It's D-Day. Who Remembers a Hero?

My grandfather was Army Infantry in the Pacific and was wounded numerous times before being knocked out of commission. He carried Japanese shrapnel inside until the day he passed. One of my heros.

 

I would probably not ruin this 5 year old thread with posts like this.

 

While I agree to an extent, I think there was also quite a bit of unhealthy suppression of "shell shock" and while we didn't really understand PTSD the same way, our methods of dealing with it basically boiled down to "don't talk about it."
It's heartbreaking, soul crushing stuff to see old men weeping, knowing it's the first time they've spoken openly about such things, knowing that they were basically just keeping it to themselves because there was no other option.

Watching your friend die in front of your eyes, seeing someone mutilated by a shell, having to kill someone with your bare hands... it does things to you. And that's totally okay that it does. Not that you are damaged goods now, not that we have to treat you like a special snowflake, or look at you like a monster. Just that we understand that your sacrifice for the country wasn't only physical.


But yeah I do share a generation with some serious pussies.

 

Deleted.

 

My Gramps Elmer, he was "over there". Never talked about it and i think he saw some crap stuff as he had sad eyes, unlike pictures in the family album of him from before the war. Encouraged me to avoid military service. He didn't give his life but he left something on the battlefield. Hero for sure, though I got the impression that if I said so he would have got angry at me.

 

My Uncle Eddie, captured and made to walk the Bataan death march, and then survived the Japanese POW camp that followed. Still kicking and about to turn 100 in Witchita, Kansas. A hero just because he survived.

 

Not quite sure what you were meaning to say in response to my post..
I think maybe that WW2 gen didn't talk much about things that happened and bottled it up, and finally years later tell a story that's haunted them and break down etc. But that goes onto today, maybe things are more understood now on the mental effect. But you still get stigmatized if you say you're dealing with anything. So you're pretty much damned if you do, damned if you don't. So, a lot don't talk now..

And it is all heartbreaking, no matter what generations.. The effects of War are horrible.


But anyway, I don't wanna de rail the thread and didn't mean to say anything off track to start, of cool stories in honor of WW2 gen / D-Day.

 

For the first couple of years that my mom and dad were married (which would have been in the early 50s) my mom had to wake my dad up with a broom. Because half the time he would come up swinging.

My dad was the youngest of four brothers. Victor, the oldest, was the only one who actually finished college. He spent the war building radar sets with Raytheon up in Massachusetts. The next brother was Leo, he was KIA in a B-17 in Europe. The next brother was George, he joined the Marines and wound up in the Pacific. He got shell shock/PTSD real bad, and when he came home he never got over it. He drank, he couldn't hold down a job, he wound up homeless in Providence. Victor used to go out every night in the winter and find him and make sure that he was in a shelter or a church or if he couldn't find anywhere else for him he'd bring him home. One night, Victor went out and just couldn't find him. Searched all night until dawn. He had to stop finally to go to work. That night the cops showed up at his house, they found George that day. He'd gotten awful drunk and passed out in an alley, froze to death.

 

My wife's grandfather was a POW from the fall of 1944 to early 1945. I never met him but I've read his journal that he kept and it's a tough read.

 

One of my grandfathers was with Rudders Rangers at Pointe Du Hoc, and scaled the cliffs. The other grandfather wasn't there, he was tied up in the Philippines with the Japanese! Dear friends, but different as night and day. One was a hard charging, beer drinking hell raiser. The other a quiet, introspective fellow. I lost one in 1988, one in 1989. They loved hunting and fishing together.

 

I remember my father (who pass away in the early 90'S) and his twin brother who is still alive.
My dad was there in Normandy, 5th Rangers, Co.D. He never spoke about any of it my entire life, but a few years ago, my mother sent me all of his letters of valor and service. Bronze Star, etc. He had many. I keep copies on my desk at work. I read them every time I think I've done something great to remind me of what greatness looks like. I have the compass he had when he landed on the beach that day.

His twin brother never really spoke about it either, but this article came out a few years ago in the local paper in PA.
For those who care to read it below, I've changed his last name to Rupp, which obviously is just to cover privacy. Never knew any of this, and I spent many hours on the farm side be side with him.


He jumped into darkness to find an enemy ahead



“Hell, we were young. We were stupid. You had to be kind of crazy (if) you don’t care too much to jump out of anything.”

It may have been youthful ignorance that prompted John Rupp to volunteer for the parachute infantry after being drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II.

