Recalling 'First Wave at Omaha Beach'
Sunday, June 06, 2004
By Grace Rishell, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, belonged to the infantry.
Allied air bombardment had failed to hit German positions, partly because of cloud cover and partly because some planes dropped their bombs far inland so U.S. soldiers heading to the beach wouldn't be hit.
Many of the tanks that were unloaded from landing craft to front the infantry attack sank or were blown apart by German fire.
There was some artillery support from Navy ships, but the foot soldier bore the burden, crawling through murderous fire from German pillboxes.
There were no Hollywood crews with movie cameras and no background music.
What now seems glorious was, 60 years ago today, plain doggedness, sacrifice and spilling of blood.
Those three things turned possible catastrophe into victory. Today, what happened on that strip of beach is so revered that tourists can be seen scooping sand into containers to be taken home and cherished.
Here are three accounts of events at Omaha Beach. Like so many of the "greatest generation's" war stories, there are gaps in the telling, as those who survived seem reluctant to divulge the full horror of the day or prefer to relate it in a matter-of-fact way that belies the losses suffered by so many.
Ernest Lusebrink
Ernest Lusebrink was determined to see action on D-Day. He'd been told it would be the greatest show on earth.
But here he was at a hospital in England with an Army doctor telling him he'd have to stay behind because of a bum leg.
The previous evening, the feisty 23-year-old resident of Paintertown, Westmoreland County, and member of the Army's 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, had been horsing around, trying on a buddy's assault jacket loaded with 100 pounds of ammunition. The weight caused Lusebrink's arms to fall toward the floor and his left knee to buckle, damaging the cartilage.
Unwavering in his resolve, Lusebrink, who now lives in North Huntingdon, waited for the doctor to leave the room, then "grabbed my equipment, put it on and took off" to find his regiment. Almost immediately, he was on a transport ship headed through choppy waters for Normandy.
Near the invasion site, he was transferred to a landing craft with 30 other soldiers, most vomiting into their helmets from seasickness. The coxswain unloaded them in water almost up to Lusebrink's neck, but somehow he managed to walk in little steps through the waves to the mine-filled sand, "where they were shooting at everybody" and the noise of war was unnerving.
"I swear to you, the channel was red," he said.
He flopped down next to a soldier and saw the man "had a bullet hole in his head." Lusebrink had lost most of his equipment in the water, so he picked up the soldier's rifle, but it was filled with sand and useless.
He kept on moving and, under constant fire with great luck, made it to a seawall, then to a gully and then close to enemy pillboxes on the hill behind the beach. Halfway up the hill were more mines and he saw "two or three guys lying there with their legs off."
Part of a mortar crew, Lusebrink had managed to save 13 shells, and he and another mortar man he met up with lobbed some of them into the German positions.
Eventually American forces broke through the barbed wire and mine fields that had kept the troops bottled up on the beach and they were able to go forward.
Safely through D-Day, Lusebrink was heading inland June 7 when a shell or bullet hit nearby ammunition. Shrapnel tore through his right knee joint and he suffered severe burns from the waist down.
The war had ended for him in only two days, and a painful recuperation in England and later the United States began.
Today he is at the Heinz VA Medical Center in O'Hara, recuperating from several surgeries. At 83, he is still handsome with a full head of gray hair, a mustache and a precise memory of all that happened on that day 60 years ago.
Of his abbreviated but intense combat experience, Lusebrink said: "I was not scared. I think I was too scared to be scared."
He's left instructions on what's to be inscribed on his headstone: "First Wave at Omaha Beach."
Louis Opipare
Something was up.
Louis Opipare was in southern England with his outfit, also the 116th Regiment of the 29th Infantry. He and his fellow soldiers were in a staging area, living in tents, and all signs indicated the invasion of occupied France was imminent.
Suddenly, they weren't allowed to talk to anyone except each other.
"The mess halls had officers stationed at both ends of the food lines" to make sure there were no conversations with outsiders, even the cooks, Opipare said. "You took what the cooks gave you" without complaint.
The security measures were designed to keep the invasion date and location secret.
