It was June 6, 1944 — D-Day. The size of the event, dubbed Operation Overlord, was unprecedented and remains the largest land, air and sea invasion in history. Planning for the orchestration began in December 1943 and the invasion served to be a turning point in the European campaign against Nazi Germany — a decisive day in history.
The Allied forces were led by Denison native Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. A transcript of Eisenhower’s encouraging speech to the troops before embarking on the landing is found at the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.. It follows:
“Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.
“But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!
“I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
“Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”
More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies had gained a foot-hold in Normandy.
Staff Sgt. Carl W. Fulmer of Tioga was wounded in the D-Day invasion, his son Bill Fulmer of Whitesboro said. Staff Sgt. Fulmer survived WWII until Sept. 27, 1944 in France. During the battle, a machine-gun operator was killed and Staff Sgt. Fulmer stepped up and took over its operation. “He was the main officer with his group; he could have told someone else to do that, but he stepped up himself,” explained Bill Fulmer. It was in this battle that Staff Sgt. Fulmer was killed.
During his military career, he earned two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star. He was one of five brothers who were in the war at the same time. He attended high school in Tioga, attended Indian Creek Church and is buried in the Tioga cemetery. He was a member of the 90th Infantry Division of the 359th Infantry Regiment attached to Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Another Grayson County son was Lt. Comdr.. James Earl Riley, a 1942 graduate of Sherman High School whose activity on D-Day was aboard one of the troop carriers. He was a “boat’s inmate,” reported his wife Wanda from Pensacola, Fla. He took the troops to Utah Beach. She said he never talked much about his experiences in WWII.
“He came back and went to Austin College and then became an officer,” she said. “He retired from the Navy after 28-and-a-half years.”
Lt. Comdr. Riley also served in the Korean conflict as well as Vietnam. Mary Lueb of Sherman was a classmate of Riley’s and reported that he was a very dear friend. Others Grayson County boys she mentioned who were participants in the D-Day event are Pete Odum, Billy Painter and Billy Ray Fry.
Fry was a private first class for the Army when he departed the Higgins boat that delivered him to Omaha Beach in the first wave of the attack. His son, Judge James Fry of Sherman, said like so many other veterans of WWII, his father didn’t talk much about the experiences.
A member of the 29th Infantry Division, Pfc. Fry was not injured during the D-Day invasion but he was wounded about 10 days later when he was captured by the Germans. He remained a prisoner of war for about nine months before escaping with another POW with the assistance of a former Luftwaffe pilot. Judge Fry remembers that his dad came home in 1945.
“He told me very little about D-Day,” Jim Fry said. “When the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ came out, I called my dad and asked if he was going to see it. There was a long silence before he said, ‘Son, I spent 50 years trying to forget what happened on that beach, now why would I want to see that.’”
Jim Fry said his dad did eventually see the movie and he reported the scene that was the D-Day landing was pretty realistic. Billy Ray Fry died on the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
From the documentary movie “Voices of D-Day,” Thomas Valence, a rifle sergeant, tells how many of the troops got sick while moving toward the beach. He said the water was rough and choppy.
“As we came down the ramp, we were in water about knee high, and we started to do what we were trained to do — move forward, and then crouch and fire,” Valence said. “One of the problems was we didn’t quite know what to fire at.” He said men on either side of him were being “hit and put out of action so quickly that it became a struggle to stay on one’s feet.”
He reported how he abandoned his equipment that had become heavy and while floundering to get his balance he was shot through his left hand breaking a knuckle and again through the palm of his hand.
“I felt nothing but a little sting at the time, but I was aware that I was shot,” he said. “My rifle jammed, so I picked up a carbine and got off a couple of rounds. We were shooting at something that seemed inconsequential. There was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle.
I was hit again, once in the left thigh, which broke my hip bone, and a couple of times in my pack, and then my chin strap on my helmet was severed by a bullet. I worked my way up onto the beach, and staggered up against a wall, and collapsed there. The bodies of the other guys washed ashore, and I was one live body amongst many of my friends who were dead and, in many cases, blown to pieces.”
More than 150,000 men were moved across the English Channel that day to the shores of France. Six parachute regiments, more than 13,000 men, were flown from nine British airfields in more than 800 planes. More than 300 planes dropped 13,000 bombs over coastal Normandy immediately in advance of the invasion.
By nightfall on June 6, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were dead or wounded, but more than 100,000 had made it ashore, securing French coastal villages and beginning the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.
Captured Germans were sent to American prisoner-of-war camps at the rate of 30,000 POWs per month from D-Day until December 1944. Thirty-three detention facilities were in Texas alone.
Saturday was June 6. It is a day to remember the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of this country’s “greatest generation.”
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