But it certainly does not define his service.

Born in February 1924, Rupp said that before the war he lived at a house about four miles farther up the road from his current Page Hollow residence, where he has lived since 1946.

Living in Warren County, Rupp, now 90, said he knew “nothing” about what was going on in the world during the early years of the war. “We were young. We knew Germany was knocking the heck out of everything in Europe.”

Drafted in March 1943, Rupp explained that he was initially placed in the 66th Infantry Division and sent for training at Camp Blanding, Florida.

“I didn’t think that was tough,” Rupp of basic training.

He was then transferred to Camp Robinson, Arkansas.

“That’s where I volunteered for parachute school,” he said.

Rupp explained, “I had a good friend from Alabama. It was his idea.” He said the friend spent an entire Sunday trying to convince him to join the Airborne. When he eventually agreed, the friend went AWOL. “I don’t know what ever happened to him,” he said.

The training at parachute school was more challenging than basic.

“A lot of it, just physical training,” he said. “A lot of it was just physical exercise stuff, running up those mountains. They’re big. There was about 400 left with me, only half of us made it. They, every Monday morning for three weeks, they said ‘whoever wants to quit, do it now.’ (There was) always a bunch that got up and left.

“I was never in an airplane until then,” he recalled. “Fort Benning, Georgia (was the) first time in my life I got (in) an airplane.” With seven or eight training jumps to complete, at the rate of about one a month, he “never landed in one for seven or eight times,” he said. “I always jumped out of them.”

Does jumping out of an airplane invoke fear?

“You don’t have time to think,” said Rupp. “You’re like a dog when it happens. They train ya’ and you react just like an animal. Before you know it you jump out that god darn door. Then you get that opening shock.”

From there, gravity does the rest.

Rupp explained that the training jumps were made at just 1,500 feet. Falling at 20 feet a second, it was quick trip. He said “you could steer by pulling the riser with your hand but that speeded it up…. You ain’t going to have much time at 1,500 feet.”

“Nothing so beautiful in the world as being in a parachute coming down.”

With his jump wings in hand, Rupp was officially part of the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team.

And his jump wings bought him a ticket overseas as the 517th sailed from Camp Patrick Henry near Newport News, Virginia on May 17, 1943 to the European Theatre of Operations.

He did not leave a girlfriend or wife stateside.

And that was a conscious choice.

“I just left friends,” he said. “I see guys that were married. They had an awful time. (I) said ‘I ain’t going to have that trouble.'”

Rupp said that he sailed on the George Bancroft, a Liberty ship, and traveled in a large convoy into the Mediterranean Sea. Once in the sea, “the Germans bombed us,” he said. “(It is a) good thing they missed my ship. There was 8,000 tons of ammo on my ship.”

Docking in Naples on May 31, Rupp said they didn’t waste any time getting off the ship.

“The Gerries were bombing us almost every day,” he recalled. The 517th was stationed close enough to the fight at Monte Cassino that “we could hear the big guns shooting in there.”

“We were just training,” Rupp said of most of the 517th’s time in Italy and Sicily.

But then did eventually join the advance north of Grosseto, in central Italy.

They “put us in combat for 18 days to see what it was like to get shot at,” Rupp said. “When we started losing guys, they pulled us out.”

The training continued through the summer months and, while the men did not know it, they were preparing for Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France.

D-Day for Dragoon was August 15 with the invasion to commence, H-Hour, at 8 a.m.

Just like the Normandy invasion two months earlier, airborne infantry were dropped behind the lines before the infantry assault, to secure key roadways, bridges and objectives.

“We loaded into planes at one o’clock in the morning (and) jumped at 4:40 in the morning. It was quite a long ride,” said Rupp.

And they didn’t receive any advance warning.

“They didn’t tell us until the night we were going to jump,” he said. “They told us where we were going. You can’t tell what you don’t know. That’s what they told us.

“It was just a night jump. We were loaded with ammo and everything. The only difference, I was in the second wave, we was not very high. We no sooner left the plane than we were on the ground.”

He said that the combat jump was well under the 1,500 feet they jumped at during training and was “probably just high enough to get the opening shock” and ensure the parachute opened.

But even though the specific site of their jump was a secret, the men had a pretty good idea.

“We were guessing,” he said. “We all were quite sure either Yugoslavia or France.”

Both locations would have forced the Germans to fight on another front, stretching their resources even further.

