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For Cornelius Ryan Book about D-Day
THOUSANDS OF MEN, ON LAND AND SEA AND IN THE AIR PARTICIPATED IN THE INVASION OF NORMANDY BETWEEN MIDNIGHT JUNE 5, 1944 AND MIDNIGHT JUNE 6, 1944. IF YOU WERE ONE OF THEM, PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.
What is your full name? Noel Albert Dube
What was your unit and division? Co. C 121 Engr. En. (C)
Where did you arrive in Normandy, and at what time? We were suppose to arrive on Dog Green but when only about five feet from shore our LCM backed off and we landed way off on Easy Red.
What was your rank on June 6, 1944? Sgt.
What was your age on June 6, 1944? 24 yrs. old
Were you married at that time? No What is your wife's name? Maiden name Antoinette Gruzewski Did you have any children at that time? No
What do you do now? At present I am Administrative Assistant to the Commissary Officer Pease AFB. N.H. but I am in the running for the appointment as Postmaster in Salmon Falls. Present Postmaster retires Aug. 29th 1958. When did you know that you were going to be part of the invasion? On or about June 1st. in the marshalling area I was brought in a shown a clay model of the coast of France and exactly what my squad mission would be.
What was the trip like during the crossing of the Channel? Do you remember, for example, any conversations you had or how you passed the time? I seem to recall the crossing was very quite I spent most of my time alone in prayer. I never said so many Rosary or Act of Contrations in my life. Recall being quite fascinated by the barrage ballons that were attached to each ship, also of the flight pf the P38 fighter planes that I saw for the first time. I prayed for the safety of mu squad at all times never for just myself. Prayed that our LCM that we were on would make it in close enough to the beach that we would all make it. Couldn't see all this training only to all drown before amounting to anything.
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- for Cornelius Ryan 2 - Your name Noel A Dube
[*Letters*] Did you by any chance keep a diary of what happened to you that day? No. I didn't keep a diary but I did after the first four days or less manage to write my future wife every day.
Were any of your friends killed or wounded either during the landing or during the day? Capt. Holmstrup our Co. Commander was killed as the ramp went down and he fell face down in the water. I did not actually see this action he was on another landing craft. I did see my platoon leader Lt. Pope of Vernal Utah get hit in the elbow as he was walking back from looking at beach obstacles he was spun completely around.
Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became casualties? No.
Were you wounded? Not on D-Day but later in Germany on the Roer River.
*Do you remember what it was like—that is, do you remember whether you you felt any pain or were so surprised that you felt nothing? I set off a Shu-mine while picking them up moving along on my hands and knees. When the mine went off I never lost conciousnous. I remember clearly being tossed into the air and landing just above the water in a bomb crater half filled with water. The pain that I felt was like a bad sprained ankle where my foot was. However I could not feel my left arm and I thought that
** Do you remember seeing or hearing anything that seems funny now, even though it may not have seemed funny at the time? Yes. I mentioned earlier that the landing craft that I was on when it came in the second time let the ramp down right on the pebble beach and I didn't get as much as the sole of my shoes wet, this is what prayers does for you, a man in my squad by the name of Bossetti, we called him Bow Wow because he always seemed to talk with a mouth full and was hard to understand, Bossetti was to land with two bangolor topedoes to blow the barb wire fence that was in front of the wall and near the anti tank ditch in front of the wall. Well, just as the ramp lowered on the pebbled beach where Boseseti could have made it easily, he turns and throws both of them overboard. When we get to the wall we have nothing to blow the wire with so we had to do it with wire cutters. That night Bossetti is on outpost and of the four put around the area where we stayed the first night his out- post was the only one not captured, however somewhere during the night he found a German P38 pistol and from that day on for the next week he went around like a one man army shouting his P38 until one day, we were behind this farm house and we spotted about four German nearly 200 yds away and Bossetti is trying to hit them with his Pistol, I threaten -
*** Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic or simply memorable, which struck you more than anything else? [*?*] On D Day when we reach D Draw we were looking right up into cave like emplacement where snipers were hiding. This is where the shot came from that got Lt. Pope in the elbow. Carl Autry from Texas took it upon himself to climb the hillside which was heavily mined, how he managed to avoid hitting them I don’t know, he finally made it to the top of the hill and approached the cave from behind, threw a couple of grenades in the cave and went in after them, he came out with two prisoners, both turned out to be mongolians. This had me puzzled at first I thought we had landed some place other than France.
That first night I was talking with a French farmer and his wife. The y must of been in their 70's also with them was their god-child about 7 or 8 yrs old. Naturally they had been terrified by the sudden change of events around their homestead, I recall talking to them just out- side of a bomb shelter they had built in the ground with logs and tree limbs for coverage. I was assuring them that they had seen their last Germans, and that they were now safe in the hands of Americans. He was surprised to hear me speak french, and said he hoped I was right. I no sooner got the words out of my mouth, when all hell broke loose over the beach less than a half mile away. I never saw so many tracers in the air at one time. All the ships in the landings were firing at two German planes strafing and dropping bombs over the beach area. I remember the old man and his wife pulling the little boy down
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- for Cornelius Ryan 3 - Your name Noel A Dube
# In times of great crisis, people generally show either great ingenuity or self-reliance; others do incredibly stupid things. Do you remember any examples of either from D-day? Bossetti gets my vote for stupid things. throwing the bangolor topedoes overboard when the ramp comes down on the pebble beach, and trying to kill at 200 yds with a pistol. The man who devised the prongs to put on the front of the tanks to enable them to penetrate the edgerow where upon backing up we, the engineers would put a charge in the hole make by the prongs and blow a hole in the edgerow. We had a Lt. Morton fresh out of OCS who replaced Lt. Pope after the latter was wounded on D-Day. He took my squad truck on a reconnaissance because it had a 30 cal. water cooled machinegun on a turret. He was travelling with his jeep which had a 30 cal. air cooled machinegun. I tried to warn him that it was fool ish to take the truck along because if he got in a tight spot he would not be able to turn the truck away and get out like he could with the jeep. He insisted. Well he was going along the road when my gunner in the truck sight- ed Germans on the right flank. He called to the Lt. and told him, also Germans could be seen on the left flank, this was also brought to the attention of the lt. Only to have him stop and get out and yell"Comrade Comrade surrender."
