse. May we never forget them.
Thank you for the awesome slide show! My father, David, served in CBI in WWII and served in the Korean War. These photos honor them all. May God bless our patriots and heroes past, present, and future. May We The People give our troops a new CIC in November. In my opinion, they certainly deserve better than what they have now.
I’m glad you liked the slideshow. Your Father was one of “The Greatest Generation” and I honor him too.
You make good points; in terms of casualties, etc. D-Day was insignificant in comparison to other battles. While the invasion of France is now touted as “getting a foothold in Europe”, the fact is that we had one a year before (in Italy), but couldn’t advance all the way up because of the high losses inflicted by “Smiling Albert” Kesselring’s defense (see Anzio, Monte Cassino).
The further we get from these events the more mythology replaces fact; today most Americans don’t know how the French resisted the invasion of their colonies in North Africa by Americans & the British. Hollywood portrayed it as the actions of a lone fanatical French officer, but the fact is they were a neutral territory with no interest in having the war in their backyard.
Seeing what this country has devolved into in the 70 years since that war, I wonder if the surviving veterans see any remnants of what they fought for.
“If we had not invaded, the Germans could have withdrawn to a defensible line and held off the Russians for years.”
By the time of the invasion Germany was done in the east; they were running out of men, ammunition, and supplies. Stalin wanted the invasion because he lost almost a whole generation of men; by 1944 the Soviets were advancing behind artillery barrages that leveled everything, and following up with ground troops increasingly made up of Far Eastern minorities - and even that was unstoppable for the Axis.
The armies in the West constituted a reserve that the Germans could have thrown into defending breakthroughs if their lines had been sufficiently shortened. Tactically the Germans were far superior to the Russians, as the defense on the Elbe showed.
Interesting to speculate how the war in Italy would have gone if Patton rather than Mark Clark had been in charge. Certainly the Texas Division wished he had been the commander.
The Germans were cooked either way, the reserves would have been chewed up certainly more Russians would have died but Stalin didn’t care. There were vastly out producing the germans and had gained control of the battlefield and the air over the battlefield.
Of course it helped that we supplied coupious amounts of trucks and soem airplanes (p-39) for ground attack to compliment the Il-2.
At best the war might have been prolonged. BTW Hitler was never inclined to give up territory to shorten up the lines that hastened the destruction of Army group center for example. See the decisions at the Kosun pocket and the Crimea for just 2 examples.
The German Army was destroyed at Kursk the rest was downhill from there.
“The armies in the West constituted a reserve that the Germans could have thrown into defending breakthroughs if their lines had been sufficiently shortened.”
The armies in the West were mostly the battered remnants of units that had been ravaged in the east. Even the Battle of the Bulge was a skirmish in contrast to Kursk, Stalingrad, Leningrad, or Kharkov. By the end of the war the Soviets had nothing but time; they were fighting on someone else’s land.
Patton achieved results with high casualties; in the end the geography in Italy was as much an enemy as the Germans, and I don’t know what else could have been achieved there.
Patton was a brilliant man; his autobiography was great.
The Wehrmacht was the best organized army in the war. Even with scrubs they were able to mount a winter offensive in the West. If those men and equipment had been available to use in the East, the Russian January Offensive would not have moved so quickly. Again, the Germans were better tacticians than we or the Russians, and detailed studies of their defenses on the Oder show this. It was a bit like Lee’s defense of Richmond .
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