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Remembering D-Day | June 6, 1944

D-Day 70th Anniversary

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied troops during World War II stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, to begin a year-long liberation of Hitler’s Fortress Europe. D-Day is an appropriate time to recall the sacrifices made by those serving and those who have served in the United States Armed Forces. To mark this occasion, the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Ind., and Scripps Howard Foundation offer this reprint of a column by famous American World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle immediately after the Normandy invasion. It’s a reminder to all of the ultimate sacrifice made by so many Americans to maintain the freedoms we enjoy.

The Horrible Waste of War

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.

It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.

The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck emblem. Sure. Hell yes.

I walked for a mile and a half along the water’s edge of our many-miled invasion beach. You wanted to walk slowly, for the detail on that beach was infinite.

The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable. And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours.

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For a mile out from the beach there were scores of tanks and trucks and boats that you could no longer see, for they were at the bottom of the water – swamped by overloading, or hit by shells, or sunk by mines. Most of their crews were lost.

You could see trucks tipped half over and swamped. You could see partly sunken barges, and the angled-up corners of jeeps, and small landing craft half submerged. And at low tide you could still see those vicious six-pronged iron snares that helped snag and wreck them.

On the beach itself, high and dry, were all kinds of wrecked vehicles. There were tanks that had only just made the beach before being knocked out. There were jeeps that had been burned to a dull gray. There were big derricks on caterpillar treads that didn’t quite make it. There were half-tracks carrying office equipment that had been made into a shambles by a single shell hit, their interiors still holding their useless equipage of smashed typewriters, telephones, office files.

There were LCT’s turned completely upside down, and lying on their backs, and how they got that way I don’t know. There were boats stacked on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors knocked off.

In this shoreline museum of carnage there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big stacks of thrown-away lifebelts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved.

In the water floated empty life rafts and soldiers’ packs and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges.

On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of steel matting and stacks of broken, rusting rifles.

On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.

We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all.

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A few hundred yards back on the beach is a high bluff. Up there we had a tent hospital, and a barbed-wire enclosure for prisoners of war. From up there you could see far up and down the beach, in a spectacular crow’s-nest view, and far out to sea.

And standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload.

Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity would move the hardest man.

As I stood up there I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns.

The prisoners too were looking out to sea – the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance.

They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.

If only all Germans could have had the rich experience of standing on the bluff and looking out across the water and seeing what their compatriots saw.

Ernie Pyle biography

The son of tenant farming parents in west-central Indiana, Ernie Pyle became history’s greatest war correspondent. When Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on the tiny Pacific island of Ie Shima in 1945, his columns were being delivered to more than 14 million homes, according to his New York Times obituary.

During the war, Pyle wrote about the hardships and bravery of the common soldier, not grand strategy. His description of the G.I.’s life was more important to families on the home front than battlefront tactics of Gens. Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton or Omar Bradley.

Prior to the United States’ entry into World War II, Pyle traveled to England and wrote about the Nazi’s continual bombing of London. His columns helped move the mood of America from isolationism to sympathy for the stubborn refusal of Great Britain to succumb to the will of Adolf Hitler.

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist’s legacy rests in his words and the impact they had on Americans before and during a war that threatened to take the world behind a curtain of fascism. His columns open a window to the hardships endured by the common U.S. soldier during World War II and serve today to honor what has been called “The Greatest Generation.”

The Ernie Pyle World War II Museum

The Ernie Pyle World War II Museum features the famous journalist’s birthplace and a museum dedicated to Pyle’s life and writings as a war correspondent. It is owned by the Friends of Ernie Pyle, who are dedicated to preserving and expanding the legacy of the writer whose columns linked the soldiers on the front line to worried families on the home front. To preserve Ernie Pyle’s memory is to preserve the sacrifices made by what has been dubbed “The Greatest Generation.” 

To learn more about the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum located in Dana, Ind., or make a donation to assist the efforts of the Friends of Ernie Pyle to honor him and that generation, go to erniepyle.org.

Mineral show, dig set for weekend

The ninth annual Ben E. Clement Gem, Mineral, Fossil and Jewelry Show and Dig is slated for Saturday and Sunday. The show will take place at Fohs Hall on North Walker Street and will feature vendor tables, free children’s activities, a silent auction and hourly door prizes. There will also be an Indian artifact display, tours of the museum, day and night digs, a Kentucky geological booth and a wire-wrapping jewelry class held at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Admission to the show is free. Show hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. For more, visit the museum online at ClementMineralMuseum.org or call (270) 965-4263.

Escapee from Clay on the loose

A state inmate has walked away from a work detail in Mayfield, Ky., where he had been jailed.

The man, described as William Clark, 5-foot-3, 245 pounds, was last seen Thursday afternoon in Mayfield.

State police say he is from the Clay, Ky., area.

If anyone encounters this suspect, contact the Kentucky State Police at 1-800-222-5555, or your local law enforcement agency. In Marion, dial 911 or 965-3500.

Shoes, cans taken to benefit others

Crittenden County 4-H will be collecting aluminum cans from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday on West Carlisle Street between Farmers Bank & Trust Co. and the courthouse to help fund 4-H projects. Cans can be picked up if arrangements are made prior to Saturday by calling (270) 965-5236.

Meantime, the county’s Extension service will be accepting shoes to donate to the WaterStep program to help purchase clean drinking water equipment for underdeveloped countries. Please place shoes in plastic grocery bags or put a rubber band around them.