Rupp said Dragoon “was supposed to be the same day as Normandy. (They) didn’t have enough ships. We had to wait while Normandy took first place.

“There were three divisions that came in after we jumped,” he said.

At least at the outset, German resistance was not too stiff.

“We didn’t have too much trouble,” he said of the enemy on the day of the invasion. “They caught up with us on the third day, 20 to 25 miles inland.”

Rupp and the rest of the 517th then moved inland up the Rhone River valley through France, liberating a host of towns along the way from Fayence, Callian and Saint-Cezaire to Saint-Vallier, Grasse, Bouyon and La Roquette, pressing into Peira Cava near the coast during 94 days in the Alp Mountains.

A Bronze Star citation details Rupp’s involvement there.

“Staff Sergeant John Rupp, Jr. …for heroic achievement in action near Piera Cava, France, 23 September 1944. Staff Sergeant Rupp was a member of a patrol which was assigned the mission of destroying enemy replacements situated on the slope of a heavily mined hill. While crossing the mined area, three members of the patrol were seriously wounded by exploding mines. Alerted by the noise, the enemy opened fire compelling Staff Sergeant Rupp and his men to seek cover. From his position, Staff Sergeant Rupp saw that his three wounded comrades were lying dangerously exposed to enemy bullets. Disregarding his own safety, he crawled across the field, feeling his way among mines and trip wires until he reached the side of the nearest casualty. After removing the injured man to safety, Staff Sergeant Rupp repeated his performance in rescuing the other two wounded men. The courage and devotion to duty displayed by Staff Sergeant Rupp are in keeping with the finest traditions of the military service.”

The unit was eventually pulled off the line and assembled, along with all other Allied airborne troops, into the XVIII Airborne Corps and moved to Sissonne, France.

“They weren’t going to use us until Spring,” he said. The unit was then moved to Belgium to “clean out four or five buildings. They never told us it was a town.”

Just days later, on the night of December 15-16, the Germans offered one last-ditch offensive to break out of an ever-tightening Allied perimeter.

What ensued is known as the Battle of the Bulge.

On December 21, the 517th received an order to move and join the fight in Belgium. “It was cold,” Rupp said. “But I got shot the first time we was in there. I wasn’t out there very long.”

On Christmas, the Germans took the city of Manhay.

According to the 517th unit history, “the fall of Manhay… sent schockwaves throughout the Allied Command” because of how the Germans were now free to attack. “Urgent directives descended… demanding that Manhay be retaken at all costs.”

In that effort to re-take Manhay, Rupp was wounded.

“I was wounded the 27th of December,” he said, “right in the Battle of the Bulge.”

But while he claims he wasn’t out there very long, a citation awarding him the Silver Star says otherwise.

“Sergeant John Rupp, Jr.,… for gallantry in action at Manhay, Belgium, 27 December 1944. When a heavy concentration of supporting artillery fire fell short and into his company, causing casualties and confusion, Sergeant Rupp, although himself wounded, quickly organized his squad and moved forward to the objective. When forced to take cover by an enemy machine gun, he single handedly silenced the weapon and killed three of the enemy. Sergeant Rupp led his squad through the town, captured or killed all the enemy in his sector, and then placed his squad in a defensive position on the opposite side of the town. Only after this action and after checking with his flank units to make sure that the line was completely held, did he allow himself to be given medical aid.”

Rupp said he was “hit right in the hand.” He explained that the impact “shot the rifle right out of my hand. (It) laid on the ground in three pieces.”

“Airborne squads are small, 12 of us in there. About 30 in my platoon,” he said.

Four of those men emerged from the Bulge uninjured.

“I was in the hospital until almost Spring,” he said. He spent a week in a hospital in Belgium before flying back to England.

Once his wound sufficiently healed, Rupp said the war was “coming to an end. (I) didn’t have to go back to the front. We were ready to go but then Patton and them crossed the Rhine and they were going so fast that they didn’t need us.”

“We were going to make a jump on a Sunday morning in Germany,” he explained, “and the sandtables they had they had buildings on there. And we asked questions, where are these things. They actually said they didn’t know. What it actually was (was) a concentration camp. Thank God I didn’t have to see that.”

Rupp said he was back in France on Victory in Europe, V-E, Day. “The guys just went right to their regular days work,” he said.

But there was still a chance the 517th could have to go fight in the Pacific Theater.

“I fought in the Mediterranean Theatre and the European Theatre,” he said. “So we had a choice if we wanted to go to the Pacific or stay in Europe. (I) volunteered for the Pacific. The regimental commander said ‘No, these guys seen enough.'”

