All this time “D Day” was the big question in everybody’s mind. It wasn’t talked about much but the thought was always there. We wondered what kind of a job we would do… and when! Finally we were alerted and began our final preparations.., waterproofing vehicles and garnishing the camouflage nets, JUNE 6th and with thousands of planes roaring overhead, the realization came to us even before the radios announced it that this was the day for which the world had waited so long. We hung about radios, plotted maps, and began guessing when we would get there. Training didn’t stop it intensified. That was a month of night convoys. You could be asleep in your bunk, coming home from a dance, or drinking a beer and all at once things would be popping and the battalion would be rolling out, picking its way through the fog, winding around in a big circle, getting lost sometimes and finally ending up back in the motor pool in the early hours of the morning only to find that another problem was ready to begin.
We built another bridge this last month — probably the fastest one ever constructed. It was Salute the Soldier Week in Pangborne and the people asked us to demonstrate how it was done. We sure gave it to them — 51 minutes, 55 seconds, and a full Colonel down there holding the watch on us just to make it official. That one was from stockpile and was 210 feet long.
Finally at 1800 hours on the 3rd of July our orders arrived and by 0430 on the 4th of July we were on our way to the Marshalling Area near Dorchester, Dorset. On the 5th and 6th we completed waterproofing our vehicles and learned how to play poker with Invasion Francs — then to the beach and onto LCT’s. We left harbor on the 7th of July but returned because of heavy seas, leaving again on the 8th of July. That was our first experience with landing craft, with Ten in One rations, and with pea soup that could be heated by touching a cigarette to a wick. At last Normandy beach showed up and we debarked at Omaha, Red Dog Beach. (See Map No. 1.)
On arrival in Prance we found ourselves attached to the 1111th Engineer Combat Group, the first of a large number of groups we were to work with during the coming year. Our initial task was clearing a large minefield at Utah Beach and there our first casualties were received through the premature detonation of a mine fuse. The casualties were minor, however, and returned to duty. Next we were assigned a road maintenance job and finally we were assigned the operation of a cold mix plant where gravel was processed for road repair.
Next the battalion was alerted for a mission connected with the projected St. Lo breakthrough. A detachment, under Major Tompkins, consisting of all our six ton truck-tractors was assigned the task of supply advance dumps and at the same time of being capable of being a mobile dump. This detachment was under the direct control of First U S Army and was the forerunner of a series of such detachments which would eventually haul more Engineer supplies to forward dumps than any other organization in the ETO.
Our bivouac areas were numerous during the early days in Normandy. They can be followed on Map No. 1. Each black dot represents a bivouac area. By this time we had begun to think that perhaps we would never get to build a bridge, although a detachment under Captain Meagher had been building trestle bridges since the middle of July.
On 26 August our big chance finally came, and we were off to build a bridge at Melun, France. This is described in an article published in the MILITARY ENGINEER which has been distributed to every man in the battalion. The article tells the technical story of the bridge but does not record our first real contact with the Mademoiselles that lived in Melun. Melun is where we got our first perfume, where the people kissed us until we were tired of kissing, where we got our first bath since arriving on the continent and where the Heinies came over one night and tried to blow our bridge out of the water.
Soon the battalion moved on again while Company A moved on to Compiègne to assist the 1110th Engineer Combatt Group put a bridge across the Oise River. The remainder of the battalion, remained alerted for future bridge jobs. A Company was highly commended by the Group for their work.
