Let Us Pause to Remember

Tks Pat, for the reminder. As you know, Dad was patrolling above the beaches the morning of D-day, and witness to the death and destruction on the shores below him. When asked for his impressions he always deferred to the story of swimming at Bogner Reach that afternoon, noting the incongruity of those two undertakings. I often wonder if he used the happier memory to block out the effect of what he had witnessed earlier in the day.

Wonderful sentiment regarding the fallen! All the best to you and yourn. / Jim

 

Thank you, Pat. Well said. To say we owe those that served a debt of gratitude seems inadequate. Together, they changed the world.

I am about to email you photographs taken from the Marauders of the 323rd Bomb Group on 6 June 1944. Some of them show excellent detail of the landing beaches, and offer a glimpse of their ringside seat to what was about to unfold below. You and Hans may be albe to splice them into a panoramic collage that may be useful inyour research.

The formations would have crossed the Channel at about 12,000 feet altitude and made two 360 degree spiralling turns off the cost to descend to about or below 3,500 feet to get under the cloud cover. The 323rd BG aircrews were ordered to descend to any altitude necessary to bomb visually.

I have the 70th Anniversary of D-Day interview of Frank Burgmeier, a Lead Navigator flying with John Bull Stirling in one of the flight lead aircraft that targeted coastal batteries on Utuah beach around 6:25 a.m., just before the landing craft came ashore. I will send it to you as well.

Please post whatever you think may be of interest to Forum members.

Although the following poem was written by a soldier firghting in the First World War, the message seems appropriate for today.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, and sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

-Maj. John McCrae
May 1915

We owe it to those that sacrifieced so much to not be so arrogant as to assume our respective countries and lives are immune to the appeal of the politics of fear and hatred that caused so much sufferring and loss in the Second World War.

Jan

 

Very interesting. I assumed they were 323rd photos because they were in the 323rd BG files at National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The 323rd must have been using them for briefings. Do you think a photographer may have just been assigned to the 323rd from the 7th AF? I will double check the 323rd's D-Day loading list to make sure.

Some of the photos have nice detail!

 

Pat,

Thank you for the words of remembrance.

Like a few other members of this Forum, I am honored to have been the son of a man that served in Normandy that day. For my father, at this hour 72 years ago, his night of hiding in a ditch in a farmyard somewhere near Hiesville with F/O Art Collins and two others was coming to an end. On the previous day, June 6th, he had been a witness to history and the horrors of war. As many veterans did, my father attempted to block out the memories of that day. In fact, throughout his entire life, his account of that day and the entire war was never more than a simple “I landed in a field near the town of Hiesville” along with a brief comment about Market Garden. Other than those short comments, he never spoke of the war to others or me except when he briefly opened up to authors Koskimaki and Ryan in the mid-1960s. It is fortunate that my father and others did so in order for us to have a full appreciation of their sacrifices decades later.

To the men like my father and the many other veterans that are chronicled in detail in this Forum, we owe so much.

R/Kevin

 

My Father wrote that when he woke up in a ditch after passing out from his wounds that he saw a field of poppies. He wrote that the first thing he thought of was that poem even as Germans were on the far side of the field digging in a light field gun.

 

Pat,

The person I hired to photograph 323rd records at NA indicated there were many sequential photos in the file from which the reconn photos were taken. She thought they might be photos from the strike cameras. Due to the cost, I asked her to pick s few to send me. There are a few I did not send, but will later today.

I will ask my researcher to send a copy the pull slip for the box containing the reconn photos and send it to you. On the NA site for military records, there is a list of researchers with their contact info, locations and areas of concentration. Alternatively, NA will do the research, but they may be less responsive due to workload or more expensive to retain in the event there is a desire to secure copies of the photographs. I experienced long wait times in working with archival staff at NA.

Jan
[hr]
Pat,

The only photographers that were on the 323rd's D-Day loading lists were from the 4th US Camera Unit and civilian press corps. It looks like representatives from the 9th Bomb Command also went along, but they were not designated as photographers. So, the photographs certainly were taken on a distinct 7th AF mission.

The 323rd's targets on D-Day were:

Beau Guillot BD
Madeline BD
St. Martin de Varreville BD
Caen RJ

In the days leading up to D-Day, the 323rd's coastal defense targets included:

St. Marie du Mont CD - May 22
St. Marie Au Bose CD - May 24
St. Cecily CD - May 24
Hermanville CD - June 2
Epperville CD - Jun 4

The reconn mission may have focused on damage assessments for the raids on coastal batteries in preparation for the invasion as well as on D-Day itself.

Jan
[hr]

 

Pat,

Here is my attempt at identifying my Dad's drop point. It is the blue circle in the middle of a field just east of the 91st LL HQ. From his drop point I believe he moved SW running into the HQ Security tank platoon position after a brief fire fight he fled east toward the beaches. He had another fire fight along one of those roads before passing out. The other arrows on the map are the 82nd AB estimated stick drop points from their afteraction report. The big dotted oval is the 508th PIR drop zone. I have added to the Google map tree puffballs where there were trees in 1944. The hedgerows and houses were basically unchanged in the photo. Picauville is in the lower left corner.

[IMG=850x500]http://i1182.photobucket.com/albums/x446/sirjahn/Picauville%20drop%20points%20plus%20trees%20plus%20actions_zps7uwbuzmb.jpg[/IMG]​

Edited by Pat to reduce image width to 850 pixels

 

Sorry my sortie sketches are for the 30th PRS.

 

Pat,

Very interesting. It's odd that there is no information noted for that particular mission particularly in light of its historical significance and tie to the DUC.

Did you recognize any locations in the 1729 photographs? This will help point to how they were used.

It looks like a remote possibility the photographs taken on sortie 1730 were used in the briefing and preparation for the June 6 mission to Caen RJ C-1 and C-2 as the 323rd made landfall on.that raid at Ouisterham. (See the sortie entry noting Ouisterham.) There is a widely published photograph of what appears to have been the briefing for that mission. At the briefing table, the Cllonel addressing the group is reaching for a what appears to be a stack of photographs on the table he is perching upon. (We know the photograph is of a 323rd mission briefing because my dad is sitting in the second row, with JD Helton in the first row. The photo is described as a B-26 D-Day briefing.) I wonder whether the documents for which the Colonel is reaching are these reconnaissance photos. Your quote indicates the film was developed after 9 a.m. The b323rd briefing would have taken place around 2:30 or 3 p.m. With TO at 3:30 p.m.

I would like to go to NA to see exactly where those reconn photos were located and the other documents with which they were filed to provide context on their use by the 323rd.

I will post the photograph when not posting from my phone.

Jan

 

The mission summary for US7GR/1729 is this.

Caen,/Carpiquet Airfield(FW), Oustreham, Beachhead area