D-Day Articles: Bob Harding, Gene Cogan

I have sat down with men who came ashore at Normandy June 6, 1994. It has been an honor. Here are two of the articles I have written.

Bob Harding

Around ten in the morning.
June sixth.
1944.
Omaha Beach. Normandy.

Bob Harding, age 19, of the 5th Engineer Brigade, 56th Engineers, stepped out of a LCI – Landing Craft, Infantry – and took his place in the second wave of soldiers to land in France on what historian Cornelius Ryan would call “The Longest Day.”

Fifty-eight years later Bob Harding sits in his Avilla home and remembers it wasn’t really a surprise that they were on this boat that had left Plymouth, England while the sky was still dark to cross the Channel.

Just five months earlier– between Christmas and New Year’s Day – they had disembarked from another ship, the Queen Elizabeth, in Glasgow, Scotland. They were then sent to England where they “practiced blowing things up.”

Scuttlebutt had it that there was something up. Harding says, “Oh, yeah, we had one guy that every time we’d be getting ready to do something, he say there was a rumor that we were going to really do SOMETHING. Then he would add that it was just a rumor.”

Harding smiles and says, “When we got on the boat there in Plymouth, the fellow said, ‘I think they’re carrying this rumor too far’” That was the last piece of humor in Bob Harding’s story for quite awhile.

He talks about General Eisenhower’s message that was read to all troops involved in the invasion: “In that speech I think it said there will be no turning back. When the last guy hit the water, I saw why there would be no turning back because they raised the ramps on that ship and they were gone. So you had one way to go. 90 pound pack and trying to keep rifle dry.
“Toward a mound . . .”

The mound was a pile of sand that they men called a dike and on top of it were guns. Continue reading D-Day Articles: Bob Harding, Gene Cogan

Meeting the bus . . .

Ah, yes, I dozed off during a History Channel show about Alaska, having set my alarm for 12:30 am. I awoke to the sound of my cell phone doing its song and vibrating like crazy on a wooden table. It was the Der Bingle contingent, calling to make sure I was up to go get the “person who went to Cedar Point” at 6 am and was scheduled to be in the school bus lot at 1:15 am.

She was a ball of tiredness, and as she slumped on the passenger seat, I was overcome by orneriness and said, “Summer, you’ve been dreaming of your trip to Cedar Point; time to get up and actually go.”

“Ohhhhhh, don’t do that to me.”

Sometimes what is sauce for the old stringy hen is sauce for the chick.

In the midst of staccato reports of her trip – the rides, the heat, her feet, the cost of drinks – I told her, “You know, your grandpa called to make certain we were awake to go get you on time.” And she gave me that “Of course” look back. She takes his concern for her for granted. That’s fine.

Here’s a vignette from a colder day:

The tree cohorts

Tree cohorts

Girl cohort

Back to the barn

Steak and Shake afterwards