LARRY , S INTERVIEWS

Chapter 8

GERMAN PLANES WERE STRAFING THE BEACH WHEN WE WENT ASHORE. IT WAS NIGHT AND WE CAME ASHORE BLIND WITH NO LIGHTS AND BEING UNDER FIRE.

Over the years Larry had the opportunity to correspond with a limited number of members of the 2487th Quartermaster Truck Company. The correspondence was by phone, letters, and personal meetings. He was able to correspond with Coy Shirley (Tech 5, Mechanic), Paul Kubis (Corporal, Truck Driver), Alton Payne (Corporal, Truck Driver), Albert Zeidlik (Corporal, Truck Driver), and Frank Neumeier (Sergeant). Larry was able to provide the narratives of each soldier and categorize them by the event and/or location.

Speaking about the crossing of the Atlantic to Europe:

Paul Kubis - “We left Port from Hampton Roads, Virginia aboard the General John Pope, one of the convoy of ships bound for England. The first two days out, fog was so bad the ships in the convoy were continually sounding their fog horns to avoid collisions. The fog cleared and we ran into a huge storm.”

Alton Payne - “The storm was so bad that everything not tied down securely was lost overboard including all the life boats. The ship’s bell top side rang continuous for a day and a half.”

Coy Shirley - “The troops were housed below deck. The 2487th was on the third level. There were 7000 troops aboard the ship which was 1000 men over capacity. There was a group of colored troops that were housed topside at the rear of the ship and several of them were lost overboard during the storm. Every man on the ship including the crew was sick. The crossing took eight days.”

Speaking about the arrival in Europe:

Albert Zeidlik - “We stepped off the General John Pope at Greenock, Scotland and directly into the war. We were greeted by German air raids that very night as well as nearly every other night while we were in England.”

Frank Neumeier - “We landed on the 13th of September 1943 and were damn glad to get off that boat! They loaded us on buses and drove us to Bishop Stafford, England.”

Speaking about England and the buildup to the invasion:

Albert Zeidlik - “We spent nine months in England hauling supplies of all types needed by our fighter bombers. At night we had to drive with only a small light called a cat eye. On dark foggy nights it was not uncommon that a truck would straighten out a curve and end up in someone’s yard or a farmer’s field.”

Coy Shirley - “We spent a year training in the Texas desert on Kings Ranch for deployment to North Africa and ended up instead in England. This meant training all over again for a totally different type of warfare. In addition to our normal duties, we were crawling for 75 yards under live fire on our bellies and learning to waterproof our vehicles and drive them in five feet of water in preparation for a beach landing at high tide.”

Alton Payne - “All I have to say about England is that by the time of the invasion, I was ready to swim the English Channel to get the hell out of there.” (Note: don’t know what he didn’t like about England but it had to be bad because he couldn’t swim a stoke)

Speaking about the landing at Normandy:

Albert Zeidlik - “Our Platoon (1st Platoon) landed on Omaha Beach at 3:00 a.m., June 13th (D+7). Our trucks were water proofed anticipating a high tide landing but we drove instead off on to dry ground.”

Paul Kubis and Coy Shirley - “German planes were strafing the beach when we went ashore. It was night and we came ashore blind with “no lights” and being under fire. We weren’t allowed to use our headlights. We formed up on the beach and our Captain Robert Colina walked in front of the column with a flashlight in one hand and a .45 caliber pistol in the other and led us off the beach.”

Alton Payne - “We arrived off the coast around mid day on the 12th of June and sat several hundred yards out until it was time for us to go ashore. We were positioned between the Battleships Texas and Arkansas. They were still shelling German held positions in land from the beach.