Editor’s Note: June 6 marked the 58th anniversary of the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe from the clutches of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The following story tells the role Oregon State College alumni played in this pivotal battle of World War II.

Paratroopers Lead the Way

For months preceding the Allied attack on Normandy, the high command of the French Underground had been receiving scores of coded messages over the BBC radio network, knowing that only two of these would be the signal that would launch the greatest military assault in history.

The majority of them, of course, meant nothing, planned that way to keep the German army guessing as to the precise date and time the invasion might come.

"Napoleon’s hat is in the ring," "John loves Mary," "The arrow will not pass," "The Trojan War will not be held," "John has a long mustache," were just a few of the hundreds of cryptic sayings the British had broadcast at random and that had been listened to by thousands on short-wave radio sets.

Then at 6:30 p.m. on the eve of attack, the two messages the French had been waiting for were transmitted : "It is hot in Suez," followed by "The dice are on the table." The D-Day everyone remembers today was about to begin!

H-Hour, the time at which the landings on the Normandy beaches would take place, was scheduled for 6:30 a.m. Five hours earlier, or shortly after midnight, 18,000 Allied paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the British 6th Airborne had dropped out of the black skies near the towns of Ste.-Mere-Eglise and Caen to point the way to the thousands of troops who would storm on to the mainland shortly after daybreak. Each man was ladened with arms, ammunition, land mines and heavy packs. Along with them rained down parachutes carrying equipment and supplies of all kinds.

Unfortunately, quite a few of the paratroopers landed in swamps and areas that had been flooded by the Germans. Burdened by their heavy loads, not a few of them perished before they ever had a chance to fire off a single round.

Almost sharing that fate was 2nd Lt. Edward Allworth, OSC class of 1942, who jumped with the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the 101st. After landing in a deep swamp, he discarded whatever he could to keep from bogging down (or worse), struggling out with only his carbine, which he held above the water with his right hand, a grenade in his left, and his commando knife clenched between his teeth. He joined an American unit near a village under heavy fire from the now-alerted Germans. Casualties began to mount and since no medics were available, he set up an aid station in a church and located medical supplies in parachute bundles dropped in the area. Organizing the evacuation of wounded from the front lines, Allworth helped carry men back to the station under the fire of mortars, machine guns and snipers. On one of the trips, he was hit by mortar fragments but continued to evacuate more men despite his own painful wound.

Allworth

His bravery did not go unnoticed. Allworth was given a battlefield promotion to 1st lieutenant for this action and awarded the Bronze Star. Back in Corvallis, his proud father, (Major) Ed Allworth, director of the OSC Memorial Union, was reminded of his own wartime experience in France, where in 1918, he had become one of World War I’s Medal of Honor recipients, one of only 11 Oregonians to ever be so honored.

Meanwhile, 1st Lt. Till Forman, ’42, a platoon leader with the 507th PIR of the 82nd Airborne, found himself in a field flooded with two feet of water. "In the moonlight, it had looked like frost as I was coming down," he said in an interview for The Oregon Stater in September 1991. He remembers the time as 2 o’clock in the morning.

"I had been the first one out of the plane," he shared, "and was supposed to signal my unit on the ground, since they would be scattered along the direction the plane was flying. But things didn’t happen the way we planned." His signaling flashlight had been wrecked against the doorway as he left the plane and they were not dropped where they had expected. He never saw his group again that night. This was to be the pattern for most of those who participated in this part of the operation.

After detaching his parachute, Till waded to the edge of the field and sought out other troopers, eventually joining a group of about 200 from various units who had gathered near a river. They fought their way to a pre-planned assembly area from which they began an attack, destroying pillboxes and fortified positions, seizing bridges and road crossings, and cutting off the Germans’ ability to reinforce their troops at the beachheads.

In the days that followed, Till took part in many battles in the Normandy Campaign, receiving a wound on the 4th of July that did not keep him from fighting. When he finally returned to England after 40 days in battle, he was one of only two officers left out of the original 14 in his unit. Five had been killed and seven seriously wounded. Till was awarded the Silver Star for distinguishing himself in action.

