Living Memories: Veterans remember D-Day invasion

After joining the U.S. Navy in 1943, Tom Elfrink was a radio man on the ship LST 281 when he found himself in the thick of the historic D-Day invasion. His ship towed landing craft to Utah Beach, one of the offensive's major landing places on June 6, 1944.

"I could hear the shrapnel bouncing off the ship," Elfrink said.

Elfrink, 89, formerly of Leopold, Missouri, now lives at the Missouri Veterans Home in Cape Girardeau. He said he was in a part of the ship below the conning tower during the invasion. However, he wasn't there the entire time.

Allied troops crouch behind the bulwarks of a landing craft as it nears Omaha Beach during a landing June 6, 1944, in Normandy, France. (AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard, File)

"There was a minesweeper ahead of us that got hit by a sea mine" and sank, Elfrink said. He said he helped "pick up guys out of the water," later receiving a thank-you note from one of the ship's crewmen.

"If somebody was sinking, you weren't going to let them drown," Elfrink said.

The Allied invasion of Normandy on that pivotal Tuesday changed the course of World War II and world history.

Tom Elfrink during World War II

The invasion came five years after the official start of the European phase of the war, when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939; and three years after American entry into the war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941.

Professor Wayne Bowen, chairman of the history department at Southeast Missouri State University, said a number of factors played in to the invasion.

There was tremendous Soviet pressure to create a second front to force the Germans to split their forces, Bowen said. He estimated the Soviet Union was facing about 90 percent of German combat power from 1941 to 1944.

The Normandy beaches were chosen for the landing because they were within range of air cover and were less heavily defended than the Pas de Calais, the shortest distance between Great Britain and mainland Europe, according to information provided by the U.S. Army.

Before the invasion, Elfrink's ship was visited in England by Supreme Allied Commander and future U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

The two officials were "both very nice, I would think," Elfrink said. "They didn't seem to be high-class."

As part of the invasion plan known as Operation Overlord, the Allies "had a major deception going on" to "confuse the Germans as much as possible," Bowen said.

At the same time as Western Allies were getting set to land in Normandy, the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front to strain German resources, which was successful, said Professor Jonathan Sperber, a history professor at the University of Missouri.

The Allies then launched Operation Fortitude to convince the Germans the invasion was going to happen at Calais instead of Normandy.

As a part of that plan, Gen. George S. Patton commanded a "fake army" of dummy tanks and airplanes intended to fool the Germans into thinking that Calais was the invasion target. The deception worked, and the German troops were out of position to defend against the Normandy invasion, Sperber said.

On the night before the amphibious landing, the Americans, the British and others dropped more than 13,000 airborne troops behind German lines in northern France. "Airborne drops at both ends of the beachheads were to protect the flanks, as well as open up roadways to the interior," according to information from the Army.

Many of the units got lost, but that worked to the Allies' advantage, because some German units froze in place, thinking there were entire units present in places where there were only a few men cobbled together, Bowen said.

The Allies landed June 6 with six divisions at five beaches, divided among the Allied powers coordinating the invasion. The three American divisions landed at Utah and Omaha Beaches, the Canadian division landed at Juno Beach, and the two British divisions landed at Gold and Sword Beaches.

Melvin Kuehle of Cape Girardeau, who served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, was stationed in New Guinea with the 860th Aviation Engineering Division when he heard the Allies had invaded Normandy.

"My reaction was like when they dropped the big bomb: Hallelujah!" Kuehle said. "It was a big welcome to us down there. We couldn't end the war with Japan unless we ended it with Germany. Anything that was news was a big boost to us."

Amphibious operations previously had been conducted on the Greek island of Crete in 1941 and the invasion of Norway in 1940 by the Germans, but those "had been much smaller operations" than D-Day, Bowen said.

At the time of the invasion, chains of command prevented the Germans from responding efficiently, Bowen said. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the German forces in the area, was in Germany visiting his wife when the Allies invaded.

In addition, the Western allies had air superiority over Europe, which helped make the invasion a success, Sperber said.

The Americans faced stiff resistance, suffering about 3,000 casualties at Omaha Beach the first day. However, the American forces secured the beach by nightfall, and the Allies began to push inland, according to David Jordan and Andrew Wiest's book "Atlas of World War II."

Later success with the beach landings meant the Allies could "scoop up" the airborne forces later, Bowen said.

The invasion proceeded slowly at first. By early July 1944, the Allies were no more than 15 miles inland at any point, according to Jordan and Wiest. However, because of the American Operation Cobra later that month and August, the Allies began to gain ground rapidly, with the surrender of the German garrison in Paris on Aug. 25, 1944.

By the time the Allies performed another amphibious landing in southern France in August 1944, the Germans evacuated France and retreated toward the Rhine River, where the terrain was more favorable for defense, Bowen said.

The war in Europe ended with Germany's unconditional surrender May 8, 1945.

Elfrink said he was on his way to Hawaii from San Diego when the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in August that year.

World War II ended with Japan's capitulation on V-J Day in August 1945. The Japanese formally surrendered aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in September 1945.

Pertinent address: 2400 Veterans Memorial Drive, Cape Girardeau, Mo.