D-Day 6 June 1944 - General Discussion Forum - General Discussion Forum

My son wrote this for his 8th Grade “Heroes” project.

Charles L. N_

Charles N_ was not a famous soldier. He was simply a soldier in World War II who risked his life for others to be free; a soldier who went into war because one country wanted to rule over other countries. He went in to try to stop that from happening so that every country and all people could be free.

Charles N_ was born October 7th, 1920, in Dundee, Michigan. His family moved to Minneapolis when he was three years old. “Chuck” lived in Minneapolis for the rest of his life. Chuck’s parents died when he was a teenager so his aunt raised him. Chuck graduated from Patrick Henry High School in 1938.

When World War II broke out in 1941, Chuck tried to volunteer for the army, but he was turned down due to his poor health. Chuck had a 4-F card, which indicated he was the lowest rated soldier due to poor health, so he felt he would not be chosen by the army. He had high blood pressure, a heart murmur, and bad feet. He signed up for the Airborne, the paratroopers, thinking he would not be selected. When he took the airborne physical test, as he put it, “one doctor took a flashlight and shined it in one ear while another doctor looked in the other ear. When the second doctor didn’t see any light, he yelled, “1-A””, which meant Chuck was the highest ranking specimen, and he would be the first to enter the war!

In December 1943, Chuck was sent to start training at Camp McCoy in Georgia. Soon after, all the American troops got on the ships and took thirteen days to cross the North Atlantic and get to Scotland. When Chuck’s troops got to Scotland, they boarded trains and went to England.

Then D-Day came on June 6th, 1944. “D-Day” means Deliverance Day, meaning that the Americans were going to deliver freedom to Europe. On that day, 180,000 American troops crossed the English Channel and landed in France to try to free Europe from the Germans.

One of the soldiers said about D-Day, “It’s not what you want to do at times, it’s what you have to do, and that was our mission in the world at that time. We had to do it, and we did it”. Chuck said after the war, “We had to go in there, we had to. We had to get a foothold in the Normandy area where we could get our men and the equipment in to get through and defeat the Hitler regime.”

The equipment that Chuck carried that day consisted of a harness, an M-1 rifle, a machine gun, and 600 rounds of ammunition, which all together weighed over 300 pounds. After they got their parachutes, they boarded the planes. When they got to the drop zone over a small town in northern France and saw the red light turn green, all eighteen men jumped out of the plane in less than four seconds. When they landed, they gathered all of their equipment and went to conquer and protect a bridge, which was their main objective.

While in Normandy, Chuck got shot in the groin. He hollered for a medic. Luckily, the bullet hit a pocket with a full clip of shells in it and shattered the shells. The powder inside the shells was burning him. When the medic came and cut his pants open, all Chuck had was a minor wound and he quickly returned to battle.

Chuck and his group were moved all over the Normandy peninsula. After thirty-seven days in battle, they had lost many soldiers, and they finally returned to England. After they had gotten replacements, they were told they were going to jump into Holland in September, in an operation called “Market Garden”. Chuck was a machine gunner, and he had an assistant gunner and two ammo bearers. They got packed up and flew over the channel to Holland. The Germans had flooded a lot of the land in Holland, so when Chuck landed, he landed right in the middle of a swamp. He was up to his neck in water. Luckily, his canopy landed right on top of a cow and really scared her. The cow took off running for the nearest land and pulled Chuck out of the swamp and onto dry land. When he got out of his parachute, he patted the cow on the head! Chuck met his C.O. as he was walking, but then Chuck and the C.O. walked into a mortar barrage. After the mortars went by, Chuck shook his C.O. McQueen, but he didn’t move. Chuck rolled him over and saw that the shrapnel from the mortars had torn off the front of his face. Chuck took McQueen to the nearest medic, and he never saw McQueen again.

When the reinforcements came to protect the bridge that Chuck’s division had captured, Chuck’s group moved up far ahead into a field. Behind them was a group of American mortar brigades. They were told to shoot a smoke shell fifty yards ahead of Chuck’s group to use as covering smoke. The problem was, though, that the guys shooting the mortars didn’t know the difference between a real explosive shell and a smoke shell, as they were brand new replacements. So, instead of getting a smoke shell fifty yards out in front of them, Chuck’s group got an explosive shell right on top of them! It killed everyone except Chuck, and he was blown up onto a road where was almost run over by a jeep.

The explosion had injured Chuck’s face and head. He was blinded in one eye and had lost most of the inside of his mouth and sinuses. He had his first surgery on his face in a church. He was then placed on the dead pile because when he had the surgery, the doctors had knocked him out, and he hadn’t awakened. As the priest was giving him last rites, he came to and was moved to the group of living soldiers. Chuck was operated on again and was strapped onto a jeep to go to another hospital, but a German plane came down and shot the driver and the jeep went into a ditch, which was filled with water. When the jeep stopped, Chuck’s head was only a few inches above the water. But, he was still alive.

Chuck was then transferred to another hospital, but the Germans captured him there. The Germans later traded prisoners with the British and he ended up in a Belgian hospital. When he came to in the hospital, he realized he was paralyzed from the armpits down due to an infection. However, during the next three months, Chuck received massive amounts of penicillin, apparently more than anyone had ever received up to that time since penicillin had just been discovered, and he regained the use of his arms and legs.

Chuck came back to America from England and was shipped to Texas to have plastic surgery done on his face. Then they let him go home to Minneapolis for Christmas 1944, and that was the first time that his wife got to see him since he had been drafted a year earlier. While he was in the Texas hospital, he got to see the first test of the atomic bomb, which was detonated in New Mexico. He was in the Texas hospital in August 1945, when Japan finally surrendered to end the war. Chuck got to choose to either stay in the army and be a parachute instructor or to go home. Chuck chose to go home.

At the end of August 1945, Chuck N_ finally got to go home from the war. He had jumped a total of 68 times. The medals he won included the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star for Bravery in Combat, the Dutch Order of Orange for freeing the Dutch, and the French Cor de Gair. After the war, Chuck and his wife had seven wonderful children, one of which happens to be my dad. Chuck was my grandpa. Grandpa died on February 6, 1991, and is buried in a cemetery in north Minneapolis.

“If I were to stop and think of all the friends I lost in the army I would be a mental wreck,” Grandpa said before he died. The soldiers who fought in World War II were committed to freeing Europe, to conquering Germany. These soldiers were going to free the world for democracy and that made it all worthwhile. My grandpa was one of those soldiers who risked his life so that other people could be free. He was blinded, lost most of his sense of smell and taste, and had a large scar on his face. But he was one of the proudest men in north Minneapolis, and he flew the flag before it was the cool thing to do. He sacrificed so much, and risked his life to save other people, people that he didn’t even know, and that is the true meaning of a hero!

By Eric N_
8th Grade