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.

They didn’t go over it. Each man had a piece of pipe and one after another the lengths were pushed into the mound, driving an explosive through it. When they set it off, they could go through.

Harding says, “After a while, you don’t get used to it, but you quit being as scared as you were. We had a colonel and he gets up and he says, ‘There’s two kinds of men on this beach: that’s the dead ones . . . and those about to die. So let’s get moving!”

Finally they got through. Harding remembers, “At way past midnight, a little before we got to the hedgerows, they pulled us aside and told us to rest a little.”

With dawn came the passage through those hedgerows that offered some protection, but also cover for the enemy. Then there were the small towns they passed through. “I don’t even remember their names,” Harding says, “ I hated that because you had to clean out every house. And the worse part was every town had a church steeple and you had to watch for snipers.”

Then they came to a town, which has a name he remembers . . . a town that most have heard of – St. Lo. He can see it again in his mind’s eye: “St. Lo was very bad because when we got in, a lot of paratroopers were hung up on the trees. To see some of those guys hanging over the shops there . . . well, you quit being scared and you got mad.”

Harding’s job was to lead a squad or platoon of riflemen to protect the engineers who were building temporary bridges. At St. Lo, they built a bridge and then blew it up when they were pushed back by the Germans. They built another one. The same thing happened. They built a third and by mistake the Allies bombed it. They built a fourth and this time they went on.

They went on and on but when the war was over in Europe and they got on a troop ship at LeHarve, their number was 75 – out of the 25o who had made the trip on the LCI to Normandy.

Harding says, “I didn’t get a scratch during all of that, but somebody beside you, in front of you, behind you” was killed or injured. “It hit you when you were there, but not as much as later on you when you had time to think about it. Why them and not me?”

Bob Harding didn’t talk much about the Normandy Campaign for a long time. He explains, “Well, when I got out to come home, I didn’t want to talk about it because all I wanted to do was get home, to get going on . . .and it brought back a lot of sad memories of guys who didn’t come home. And it still does.”

Despite it all, he says, “For me, I’m glad I went; I’m glad I was there. I wouldn’t want to go back and I hope that nobody has to go. But I always figured if it was worth having – what we’ve got, then it’s worth fighting for.”

Gene Cogan and Bob Harding

Gene Cogan took an airplane to France this week . . . and a drive to Omaha Beach in Normandy. He has gone to take part in the anniversary of the invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944. He was there 60 years ago, as well. He was 21 then . . . and that first time he came by sea.

In the period between these two journeys, he has been an elementary teacher and school administrator and he says the best part of his life has been working with the kids. He is a resident of the town he left when called to service; he says he chose to remain in the rural area because he felt he would be able to have more overall contact with the students in a small town setting. And for years, he had a summer baseball program.

He has been asked to speak of his experience on D-Day and, in turn, he has asked neighbor Bob Harding, who also came ashore on that French beach to join him in answering questions about their memories of that long day and the days that followed.

They have known each other for years, yet they find themselves asking each other basic questions about their service experience; Cogan wants to know if Harding shipped out to Europe on “the (Queen) Elizabeth or the (Queen) Mary.” When Harding says he went over on the Elizabeth and came back on a troopship, Cogan laughs and remarks that it must have been “bumpy.” He tells Harding he went on the Mary and came back on the Elizabeth.

They ask about bases. “Were you here? When were you there?” And with a chuckle, Harding tells Cogan that he trained in “good old ‘Loooweeeziana’ with the snakes.” Cogan recalls that during basic training, the emphasis was on fighting the Japanese. It was only when he went to a base on the East Coast did he know he was going to Europe.

These boys who left from this area to go to war and who now share the same neighborhood and local memories, were also in the same general locale on D-Day. Cogan went in with the 29th Division, hitting the beach at around 8 o’clock and Harding landed with the 5th Engineer Brigade at about 10 that morning.

They don’t know these things about each other, however; they have to ask because for all these years, the war was something they did not talk about. Harding says, “My kids said, ‘You never talked to us (about the war) and Cogan echoes, “My kids always said that and I never have . . . I’ve talked to you (the interviewer) more than anybody else.”

Cogan has a caveat about the afternoon’s interview: “Now I don’t want you to even hint at the word hero.” Harding remarks of someone who said to him, “You’re my hero,” and says he told her that the heroes were still over there – beneath the rows of crosses.

With that ground rule established, the men talk of their experiences. They both say they had been trained well. Cogan’s unit had practiced beach landings – invading England – and Harding, whose job was to protect the engineers recalled spending a lot of time in England “blowing things up.”

Morale was good. Cogan says, “They kept us very well informed about why we were doing this and so on and so forth.” Did they know they were preparing for the actual invasion of Europe? “Oh yeah. We didn’t know where or when, but we knew we were going to be in on that.”

Harding says he and his fellow soldiers were young and strong and tough . . . and Cogan, with a laugh, refers to the natural attitude of very young men and says, “Why, I thought I was the best soldier in the world.”

Harding and Cogan remember there wasn’t much talk of casualties and Cogan says that during the time they were on the LCI waiting to cross the English Channel (a trip that was delayed for 24 hours due to weather), the captain got everybody up on deck and said, “Tonight everybody writes a letter home and I mean everybody; for some of you this is the last letter you’ll ever write.”

Cogan says, “That the only sobering statement made about things that might happen when we got over there.” Nor were they aware of how intense the battle would be.

Cogan, who landed first, says, “We were in an LCI and we were ready for a wet landing and our rifles were incased in cellophane carrying cases. The ship’s captain came on the speaker system and said, ‘I think I can get you in there’ . . . so we (landed) in very little water.

“These LCI’s had a gangplank on either side of the ship . . . and I don’t know how far down that gangplank I was when a machine gun opened up. I don’t know if it was theirs, or ours but I didn’t stop and ask questions. If diving from a gangplank is an Olympic event. I’ve still got the record.

Harding left his LCI about two hours later and remembers that “when the last guy hit the water, I saw why there would be no turning back – they raised the ramps and they were gone. The Captain called out, ‘We’ll go get you some more help.’

“You had one way to go – with a 90 pound pack and trying to keep your rifle dry.” Putting his hand between his waist and chest, Harding says, “The water was about up to here . . . and we waded in.”

When he talks of reaching the shore, the beach, he refers to the movie “Saving Private Ryan” and says, “You’ve seen it – how the water was red . . . That’s the way it was.”

He tells it. “You’re scared because it’s pretty noisy. You’re all confused.” The beach was covered with bodies. “There were a lot of them – very, very many – and they were washing in and lying right on the shore and all the way up to where (a defensive sand) mound was.”

There on Omaha Beach they did their jobs. Cogan looks at Harding and asks, “Didn’t you concentrate on the job at hand, Bob, rather than thinking about what might happen?” Harding answers, “You didn’t think about it. After the initial shock, you quit thinking about what’s going to happen because you’re thinking about what’s got to be done.”

Thinking back to that time, Cogan says, “You know, for years I knew I was a part of D-Day but I never really thought much about it.” Harding adds, “I never did.” Cogan then continues to say, “It’s only been about the past maybe five to seven years when The History Channel talked about it or showed films that I began to think, “Well, maybe I was a part of something important, something pretty big.”

Cogan says, “When you are there, your war is what’s around you. It isn’t anyplace else. It’s right there in front of you.”

On June 6. 1944, tens of thousands of soldiers each fought the war right in front of them . . . and somewhere among them were Gene Cogan and Bob Harding.

To all of them: Thank you.