No Day At The Beach by Duane Heath
GI MEMORIES: OMAHA BEACH
The following article is taken from an Arizona newspaper published in July 1992
The Daily Despatch As told to MIKE ANDERSON, Dispatch Staff Writer
Our thanks to Duane Heath’s widow, Doreen, for sending this account to Glenn Booker, Chairman, Barry Island War Museum.
Doreen (nee Marley) is a GI Bride from Grovesend, Gower. Her husband was with the 348th Engineer Combat Battalion and was stationed in the Swansea area in 1944.
[ Editor: He arrived around October 1943 and may have left for England by April 1944. I will double check.]
We learn something of what happened to him after he left Swansea for Normandy…
There was something about the cleanliness of the beach that just didn't look right when Douglas (Arizona) resident Duane Heath went back to see it not too long ago.
“The thing I noticed was that there was nothing on it - no junk, "said Heath." It was so strange to see the sand so clean.” It wasn't so tidy the first time Heath saw it, almost a half-century ago on "D-Day," June 6, 1944, as a member of the Allied forces invading German-occupied France. "There were papers, rifles, damaged vehicles and bodies all over the place," said Heath. "We had to drag the bodies off the beach so they wouldn't be pulled back into the water when the tide went out."
The hundreds of bodies were American soldiers, struck by machine gun bullets, or blown to bloody pieces by land mines, or slaughtered by German artillery and mortar fire. Some never made it to dry land, and died while wading through the surf. Others died moments after they set foot on the Normandy beach, which would from that day on be known by its military code name of "Omaha."
Soldiers of two American infantry divisions - the 1st and the 29th – and a number of supporting units, ran into a hailstorm of fire from an undetected veteran German division that almost stopped the assault in its tracks.
Heath, 68, was assigned to one of the units supporting the infantry's amphibious assault on Omaha beach. His outfit – the 348th Engineer Combat Battalion of the Fifth Engineer Special Brigade – landed shortly after the infantry had fought their way ashore and carved out a tenuous beachhead.
Heath, who had been drafted out of high school in Washington State during 1943, recalled the preparations for the invasion and the night-time voyage from southern England to the French Coast in a small landing craft. “We went to camp D-4 in Weymouth,” said Heath, now retired. “They showed us a sand-table model of the beach, where the kknown obstacles were. Then they took us to Portland Bill to waterproof our vehicles. We boarded an LCT (Landing Craft Tank), and were handed leaflets as we loaded up."
The leaflet was a personal message from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, overall commander of Allied forces in Europe addressed to the “American, British and Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces… “ Heath kept the leaflet throughout the war, and still has it today.
The invasion was postponed for a day due to bad weather. Heath and his buddies remained aboard the cramped landing craft, waiting for the word to go. When it came, the engineers started across the choppy water of the English Channel in the dark, to avoid observation by the Germans.
"As we approached Omaha, I felt a stab of apprehension," said Heath. "We got there at about 3 in the morning. I remember talking about how anything would be better than staying on that LCT. Well, we were wrong about that!"
Heath's unit had the mission of improving the beach to allow vehicles and men to land safely in the surf and sand, and was also responsible for bringing supplies ashore to the combat troops.
The invasion succeeded, despite heavy German resistance. The engineers worked behind front lines, rebuilding bridges, roads and other necessary facilities destroyed in the fighting. "From Omaha beach we went to the port of Cherbourg," said Heath. "Because the port facilities were destroyed, we used stiff-leg cranes on the docks. We worked the German POW’s very hard.”
The Battle of the Bulge
Heath’s unit remained in Cherbourg until Mid-December, 1944, when the Germans launched a last ditch offensive in the Ardennes forest, called the "BattIe of the Bulge" by the Allies. "When they heard about the breakthrough, they moved us up to the front as quickly as they could," recalled Heath. Heath helped capture one German paratrooper who had landed behind Allied lines. "We captured him in a Belgian village,” said Heath. "He'd broken his leg and had held the villages at gunpoint until he passed out. "
When the German army started disintegrating in the spring of 1945, Heath's unit became part of the rapid Allied movement across the Nazi homeland. Like many American troops, he was shocked and horrified by the evidence of German brutality toward Jews and foreign workers imported as slave labor. "I saw a concentration camp at Ludwiglust, near Lubtheen," said Heath. "The bodies of the prisoners were living skeletons. It made you sick. It was unbelievable. It and the atomic bomb were the two things in World War II I just couldn't believe (at the time.)"
He returned to Normandy for the first time during a six-month vacation in Europe... The German pillboxes were still in place and a monument had been built for his engineer unit overlooking Omaha Beach.
Heath’s wartime memories remained vivid as he looked out over the sand and surf where American soldiers had died decades ago. “I was kind of awestruck. It was strange to see the sand so clean, and no ships in the water.”
Tragically, Duane died in a car accident in 1992.
Duane Heath, who served with the 348th ECB and his GI Bride Doreen (nee Marley) and their family, during a visit in 1959
From an earlierNewspaper article dated 1945 -
Doreen Marley, was a GI Bride and reveals,
“I was not officially classed as a GI Bride, really, as it was after the war my fiancée Duane Heath, sent me an airline ticket and we were married in Washington State in 1945. You can see the newspaper photo of my arrival, where I am with my mother-in-law Mrs. Roy Heath, taken in 1945.
Doreen Marley from Grovesend married Duane Heath in Waneta District ‘YAKIMA’ Washington State USA
From an earlierNewspaper article dated 1945 -
Doreen Marley, was a GI Bride and reveals,
“I was not officially classed as a GI Bride, really, as it was after the war my fiancée Duane Heath, sent me an airline ticket and we were married in Washington State in 1945. You can see the newspaper photo of my arrival, where I am with my mother-in-law Mrs. Roy Heath
Doreen Marley from Grovesend married Duane Heath in Waneta District ‘YAKIMA’ Washington State USA
Doreen is pictured in 1945 with her mother-in-law Mrs. Roy Heath
Doreen remembered:
Doreen Marley, who lived at No.12 New Road, Grovesend, Near Swansea, South Wales, describes the impact of the US Army on our small village:
‘To our surprise we all awoke one morning to learn that hundreds of “Yanks” had moved in through the night. There was great excitement for a while, the campsite was quite large and Americans were everywhere’. Local cinemas, cafes, shops, and dance halls did well while the GIs were here.'
Other locals noted -
The local boys loved American soldiers, as their Lorries drove along the road the GIs would laugh and wave to pretty girls and they would throw gum and biscuits to children as well.
‘it was a tremendously exciting time for us, they drove round in jeeps and spoke like film stars’.
Acknowledgmeent:
Glenn Booker, Chairman, Barry Island War Museum and GI Magazine No 8.
