This is a column published in the Putnam Herald on Wednesday, June 5th.

Some years ago, I spent a summer vacation in Northern France. We stayed in a small hotel on the coast and I clearly remember walking along a wide, buff-colored beach in the early morning sun. It was warm, the sky was blue, the ocean calm and the sand was almost deserted apart from a few families scattered here and there below the low bluffs, above which seagulls lazily circled. It was an idyllic scene but, seventy-five years ago tomorrow it would have looked very different.

At that time Germany was in control of most of Europe. The bluffs above the beach were festooned with barbed wire, protecting big gun emplacements and numerous machine-gun nests, while at the tideline steel, concrete and mined wooden obstacles stood waiting for any unwary craft that came near them.

The craft did come, many hundreds of them, each carrying dozens of young Americans. These were soldiers of the 29^th Infantry Division and that morning they landed on the beach that, by the end of the day, would have earned the name “Bloody Omaha”.

This was D Day, June 6, 1944 and the Allied invasion of Europe was on. The landings had started in the dark hours just after midnight when around 15,500 men of the US 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions dropped from the skies into the darkness of the Normandy countryside.

These paratroops, along with their British comrades, spread chaos among the German units along the coast, helping to prepare for the 156,000 allied soldiers who poured ashore from the numerous ships and landing craft.

In some places these seaborne warriors found little resistance, some of the Canadian troops were already pushing inland within an hour of the landings, but the 34,250 men who stormed on to Omaha beach the situation was different. Here, only two tanks made it ashore and the artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire from the well-prepared enemy positions was devastating.

Around four and a half thousand of the invaders became casualties that day with almost half of them falling on Omaha beach. Among those who made the ultimate sacrifice were several from West Virginia and the initial casualty list of those killed in action bore thirty-eight names from all over the state, although there were hundreds of other Mountaineers who were there of course.

One of the first to land was Sergeant Clifford Carwood Lipton, a native of Huntington. He served as jumpmaster on a C47 and parachuted into the swampy fields of Normandy with the rest of Easy Company of the 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the unit made famous by the HBO series “Band of Brothers.’

Lipton landed in darkness away from his drop zone but soon made contact with other members of his unit. He was in action all through the long day that ensued and, as nightfall came he’d earned a purple heart after being wounded by shrapnel and a bronze star for his actions in silencing an enemy artillery battery at Brecourt Manor. He fought on throughout the rest of the war, earning two more purple hearts and a second bronze star as well as a battlefield commission. He finished the war as a First Lieutenant and passed away in 2001.

Lipton wasn’t the only West Virginian jumping into the unknown that night. Harrison Summers of Rivesville in Marion County was with the 502^nd Regiment of the 101^st Airborne and his unit swiftly seized their objective. Summers was then tasked with capturing a group of buildings. These proved to be a German barracks and with just two companions Summers attacked them. Five hours later he’d captured them, killed 31 of the enemy and sent many more running for their lives. He was recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor at the time and again after his death in 1983 but received the Distinguished Service Cross instead. He too finished the war as a First Lieutenant and spent the rest of his life working in West Virginia’s coal mines.

As dawn broke and Lipton and Summers were fighting near the Normandy town of Carentan, Pierre Gunnoe from Boone County was with his unit, the 5^th Ranger Battalion, in a landing craft approaching the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach. This was the most heavily defended sector of the whole invasion coast and the unit started to take casualties before they came ashore at around 6:30. The survivors reached the beach and stormed a pillbox to open the way for the waves of men behind them. Gunnoe was lucky, he received a minor flesh wound but the rest of his unit suffered more than 75% casualties. Gunnoe was to be wounded another 4 times and passed away in 2000.

These were just three of the West Virginians who took part in the invasion seventy-five years ago, there were many others from the Mountain State who played their part too. George Wehrle, for instance, was a seaman aboard the heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa. He didn’t land in France that day but he left a diary detailing the aerial assault and how his ship moved in toward the shore to provide supporting fire for the ground troops despite being targeted by enemy shore batteries.

Vincent Di Bacco from Tucker County wasn’t in the first waves of the assault, he was a medic who landed on Omaha Beach with an engineering battalion around 10:00 a.m. He later described the scene that met his eyes as “something from hell.” The assault troops were pinned down all along the shore line, the mortar and machine gun fire was incessant and there were so many wounded he worked non-stop until well into the night. Di Bacco was lucky, he survived the war, as did his two brothers, who also served.

Hundreds of West Virginian natives were there seventy-five years ago. Unfortunately most of them have gone to a better place now but their deeds will be remembered tomorrow. President Trump will be taking part in the commemorative services as will members of the Royal Family and representatives of the governments of many of the countries whose men and women played a part in freeing the world from tyranny. Once again the boats will come ashore and the planes will roar overhead, one of them carrying at least two men in their nineties who will be making tandem jumps with the British parachute display team and who last parachuted into Normandy in 1944. 