After Saturday, cans and shoes can be dropped off at the county’s road garage on U.S. 60 east of Marion.

Graduation section in Today's Press

Don't miss this week's Crittenden Press printed edition with the complete graduation section. It's a keeper.

Rosebud getting better traction

A contractor for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) plans to place high-traction coating on a section of US 60 East in Crittenden County today.

This work will require one lane traffic on US 60 at mile point 21.7. This is the curve at the lower end of Rosebud Hill that is sometime referred to as the Tradewater Curve. This work zone is along US 60 about a mile west of the Crittenden-Union County Line between Mattoon and Sullivan.

Motorists should expect to encounter one-lane traffic with alternating flow controlled by flaggers today. 

The high-traction coating should be installed by late this afternoon. After it cures, a paint truck will be back through the area to re-stripe the roadway in a few days.

This section of US 60 has had a high number of wet weather crashes in recent years. The high-traction coating is being added as part of the Highway Safety Improvement Program, or HSIP. 

Yard Sale today and Friday in Midway

Yard sale, 6860 U.S. 60 West. in Midway today and tomorrow. Adult clothes, kids' clothes, girls' newborn-4T, boys' 6-7-8, other assorted household items, children’s books and more. 

Extension board to meet Tuesday

Crittenden County Extension District Board will meet at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday.

CCHS SBDM to meet

A special called Crittenden County High School SBDM meeting will be Friday at 10:30 a.m. in the Crittenden County High School ag room. The meeting will be SBDM principal selection training.

Relay for Life set for Friday.

Crittenden County Relay for Life will be held beginning at 6 p.m. Friday at the courthouse square in Marion. West Carlisle and Court streets around the courthouse will be blocked off beginning that afternoon for the event.

If rain, the Relay will be held inside Rocket Arena.

For more on the Relay, including a schedule of events and a touching story on Al and Angela Starnes' cancer survival story, pick up an issue of this week Crittenden Press.

MAPP meeting Thursday

There will be a Crittenden County MAPP meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday at the Crittenden Health Department conference room.

CCMS SBDM reschedules meeting

Crittenden County Middle School SBDM's regularly scheduled June meeting has been rescheduled to 10 a.m. June 25 in the school conference room.  It has been rescheduled due to a conflict in member schedules.

Big Furniture Yard Sale

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Baseball team hosting silent auction

Crittenden County’s Team 11, which will compete next weekend in the Jake Hodge Wiffle Ball Tournament in Princeton, is hosting a silent online auction to benefit the scholarship fund created in their late teammates’ memory. Team 11 is comprised of Hodge’s former travel baseball teammates.

Among items being auctioned are: two Tennessee Titan Tickets vs Jacksonville Oct. 12, valued at $83 each; dinner for two at Stoney River in Nashville, value $150; four St. Louis Cardinals tickets vs Padres Aug. 15; a Green Turtle Bay gift certificate and gift certificate to Jade & Earth Spa at Green Turtle Bay; and a custom reclaimed wood framed mirror, valued at $175. More items will be added. 

Bidding begins at noon Thursday. Bid on items at Team 11 on Facebook.
Contact Misty Champion at (270) 704-3311 for more information.

Get in Shape this Summer

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Area deaths

William Porter, 71, of Marion died June 2, 2014, at his home. Arrangements are incomplete at Boyd Funeral Directors in Salem.


Ada Mae Hillyard, 88, of Marion died May 31, 2014, at Salem Springlake Care Center. Myers Funeral Home in Marion is in charge of arrangements.


Theresa Harness, 58, of Morganfield died May 31, 2014, at Crittenden Health Systems in Marion. Whitsell Funeral Home in Sturgis is in charge of arrangements.


Brian Wayne Jones, 34, of Norfolk, Va., died in the line of duty May 31 while serving the City of Norfolk as a police officer. Altmeyer Funeral Home in Virginia Beach is in charge of arrangements.


Dewey Edward Loveless, 53, of Salem died June 1, 2014, at his home. Boyd Funeral Directors in Salem is in charge of arrangements.

Softball, baseball cancelled tonight

All baseball and softball games at Marion-Crittenden County Park are cancelled tonight due to rain.

The Farmers Bank Fan Appreciation Night which was scheduled for this evening will be tomorrow night.

Document Shredding Saturday

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Road work to begin on Ky. 120 Tuesday

A contractor for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KyTC) plans work along Ky. 120 through Providence in Webster County starting Tuesday.

Work is planned along Ky/ 120/Main Street from mile point 3.645 just west of the Railroad Crossing near Cedar Street and extends eastward through providence to the intersection with U.S. 41-Altnerate at mile point 6.723, a distance of just over 3 miles.

Starting Tuesday, a crew will be making base repairs at various locations along this section for about two days. Once those base repairs are completed, traffic will be allowed to run on this section for about a week to allow the new base material to settle.

Starting around Tuesday, the contractor plans to start milling and asphalt paving operations along Ky. 120 through Providence, including sidewalk ramp upgrades.

Motorists should be alert for one lane traffic with alternating flow controlled by flaggers.  There will be times during the milling and paving process when on-street parking will be prohibited to help facilitate the work.

Rogers Group is the prime contractor on this $569,901 highway improvement project.  The work is expected to take about two weeks to complete, weather permitting.

Approximately 6,000 vehicles travel sections of this work zone along Ky. 120 in an average day.