He didn't say much about it. A boat next to his was 'blown out of the water'. A German round hit his boat in the little office. Luckily, he wasn't in there at the time. His jacket, draped across the back of his chair, was shredded, and several cartons of cigarettes in the locker were 'turned to snuff'.
My grandfathers best friend was a sailor on the Arizona. He NEVER talked about it, but I found out after he killed himself that he was haunted by it his whole life, he was 68.
My uncle was an engineer on the first wave at Omaha beach. He remembers passing by the battleship Texas as she cut loose with a 14 inch gun salvo into German positions. He speaks of the invasion at times. He said on that day he had several buddies who were standing there one second and the next second they were just gone, nothing left from the mortar or artillery round that landed right on them.
He talks some about the hedgerow fighting and how vicious it was. He had a low opinion of Patton saying he pushed too hard on the right flank after the breakout at St. Lo and got a lot of GI’s killed by friendly fire which he thought could have been avoided by just a slight pause in the advance before then going hard and fast.
At one point him and his buddy captured a few Germans right after the landings and they took the Germans to a collection station and the officer in charge told them this is a collection point for dead krauts only do you understand and motioned for them to take care of them being live krauts. They said yes sir and moved on down the line where they turned them into a position where they were taking POWS.
He was at Sainte-Mère-Église and passed a tree where a US paratrooper had landed and got shot by the Germans. He said a group of German POW’s were walking by, about 15-20 of them and they were pointing at the dead GI and laughing and a couple of paratroopers were enraged and took the Germans out behind a building and he said he heard a bunch of gunfire and the GI’s walked back and there were no more German POWS.
He is 94 now and currently battling pneumonia.