Price for Peace Page #4

a lot of soul-searching,

and the anticipation of a battle,

never having been in it before,

and wondering

what they were getting into.

In order to make an invasion work, the

navy's job is to go in before the invasion

and soften up the beach.

You destroy all of the enemy

on that beach.

The planes are bombing and

everybody is doing the best they can

to make sure there's not a soldier alive

of the enemy when we get there.

The night before D-Day

we were very nervous.

And we'd go up

and watch the bombardment.

I looked around and said,

"Are you scared?"

He said, "You're damn right I'm scared."

I said, "Who isn't scared?" He said,

"If you're not scared, you're not human."

I remember waking at dawn

and all of a sudden, this is for real.

About five in the morning,

after little sleep, if any,

we had chow call

and we had steak and eggs.

That's the only time ever,

of all the time I spent overseas,

that I got steak and eggs for breakfast.

It was a very eerie experience

having breakfast in civilised fashion

and realising that day we were

going ashore and might all be killed.

We began at about 6 a. m.

Getting ready for the assault.

We clambered down these cargo nets

and I was nervous with all this gear.

One thing they did not tell us, that boat

can come up under you very quickly.

You gotta hit that just right

or you'll knock your knees out.

In fact, we had one boy break a leg.

We rendezvoused in the ocean

about four miles off of the beach.

The circles broke

and formed parallel lines.

We were moving in and D-Day

and H-Hour was there with us.

There were over a hundred D-Days

in the Pacific on big and small islands.

But always the objective was to begin

the process of taking that island.

As we approached the beach,

I could feel a real tenseness

in everyone aboard that craft.

It was complete quiet.

While you're going towards the beach,

you're doing an awful lot of praying.

And some of the guys got a little sick.

I watched the guys around me.

They were scared, I was scared.

We had no reason not to be.

You don't know what's waiting for you.

They could wait

until you got on the beach,

or start firing right away.

You don't know.

When we were getting close

to the beach,

then you begin to feel,

"My God, this is real."

And then as soon as they drop

that ramp and you're exposed,

you feel like you're the nakedest person

in the world.

And you knew that they're gonna

start to shoot, which they did.

Very soon after that, all hell broke loose.

There was a tremendous volume of fire

coming from the defences.

I had never seen anything like this

in my life. Absolute hell.

There were 600-800 ships out here.

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