Lt. Col. Patrick Cassidy, ’37, was also in the pre-H-Hour drop. He received the Distinguished Service Cross for leading his unit in the face of enemy guns and for directing artillery fire to eliminate a German machine gun nest. Capt. Knut Raudstein, ’40, also received the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism.

H-Hour at Utah and Omaha Beaches

Overnight, the rough seas of the English Channel had become alive with almost 5,000 ships carrying the first wave of assault forces to the Normandy Coast. The coordination of their loading and departures from numerous ports, narrowing them down to 59 convoys sailing through carefully mine-swept lanes and bringing them together at last in a rendezvous area only five miles in radius, was (and is) one of the greatest logistic triumphs in military history. Especially since it was accomplished without enemy detection.

At precisely 6:30 a.m. landings began, the British at three beaches on the east side and the Americans at Omaha Beach in the center and Utah Beach to the west.

The Utah Beach sector had been somewhat softened the night before by paratroopers, but Omaha was heavily defended and proved for the Americans to be the most difficult landing of all.

Ross

At 6:33 a.m., 2nd Lt. Wes Ross, ’43, commanded Boat No. 8 through the surf onto Omaha Beach and was platoon leader of Co. B, 146th Engineer Combat Battalion. His mission was to blow up German-placed beach obstacles in advance of the infantry landings.Under withering fire, they managed to secure a 50-yard gap in the rows of embedded steel posts, called "Rommel’s asparagus," before the first landing craft put ashore at about 7:15. Many of his company had been wounded by that time and at 8 a.m., Wes himself was hit by mortar fire and had to be evacuated. He later received the Distinguished Service Cross and received a battlefield promotion.

Meanwhile, out in the Channel waiting to come in were Army Sgt T-3, Kent Haley, ’40, a radio operator aboard the transport SS Exchequer; Ens. Harvey Ronne, ’41, commander of a Coast Guard cutter; and Navy Lt. jg. Hollis Ottoway, ’42, in charge of an infantry landing craft.

Landing at Utah with the Fourth Infantry Division, 2nd Lt. Wayne Young, ’42, was a forward observer for the 29th Field Artillery Battalion. His unit was sent to support the 8th Infantry Regiment with powerful M-7s...105mm cannon mounted on tank frames. With resistance lighter than at Omaha, the Fourth was soon able to move towards Cherbourg, one of the prime objectives in the invasion. Wayne later received a Bronze Star. Two of his Oregon State ROTC buddies were also at Utah, with Fourth Division field artillery battalions: 2nd Lt. Ed McAlvage, ’42, with the 20th, and John Tolleshaug, ’42, with the 42nd.

Others in the action at Normandy were: Capt. James Allgood, ’40, Capt. Henry Shumaker, ’33, who later wrote that he had appropriated a German pillbox as sleeping quarters, and Capt. Wayne Fish, ’39, whose boat was torpedoed in the landing. "We lost almost everything," he later remembered, "and stormed the beach with only trench knives, pistols and a few rifles."

By June 13, only a week after the D-Day landings, the Allied armies had moved inland as far as 20 miles and had joined together along an 80-mile front. Though they were confident they could do so, the Germans had failed to defeat their enemies on the beaches of Normandy. By Aug. 25, Paris had been liberated and the battle to free all of Europe had begun in earnest, with the Battle of the Bulge and many bloody months still ahead.

The feelings of many a GI after Normandy were summed up in a letter from Lt. Jack Vermeul, ’41, to his family and OSC classmates. "Things have quieted down somewhat and maybe I will live to a ripe old age after all."

One Oregon Stater who did not live through the Normandy ordeal was Tommy Swanson, ’37, a star footballer for the Beavers in the mid-’30s. Swanson, a captain in the 320th Infantry Regiment of the 35th Division, survived the assault on Omaha Beach the morning of the 6th, only to be killed near the village of St. Lo on July 13. He won the Silver Star posthumously for gallantry in combat.

George Edmonston Jr. is editor of the Oregon Stater and Eclips. Tom Bennett is a free-lance writer living in St. Louis, Mo.