Many years have passed and the world is a different place, but it’s different because of what these men did and so it’s only right that we should remember them on this anniversary of their sacrifice. Remember them and those who continue to serve to ensure we keep our hard won freedom.

My column

As you can see, I’ve rather neglected this blog over the past few months. The problem is I don’t seem to have time, I’m always writing a novel or sometimes two and my weekly column in the Putnam Herald newspaper takes time to research and write so there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day.

It’s the newspaper column that has prompted this post. I receive frequent emails from readers and twice lately people have asked if I could put my articles on a blog so they could let friends and relatives who don’t get the Herald read them.

I’m always happy to give readers what they want if I can and so here is the first of these articles. My editor used the headline, First Three Soldiers Killed in American Revolution. I simply called it April Morning.

This week marks the 244^th anniversary of the deaths of Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall. These men were not rich and they were not famous. Almost certainly they were not well educated, they did nothing outstanding and the only reason that history remembers their names is because they died.

They probably came from the county of Lancashire, in north-west England, and met their ends on a bridge more than three thousand miles from their homes.

So, who were these men and why did they die? They were soldiers, red-coated privates in the light company of the British 4^th, King’s Own, Regiment of Foot. The year was 1775 and their regiment, along with three thousand other soldiers, was stationed in the port of Boston.

They were not welcome guests. The Province of Massachusetts Bay, as it was then known, was considered to be in a state of rebellion and tensions were running high between the army and the citizens.

Things came to a head when, on April 14, Thomas Gage, the royal governor, received orders from the parliament in London to disarm the people, to seize all military stores and to imprison the patriot leaders.

He was told that Massachusetts was sending messages to other colonies asking for support and so he decided to act swiftly. Orders were drawn up for an expedition to capture military equipment that was said to be hidden in the town of Concord. Lt. Colonel Francis Smith was to command and he ordered the grenadier and light infantry companies from 11 regiments to be mustered on Boston Common late in the evening of April 18^th.  Privates Smith, Gray and Hall were among those who were awakened and who marched across the Common to the water’s edge where the Royal Navy’s boats were to ferry them across to Cambridge.

The expedition was badly organized. Our three soldiers found there were not enough boats, they had to wait and when they finally boarded one it was so crowded they could not sit down. On top of that, when they reached the opposite shore they were off-loaded into waist-deep cold water at midnight.

That wasn’t the end of the problems. It took two hours to unload the expedition’s equipment and it was well after two a.m. before they began marching in wet boots toward Lexington where, because of the delays, the alarm had already been raised..

They reached the town at about five o’clock in the morning and our three soldiers’ company was there on the green when someone fired a shot, the British redcoats lost control, returned fire and several of the Lexington militia were killed.

Order was restored and, instead of following the wisest course and returning to Boston, Colonel Smith ordered his column on to Concord.

 By now the countryside was thoroughly alerted. Local militia had gathered in the town and their numbers were continually increasing as companies from more distant places joined them. Despite the skirmish at Lexington they didn’t seek to engage the redcoats but were ordered to hold their fire and they withdrew to a hill top north of the town to watch what was happening.

Smith now ordered part of his force to search Concord while dispatching several companies of light infantry to look for military stores on a farm to the north. This latter column had to cross the Concord River via what was called the “North Bridge”. It was here that the militia force, gathered on the hill, could overlook the crossing and so it was decided to leave three companies to guard the bridge in case they decided to threaten it. One of these was the light company of the 4^th Foot and among them were the three men from Lancashire.

The British troops in the town found some gun carriages and other stores that they were ordered to burn. Smoke rose from among the houses and the militia on the hill thought the redcoats were burning their homes. They began to move down the slope toward the bridge.

Seeing this, the British office in command of the three light companies guarding the crossing ordered his men to form a narrow column and withdraw across the bridge to the town side. The light company of the 4^th was in the front of this formation as the militia continued to advance until the two sides were only about fifty yards apart, with the bridge between them.

By now the British troops were exhausted, they’d not slept all night, they’d been wet through, had marched twenty miles carrying heavy equipment and were now facing around five times their number of heavily armed militia. Whether by accident or intent one of them, a man from the 43^rd regiment, fired a shot and immediately two more followed suit. Thinking the order to fire had been given, those at the head of the British column fired a volley and two of the militia were killed.

That was the moment when the famous “the shot heard around the world” was fired. The militia returned fire and Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall fell dead on the bridge.

The British were to suffer a further 297 casualties that day and many thousands more over the next eight years before the Revolutionary War ended but these three are remembered because they were the first British soldiers to die. One of them now lies beneath a monument in the centre of Concord, while the other two are together in a well-maintained grave beneath a tree on the west side of the North Bridge, casualties of the first small step that eventually founded this nation.