Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1994)
TWO - Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, June 1, 1994 Soldiers remember D-Day on 50th anniversary of invasion This year marks the 50th an niversary of D-Day during World War II when American and Cana dian troops joined British forces in the final campaign to free western Europe from Nazi Ger many occupation. Three million soldiers and 2,727 ships were in volved in the largest amphibious military operation in history. On June 6, 1944, the first day of ‘Operation Overload’, 57,000 Americans and about 75,000 British and Canadian soldiers landed on five Normandy beaches in France after crossing the British channel. About 23,000 men dropped onto French soil by parachute or in gliders. Memories of that war in Europe remain forever etched in the minds of local veterans who survived that ordeal. Time has not erased those encounters or memories of comrades who died fighting for freedom. lone’s Paul Rietmann was among those young men who died during that invasion. Veteran James Farley is cur rently on a trip to visit the land that he remembers as being tom apart by war. His 15-day tour in cludes visiting the sites of Nor mandy beach invasions and ma jor battle sites such as the Battle of the Bulge, Caen and Arnhem. D—Day ceremonies there rae ex pected to be attended by 13 heads of state along with thousands of returning veterans. Farley became a second lieute nant in the 925 Field Artillery Division following ROTC train ing at Oregon State College. On D-Day his unit had been station ed neaer Exeter in England. It took five days for ships carrying that unit’s heavy equipment to land at Omaha Beach because of rough seas. “ It was all w ar,’’ Farley recalls. But I give all the credit to the doughboys (infantrymen) who really had it rough, he said. After destruction of German-held coastline fortifications, his unit provided reinforcements as Allied troops pursued the retreating Ger mans. They moved across borders as Allied forces freed na tions that had been overrun by Germans. Farley was discharged in February, 1945. He resumed hometown life where he has been engaged in ranching. He also ow ned and operated an automobile agency and garage for many years before his retirement. Time hasn’t erased stories about morale building tactics us ed by military units who bragg ed about which divisions were the most influential in winning the war. As a bombardier and First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Raymond (Bud) Batty recalls his unit joking about drop ping bombs behind Allied forces to keep them moving forward. Batty flew 54 missions to knock out bridges, roads and German strongholds. The effec tiveness of those missions that cut off German supplies and man power was revealed in the Ger man radio broadcasts of Berlin Sally, who called them “ bridge busting bastards,” Batty said. Batty was living in John Day when he was drafted at age 22. He signed up for a three-year hitch in the Air Force. He became an air mechanics instructor at a school in North Carolina. He enrolled in the Army Cadets Air Force School in Long Beach, C A ., because he said his mechanic role “ was boring” . He was one-half inch too short in height to qualify for a pilot. Ad ditional training as a navigator and bombardier molded Batty in to a versatile member of a six- man crew flying B-26s. Alter crews were assigned, Batty said they practiced “ milk runs” in Louisiana. On D-Day Batty ’ s squadron was on the way overseas via Greenland as first replacements after the Norman dy beaches were cleared and secured. Batty’s military life was no longer ‘boring’. Once his plane suffered mechanical damage and they had to set down in Brussels which, by that time, was being held by Canadian troops. Lack ing access to replacement parts, the crew stayed there five days until another plane flew them back to base. Their plane was I later repaired. Another close call came when their plane lost a motor on the way back to England. Batty said his crew was prepared to “ditch' in the English Channel, but after almost scrap ing the cliffs they made a safe landing. With 139 service points. Batty received the distinguished flying cross along with a bevy of medals. But he never received the purple heart as he declined to report to a doctor to verify an in jury when anti-aircraft flack sizzl ed under his flack jacket. Lady Luck flew with him on missions when his plane received 300 bullet holes and when his plane and one other, out of a squadron of 12 were the only ones to escape being shot down. “ Going back to Europe would bring back alot o f bad memories,” Batty said, so he and his wife declined to join in the overseas commemoration. He once tried flying small planes but he said they were too slow and too light. Following four years and four days in the service he decided to keep his feet on the ground. After ranching at John Day and Klamath Falls, the Bat- tys came to the Heppner area in 1968 ^id farmed here before his retirement. Those successful bombing mis sions relied on Army Air Force ground crews. John Wood said that his crew of 33 men worked around the clock to keep those big bombers flying. As chief armorer of a squadron of Flying For tresses, Master Sgt. John Wood’s crew was in charge of all bomb ing and gunnery equipment. Under his direction they were responsible for maintenance, checking and repairing all the complicated mechanisms used by planes to drop bombs with destructive effectiveness. Wood was drafted at age 30 in April 1942, while living in Enter prise. His basic training began in Texas. Technical schools follow ed at Denver and Detroit. His 34th unit was formed from the 385 bomb group after advanced training in Salt Lake and Spokane. After 25 months of military service in England. Wood was sent back to the U.S. He was ex pecting to be sent to the South Pacific war zone when Japan sur