Where were you at midnight on June 5, 1944? Aboard a landing craft in Weymouth harbor.
Where were you at midnight on June 6, 1944? In Viervill France.
Do you know of anybody else who landed within the 24 hours of D-day, June 6, as infantry, glider or airborne troops, or who took part in the air and sea operations, whom we should write to? Arthur Archambeault 335 Lake Ave. Manchester, N.H. John Bordas, Perryopolis, Pa. George Burnham, Waterbury, Vt. Otto Field 1705 N. Laramie Ave. Chicago 44, Ill. Gerald Ferguson 108 Walnut St. Canton, Mass. Chester Grzelak 9 High St. Jewitt City, Conn. Robert Kimball, Danvers, Mass. John Lukowski 224 E. Miller Ave. Munhall, Pa. Edmund Noseworthy 639 E Bryan Ave. Synnyvale, Cal. Lynn Pope Vernal Utah Walter Toulouse 92 Santa Rita Dwelling, Tucson, Arizona Frank Woods 5808 22nd St. Arlington, Va. Howard Wright, Lowrey City, Missouri Alex Weltz Jr. 560 So. 7th Apt.G San Jose, Cal.
PLEASE LET US HAVE THIS QUESTIONNAIRE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, SO THAT WE CAN INCLUDE YOUR EXPERIENCES IN THE BOOK. WE HOPE THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE YOUR STORY ON SEPARATE SHEETS IF WE HAVE NOT LEFT SUFFICIENT ROOM. FULL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WILL BE GIVEN IN A CHAPTER CALLED "WHERE THEY ARE NOW;" YOUR NAME AND VOCATION OR OCCUPATION WILL BE LISTED.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP.
Cornelius Ryan
Frances Ward Research, The Reader's Digest
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* it had been blown away. I had had a feeling the morning that we moved out for the river crossing that something would happen as I told my friend Arthur Bibeault, if something happens to me to be sure that all my belongings get home. As I entered the minefield that night I turned to Frank Woods and said. "Stand by, if you hear a bang it will be me." The boys heard a bang and they were at my side with the stretcher almost as soon as I hit the ground. I heard Woods say " Its Dube and he's a mess." They put me on a stretcher and carried me nearly a quarter of a mile using a slit trench that the Germans had been using the day before. All along the way they kept telling me we are nearly there, but I had gone over the area twice before that day, and even though I was blinded by the blast I knew where the men were. Finally they reached the foot- bridge that C Co. 1st. Platoom had thrown across, carried me across and put me on the hood of a jeep waiting at the bridge for me. They took me to the first aid station which was the house I had left from early in the morning for the crossing, and carried me into the cellar. I recall having an awful time trying to hang on as they carried me down the steps, the steps were quite steep. As they put me down on the floor I remembe r as though this happened yesterday the doctor saying. " You have a bad leg son, I have to take." I said to him " Go ahead if you think you can’t save it." He called for one of the sargents to bring a bucket, and you may think that I am exaggerating but the doctor proceeded to cut off the leg with a saw, I can just see myself rocking back and forth on the stretcher every time he pushed down and up until I heard my leg fall in the bucket. I had been given one shot of morphine and of course was in state of shock and during the amputation did not feel any additional pain. I was brought upstairs and brought outside in the yard where a Catholic priest administered the last rites. After a farewell with men around me, I was put on the hood of a jeep and driven to Aachen where I was put board a freight train and taken all the way to Paris. This ride was where I did most of my suffering. I did not think I would make it. It was during this journey that apparently I was coming out of the shock and was getting the intense pain that followed for the next week or two.
ed to shoot him the next time he takes the pistol instead of his M1 rifle. It was in this same area that I asked George Burnham of Waterbury, Vt. if he had anything in his canteen that mine was dry. I thought he had water in it, well apparently George had found a wine cellar and had filled his canteen with cognac. I had never tasted anything stronger than soda pop in my life, and when I took a great big swallow from George's canteen my steel helmet came right off my head. I recall a short while after we landed, we were moving down the beach until we were stopped by machine gun fire. We all were in a prone position on the beach as close to the small bank facing the hillside as possible trying to get some cover, when I see Sgt. Hunnefeld, he was the 7th squad leader removing a few of the pebbles and making a small place for himself, he then turn on his back, put his hands behind his head and was enjoying the scenery, he looked so comfortable that I joined him, here we were seemingly enjoying a day at the beach, sunning ourselves. I recall a drowned sailor being washed ashore at my feet and not thinking too much of it. However this lasted 10 minutes at the most, until General Cota appeared on the scene. Here was the bravest man I saw all day. He was the only one standing on the beach, he said" Let’s get off our ---, up and at em we can’t win a war resting on this beach." I don’t mind telling you that we got up and we didn’t sit down or stop again until we reached D-1 exit. Many othe r things happened such as trying to find La belle blonde which I was hea r- ing so much about, taking the chief of police's horse and buggy back from a reconnaissance. The one thing that will stick in my mind is what I saw the morning after D-Day, D plus one.