OUR MEN OF D-DAY
By: Scott B. Thompson, Sr.
Laurens Now Magazine
June 2019
When Ed Hodges jumped into the cold waters of the English Channel, Lt. Kelso Horne was diving out of the dark, pre-dawn sky over St. Mere, Eglise in Normandy. Sgt. Bobbie Brown was preparing his platoon of the 1st Infantry Division to debark their landing craft on Omaha Beach while W.E. Carter and John Bogle and their fellow engineers were making last minute checks on their equipment.
Laurens native, Lt. Bobbie E. Brown, who had been awarded a battlefield commission from sergeant to first lieutenant for his heroic actions in North Africa., led hid platoon during the hard fighting on Omaha Beach. During the battle, Brown’s captain was killed and once again, Brown was promoted, this time to lead Co. C., 18th Infantry Regiment of the First (Bid Red One) Division. Some four months later, Captain Brown led his company up Crucifix Hill in Germany. Brown single-handedly destroyed a great number of heavily-fortified German gun emplacements. For his heroic actions while suffering numerous wounds, Captain Brown was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Another Laurens Native, Lt. Kelso Horne was the face of the Parachute Infantry regiments. 508th 82nd airborne. At nearly 30 years of age, Horne was one of the oldest, if not the oldest paratrooper on D-Day. A Dublin High School student, Horne was a member of the 508th regiment of the famous 82nd Airborne Division, which was organized at Camp Gordon, near Atlanta in 1917. Despite being shot at by ground fire, Horne escaped the treacherous trees and waters below to land safely to the ground near St. Mere Eglise. He joined his unit to began the march toward the Normandy inlands.
One day, while Lt. Horne was marching, a photographer pulled up in a jeep and asked to take the exhausted paratrooper’s picture. That photograph was placed on the cover of Life magazine for the cover story of the D-Day landings. Horne’s grim, yet determined look in eyes, told the whole world that America was indeed going to win the war. Today, the particularly issue is still one of the most popular issues from the World War II era. Horne’s picture was also used by Time Magazine on the front cover of its Millenium issue in 2000. He was wounded a few days later and sent to a hospital. When Horne died three years later, some of his ashes were spread in the courtyard of old church in St. Mere Eglise, where he landed that night, 75 years ago. The eternally grateful citizens of the town have since erected a memorial to their fallen hero. Alfred Davidson, a member of the 101ST Airborne Division, also took his life in God’s hands as he parachuted into the dark skies over Normandy. The paratroopers were to cut of German supply lines to Cherbourg and block any enemy forces from moving toward the coast.
In the skies, General Eziekel Napier, a former resident of the Montrose community and a native of Hawkinsville, was directing his bombers of the 489th bomb group. The West Point (Class of 1929) graduate was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre with a palm, for his devotion to duty and courage under all conditions serve as an inspiration to his fellow flyers. His actions on all these occasions reflected the highest credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of the United States.
“There were dead bodies everywhere, said Isam Davis, who moved to Dublin after the war. As Davis was wading toward the shore in chest-deep water, he noticed that the sky was dark with planes. While he had difficulty in remembering many details, stating that it’s like trying to describe the grand canyon to someone who has never seen it, Davis never forgot the he was luckily one of only five members of this 100 plus members of his company to be alive at the end of the war.
Lyman Keen didn’t get a chance to see much. Shortly after wading ashore, Keen was hit in the head and severely wounded. He did recall, “The channel was plum red with blood.”
George P. McIntyre, who moved to Dublin after the war was on his 15th mission. The B-17 pilot, years after the war remarked that it was a relatively easy mission which took place late in the initial attack.
W.E.Carter, assigned to the 294 Combat Engineers, remembered picking up usuable weapons from the dead as he waded ashore. His company and that of John Bogle were assigned to conduct mine sweeping operations for the 4th Infantry Division. James T. Warren, PFC, 4th Infantry Division, George H. Horne, Pvt. 1st Infantry Division, wounded, and David Stevenson (29th Infantry Division) were there too on that terrible, but glorious day.
John Bogle
David Stevenson
Lloyd Barron could never forget the corpses, some with their limbs still twitching and stacked like pulp wood in cords all over the blood-red death trap, designated as Omaha Beach. Assigned to Co. I, 116th Reg. 29th Division, Barron was originally assigned to land at H-Hour plus 50 minutes in the Fox Green, Dog Red Sector of Omaha Beach as the second wave of the 116th Infantry hit the left center of the beach. The first company of the 116th to hit the beach was Company A from Bedford, Virginia. Nineteen members of the company, known as the “Bedford Boys,” were cut down in the first few minutes. Barron’s Higgins’s boat fortuitously drifted away from the assigned attack point. “It was so quick, there wasn’t much to do, just to get out,” Barron said.
Ed Hodges remembered going in about four o’clock that morning, about three hours before the first wave was scheduled to attack on Utah Beach. Hodges recalled that he and his men had to swim some to try and dismantle the firmly placed wooden frames close by the shoreline. “We had metal detectors to find the mines, and we had to dig them out,” said Hodges. There was some hostile fire, “but luckily not much,” Hodges recalled.
Ed Hodges on the beach at Normandy (upper left)
“After the first wave got in, we had time to rest and the load lightened up,” remarked Hodges. When asked if he was scared, Hodges replied, “Scared? We didn’t have time to be scared. We had a duty to do and had to get it done.” Once the beachhead was established, Hodges and his fellow sailors were assigned to act as keepers of the beach, directing traffic in and out of the area.
Jake Webb vividly remembered the landing, “The front gate came down and we hit the beach. I don’t remember having any time to worry about what was about to happen. We had been well trained, and we simply moved out. When we landed, we didn’t know the beach was mined. Someone yelled “mines”! We were lucky. The water was only knee-deep and I waded on to the beach. It wasn’t like Omaha Beach, where so many of our men drowned with the weight of their equipment pulling them down. I followed the tracks of the man who was out in front of me. Just as we were setting foot on solid ground, German artillery rounds began firing on our platoon which was in the first wave to hit the beach. The German 88mm guns were pounding the beach and the water. Our platoon sergeant hollered, ‘Get going - they are zeroing in on us”! I turned around, and he was waving to us to get going and fast. About that time a round hit near the sergeant. A piece of shrapnel struck the sergeant’s throat. He managed to climb into a shell crater to wait on aid from the medics. I didn’t see him for a while, but he did return to our company when we were in Germany. We made it about a half mile inland that day. Our mission was to link up with the paratroopers who had jumped behind the German lines the night before.”
Alfred Davidson
June 6, 1944 - perhaps the seminal day in the history of the world. It was a day when a dozen or more of Laurens County’s finest men crossed the channel in defense of their homes, to save their country from tyranny, and as it turns out to save the freedoms of the world. In a way, all of Laurens County was there, serving in the military, or keeping watch on the home front, praying, hoping that the day would soon be over and the world would begin to be a safer and more free place to live in.
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