rendered. Although his WWII military service ended then, he was called back during the Korean war and he spent nearly a year in California. Since 1966, the Woods have made their home near Heppner where he has spent a lifetime as a carpenter before his retirement. Then there were the military medics who assisted the wound ed and dying soldiers. Their work was sometimes downplayed, but not by the men who personally received that attention. While not actively participating in combat, Gene Majeske ex perienced the horrors that war in flicted on young men while he was serving as a young Army medic. Majeske, who was drafted in 1944, received his basic training at Ft. Lewis, WA. and was then sent to Pennsylvannia. Shortly after D -D a y he was on an American ship sailing from New York to France as part of the Ar my’s 36th Engineer Regiment. “ Depth charges trying to sink the boat, sounded all night while we were crossing the English Channel,” Majeske said. After a safe landing, he spent two years in occupational hospital units in \ Gene Hall with his army jeep France, Austria, Belgium and Germany as the U.S. helped restore those countries. After he was discharged in May 1946, Majeske returned to his wife and the Lexington family farm that he has continued to operate. A Morrow County resident since June 1990, Veteran Jubby Roach readily recalls his World War II service. During D-Day Mater Sergeant Roach was with the Army’s 502 Quartermaster Company that unloaded equip ment from landing craft on Omaha Beach. Roach, age 23, was working in California when he was drafted. His basic training began in Il linois. “ I’ll never understand how I got switched from a medic to a mechanic,” Roach said. But he found himself in charge of training men as drivers of trucks and tanks. In spite of many fallen infan try soldiers on Omaha Beach, Roach's division got on shore with trucks and other equipment. Land mines got some of the vehicles, he said, and for a time he and 33 men were cut off from other Allies by the Germans. Those trucks, trailors and weapons assisted the reinforced troops as they pursued the retreating G erm ans across borders. Roach said he was “ real lucky” as his unit was cut off again, near the Rhine River. However he lost many close bud dies during the four years and 18 days that he served his country, a memory that is difficult to forget. While some WW II soldiers kept their feet on the ground, three Morrow County veterans chose to jump out into space, rather than depend on a plane for a safe landing. Gene Hall, James Norene and Donald Robinson were with the 502nd Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. Hall, whose parents were liv ing near Fossil, was attending Oregon State University when he was drafted in March 1943. Norene. who was also attending OSU was drafted in Dec. 1943 and Robinson left the family ranch near Hardman for the ser vice in January 1942. After basic training at different locations, these men volunteered for the paratroops. Following ex tensive training at camps in the southern part of the U .S., they were sent to England. There they acquired an in-depth knowledge of foreign terrain as they con tinued making practice jumps. Targeted landing sites didn’t always pan out due to ground winds. Robinson said he wasn’t looking for flowers when he fell through the roof of an English greenhouse and broke some bones in his foot. General Dwight Eisenhower made the decision about D-Day which was postponed by a day due to bad weather. The Ger mans, who were fortified along the French coast, didn’t per ceive that airborne troops would drop inland under cover of night before landing troops reach ed the beaches. The night sky was illuminated with tracers as pilots flew slow- moving transport planes, without armament loaded with human cargo. After machine gun fire rip ped through the bottom of that C-47, Robinson recalls, they were glad to jump at just 250 feet from the ground. At that eleva tion. there really wasn’t any point in packing an extra chute, he added. Robinson’s division followed tanks inland as a reserve force to mop up scattered German troops and secure Allied supply routes. Once while resting briefly near a French village, the tired and hungry paratroopers were befriended by a French farmer. After giving these soldiers Cognac that he had hidden from the Germans, Robinson said that their forward line of march weav ed considerably. Two weeks later Robinson was hit by shrapnel from an 88 ar tillery shell after encountering Germans entrenched in a French farmhouse. After being attended by a field medic, that night Robinson said he heard German voices while laying in a shell hole. To avoid detection from Germans who weren’t taking prisoners of war then, he crawl ed into a nearby covered slit trench. Members of his unit sear ched and found him there the next day. Hall’s unit was commission ed with the dangerous job of knocking out communications. Laden with dynamite caps, com pound C and primer cord they knocked out bridges and railroads after parachuting 15 miles inland from the coast of France. His unit was later sent to southern France to help secure the Cherbourg Pennisula. His war experiences are one thing that he’d rather not talk about, he said. Hall was discharged in September 1945. He resides in Heppner after a lifetime of work ing on ranches and other occupa tions. Robinson was discharged in January 1948 after spending about three years in and out of Army hospitals. Since then he has been an active cattle rancher near Heppner. Also opting to float down to earth, Heppner veterinarian Dr. James Norene signed up for the n Sii* Gene Majeske with truck during war Continued page 3 Don Robinson in full jumping gear Bud Batty in front of barracks James Norene L-R: Don Robinson, Jim Farley, Bud Batty, Gene Hall, John Wood, Gene Majeske and Jim Norene look over old photo and news paper clippings from D-Day.