Rupp was discharged on November 28, 1945.

“They started kicking guys out in a hurry,” he said. “The government didn’t want to pay no Army wages. They talked to us. They wanted the guys to sign up and stay in. I’m glad I didn’t. Right after that, Korea hit.”

Coming back home, there weren’t any big celebrations.

“Just came home,” he said. “Neighbor said ‘Hi’ and that’s it.”

Rupp went to work at the Youngsville Furniture Factory and eventually moved to the Jamestown Metal Corp. fabricating steel.

In addition to the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and Purple Heart, Rupp was awarded the Good Conduct Medal, American Defense Medal, Victory Medal, E.T.O Ribbon with arrow head and four combat stars, the French Croix and the Belgian Croix.

“You do a lot of things you don’t even think about,” said Rupp of his service. “You just do it…. A lot of it is how aggressive you feel. Some guys could do it. Some couldn’t.”

 

All that metal on his chest and just a Private. What a D.I.C.K.!

 

An old friend named Alex was 1st wave at Omaha.
I knew him for years and didn't know this until the 50th in 1994. He told no one until then.
He always liked the M1 Carbine as it saved his life in the Bocage. Shrapnel hitting the rifle's stock instead of his gut saved him.
He ended up in Cz when the shooting stopped. He passed on about 10 years ago.

My Uncle Steve was an Amphibious Engineer who landed in France a couple weeks after D-Day.
He was at Remagen when the Ludendorff bridge fell.
He too ended up in Cz when the shooting stopped.

My Dad was a Navy Vet. He served on a DE in the Atlantic late in the war as he was only 17.
When the shooting stopped in Europe, his ship was heading to Okinawa.
Two days out of Pearl, engine problems sent them back for repairs.

They're all gone now,but these men are my Heroes.

 

I had the honor of meeting some WW II Vets when I was in Holland back in 2006. I was just a Private and had only been in the Army about 6 months. We were in Holland for the anniversary of Operation Market Garden. 40 of us got to jump on the Arnhem dropzone and I was lucky enough to be picked for that. I remember rigging up in the hangar and seeing a bunch of old guys in bright orange jumpsuits, we got to talking to them and they were WW II Vets. They had jumped on this dropzone and fought on it in WW II, they then made a pact with eachother to come back every year and jump there, there were about 6 of them. They ended up tandem jumping out of C-47s, the same birds they jumped in on during WW II. Probably one of the coolest moments out of my entire Military carrer.

Then I got pictures of me in front of the Nijmegen bridge. That was the bridge that my unit fought on and protected as Germany withdrew while blowing up bridges in Holland. The movie "A Bridge Too Far" is actually about the events of it during WW II.

 

Good thread.


My Grandad was there the day after so 73 years ago tomorrow.
Wish i knew more but he passed back in 2000 when I was 15......

 

No story but i have a pretty cool pic.

 

Well, no one directly involved with D-Day, but my Father was a Gunnery Sergeant running anti-aircraft batteries at the Panama Canal, and my mother was in one of the first groups of WACs that was commissioned. She actually outranked my Dad when they got married! he was a Sgt, and she was a 1st. Lt.!

 

@scocar Here are the pics I mentioned earlier. These were his pictures that were in a shoebox given to my mother (his niece) then to me after she passed.
Uncle Ralph is on the right.



There are far too many to post here

Here are a few

 

Awesome photos!

 

Thanks for sharing all the great stories and memories, all.

Jesus. That's the shit right there. It also reveals how much of what some perceive as heroism is often in large part primal instinct borne of the situation.

Reading citations and after actions reports are some of the most stunning records we have of theses experiences, especially since so many have preferred to remain silent.

I was hoping you would share that one. What an experience.

Awesome! So these photos knocked my memory loose. It was a history of Tinian, not Tarawa, that I edited. Tinian was also brutal, more brutal than those particular pictures happen to depict. But they had learned a lot by then from all the preceding island assaults. It was one of those battles that ended in them facing fanatical Japanese soldiers holed up in limestone cliffs and caves, along with villagers who were choosing to jump to their death in the sea. The Marines had to resort to using flamethrowers and hand grenades to the bitter end. Tinian's biggest historical significance was that it provided an airstrip within heavy bomber range of mainland Japan. And this is where Fat Man and Little Boy departed aboard B-29s on their fateful journey that changed the world forever.