News

Remembering D-Day

By Scott Wagar

06/04/2013

Editor’s Note: June 6 will be the 69th anniversary of D-Day. The Bottineau Courant this week conducted an interview with Howard Nelson who fought on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Here is Nelson’s story.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day was initiated on the beaches of Normandy to end the tyranny of the Nazi Party in Europe.  

In 1942, Howard Nelson was working on his family’s farm northwest of Souris, N.D. He was 20 years old and had spent his young adult life working the quiet and tranquil fields of North Dakota. However, in that year his life would change forever, and he would go places and see things that his memory’s eye would never allow him to forget.

“World War II had broken out,” Nelson said. “And, if you have not experienced war, war is hell on earth.”

Within months after the war started for Americans, Nelson received a draft notice which stated that he was to report to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis for active military duty. Nelson was trained to be an infantryman and was assigned to the 36th Infantry Division and served under the 133 Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Company D as a squad leader for a machine gun unit.

Oddly, the 36 ID was also called the Texas Division because it originated as an Army National Guard Division from Texas.

“I was in the Texas Division,” Nelson said. “Isn’t that funny, I was a North Dakota boy in a Texas Division.”

The National Guard Unit became the 36th Infantry in 1917 at the onset of World War I. The division was sent to Europe in July of 1918 and fought in the major operations of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

At the end of WWI, the 36 ID was sent back to active state control. However, the infantry division was called back to active duty on November 25, 1940, in San Antonio, Texas, while Europe was in turmoil and heading into the direction of a world war once again.

On the onset of World War II, the 36th became a division of many soldiers from many states, which included North Dakota.

Nelson was trained as a machine gunner for the army, and he and his fellow infantrymen shipped out of the New York Port of Embarkation on April 2, 1943, with orders to North Africa.

“We left New York on the Queen Mary, which had been turned into a transport ship,” Nelson said. “We landed in England and trained there in a few different areas before moving on.”

Once in Africa, the 36th ID continued combat training. The soldiers saw their first action on Sept. 9, 1943, when they rushed the beaches in the Gulf of Salerno in Paestum, Italy, against heavy German gun fire.

The 36th gained control of the beaches, but from Sept. 12-14 the Nazis counter attacked the U.S. Forces. The 36th forced back the German army with assistance from air support and navel gunfire.

“The invasion lasted 14 days,” Nelson said. “After it ended, we were sent back for a brief rest before moving on.”

After receiving some R&R, the 36th ID moved through Italy to recapture Rome from Germany.
Nelson saw a number of battles during this time, but eight months before D-Day, he was sent back to England to prepare for the invasion of France.
While back in England, Nelson was walking through the camp when a car pulled up to him, stopped, and a man came out of the car wanting to talk to Nelson.

 “It was General Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Nelson said. “He saw me walking and asked his driver to pull over so that he could talk to me. He thanked me for my service to my country and said, ‘You must be a farmer because you have such broad shoulders.’ I smiled and thought to myself that if he only knew I was from North Dakota and I farmed.”  

That wouldn’t be the last time Nelson saw Eisenhower up close and personal. On the eve of June 6, Nelson had the opportunity to see history unfold before his very eyes when Eisenhower appeared before the men who would invade Normandy.

“I was able to stand within ear shot of Eisenhower that night when he came down to talk to us foot soldiers. He told us that we would have to bear the grunt of the invasion and that we would have to be swift to meet up with the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions because if we didn’t, it all would be lost,” Nelson said. “He also told us that we couldn’t faultier and was frank in saying that some of us would not come back. After he said that, he had tears in his eyes, but a young soldier came up to him, put his hand on his shoulder and told Eisenhower not to worry and that we would get the job done for him. I have never felt so sorry for a man in all my life as I did for Eisenhower that night.”

Once on the landing crafts that morning, Nelson’s commanding officer told the men that once they left the landing craft they were to cross the beach as quickly as possible and not to stop until they were at the enemy’s bunkers, which they were to take out.

“He told us not to stop running even if our fellow soldiers were shot and wounded we were to keep going and not turn back,” Nelson said.   

In the early morning of June 6, Nelson stepped off his troop transport ship on to Utah Beach under German gun fire, explosions, battleships sending artillery over the beach against the Nazi’s bunkers and men screaming as they were wounded.

“Liked the CO said, I ran like the devil across the beach and was able to get up against a German machine gun casement,” Nelson said. “My breath was pretty much gone, my heart was in my mouth, and the noise just wouldn’t quit. But, I made it off the beach. However, if it wasn’t for the navy clearing mines and the paratroopers doing their job, there would have been no use for us infantrymen to go in.”

Once the Americans had captured the beach, Nelson took a moment to rest and looked back at where he had come from early that morning and was shocked in what he saw.

“When I jumped off the landing craft that morning the water was so blue,” Nelson said. “But, when I looked at the end of the day the water was bright red from the men who had died in the battle.”

Nelson and his squad moved forward to Saint-Lo, a small village just off Utah Beach, but they fell against heavy opposition from the Germans.

“The Germans put up a fight, but we were able to take the town from the Germans,” he said. “When we went into the town there was a lot of damage and all I saw was one lone cow walking down the street.”  

From Saint-Lo, the 36 Infantry continued through France, but due to large casualty rates and complete exhaustion from fierce fighting, the 36 ID were pulled off the front lines to rest, acquire new soldiers, and begin to prepare to be sent back to America to start training for fighting in the Pacific Theater.

However, just hours before being sent back home, the Germans initiated the Battle of the Bulge.  

“We were ordered to get up and we thought we were on our way home, but they sent us over to get ammunition and winter clothing,” Nelson said. “When that happened, we knew then that we were not going state side.”

For the 36th Infantry, they fought a long and hard fight against the Nazi in the Battle of the Bulge, but in the end, they assisted in pushing back the Germans and ending WWII in Europe.

The 36th wasn’t just known for its ability to battle against all odds with great victory, the division was also recognized for its humanitarian work during the war by liberating and securing the subcamps of the Dachau Concentration Camp. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has honored the division for its assistance with Dachau.

As the war ended in Europe, the division was stationed in Kufstein, Austria where the division conducted one of its final missions and captured Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, the commander of all German forces on the western front.

During the three years the division saw combat in the European Theater, the 36th infantry had the most casualties of any other U.S. military division in WWII with 3,131 men killed in action and 13,191 soldiers wounded.

Today, when Nelson thinks back in time, he remembers the war which taught him one important lesson

“War is grueling,” Nelson said. “I was lucky to get out alive.”