On June 5, the North Side resident set sail with the D-Day armada, leaving behind in England all safety and the familiarity of a common language. Opipare remembered that he took communion on board ship and that when he looked out, "there were boats as far as you could see."
As dawn broke over the shoreline of Normandy, Opipare and his unit were dropped into the surf with the bullets flying. Water reached the chest of the 6-foot-2 infantryman, but he pressed ahead to the beach. "I was probably a little nervous, but not scared a lot."
Opipare becomes quiet and emotional when attempting to talk about injured comrades, saying only: "I heard somebody behind me holler. He was hit."
But the orders were: "Keep moving. Don't stop or you'll get hit. If somebody gets hit with you, keep moving."
He sought shelter beneath a cliff for a while as the Germans fired over his head, then worked his way up to a road leading to the village of Vierville. "We lost some fellas" on the way, he said.
"You were on your own. I found a sergeant and a couple of guys. I joined them. I figured the more the merrier. The Germans shot at you and you shot at them."
The small band saw a house where Germans might be hiding. One of the men cautioned not to get too close until the situation could be evaluated, but the sergeant moved closer. A German threw a grenade and killed him.
Later, Opipare said, he and his companions entered Vierville, where they saw the bodies of five or six American paratroopers hanging from trees. They had been shot dead the night before, yet another shocking sight for young men who'd been in war just a few hours.
With Omaha Beach finally secured, there was little time to rest. Now would start the vicious fighting through the Norman countryside, where the high hedges of farms provided an excellent defensive position for the Germans and would cost many American lives.
Opipare always expected to survive the war. "I said if I can get off that beach, I can get home."
He's been to the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., finding it "wonderful, perfect," but it was poignant to see "all those guys in wheelchairs, old veterans who used to be young and now we see them old."
John Pinder
Bournemouth is a seaside resort on England's southern coast known for its steep cliffs and beautiful gardens.
Months before D-Day, two young brothers from near Florence in Washington County spent a day together in Bournemouth, pleased to relax away from their respective military duties.
The visit was the last time John and Harold Pinder would see each other. Across the narrow English Channel, the destinies of war awaited them.
In January 1944, Harold Pinder, a B-24 pilot, was shot down in the Ardennes. The Belgian underground hid him for a month, but the Germans discovered his hiding place and sent him to a prisoner-of-war camp, where he spent the rest of the war.
John Pinder wore the insignia of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, a patch stitched with a large red numeral 1. On D-Day, he was at Omaha Beach, where many of the radios, essential for coordinating the assault, were either lost in the sea or malfunctioned.
On that day, his 32nd birthday, John would win the Medal of Honor. His citation recounts how he landed near Coleville-sur-Mer 100 yards off shore. Carrying a vitally important radio, he struggled in waist-deep water toward the beach.
His citation describes his heroic conduct:
"Only a few yards from his craft, he was hit by enemy fire and was gravely wounded. Technician 5th Grade Pinder never stopped. He made shore and delivered the radio. Refusing to take cover afforded, or to accept medical attention for his wounds, Technician 5th Grade Pinder, though terribly weakened by loss of blood and in fierce pain, on three occasions went into the fire-swept surf to salvage communication equipment.
"He recovered many vital parts and equipment, including another workable radio. On the third trip he was again hit, suffering machine-gun bullet wounds in the legs. Still this valiant soldier would not stop for rest or medical attention.
"Remaining exposed to enemy fire, growing steadily weaker, he aided in establishing the vital radio communication on the beach. While so engaged, this dauntless soldier was hit for the third time and killed."
Harold received the news in a letter from his father. In the prison camp, "We could walk around inside a barbed wire enclosure for exercise. When I got the letter, I walked for a couple of hours."
Both brothers had been born in McKees Rocks, where a brass plaque honoring John Pinder now has a place of honor at the town's veterans memorial.
Today, at his home in McCandless, Harold Pinder's thoughts will be several thousand miles away on the beach where his brother spent his last moments. He said John "always excelled in sports and schoolwork and was always right up at the top of the class; and I felt that's what he did on D-Day." |
