Soldiers recall D-Day invasion
Arguably the most famous image of the D-Day landings is of soldiers getting off boats and entering a chaotic beach battle on the morning of June 6, 1944.
However, Bill Cook of Venango Township, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, parachuted into Normandy, France, five hours before the action started.
“We jumped in there at night,” Cook, 91, said.
He landed in a pasture not too far from the beachhead at Normandy, and he had some difficulty getting out of his chute. At the time, it was dark and raining, so he took cover in a hedge and waited until daybreak.
In the daylight, he found other soldiers. Cook found one man he knew, and he thought he was sleeping. When Cook went to wake him up, he found that the man had been killed by a sniper.
Cook stayed safe until the next day.
On June 7, he was with a group of four people when Germans began shooting. Cook was hit.
“I was the only one that walked away,” Cook said.
When he came to, his lieutenant was laying dead on top of him. For a while, Cook just lay there, saying he was “numb.” Eventually, he decided to get up even though he was bleeding heavily. Another lieutenant helped him with his wounds, and he was taken to a church with other wounded.
“Next day, we went back to England,” Cook said. “That was the last combat I saw at Normandy.”
He was in the hospital in England for about one to two months. He still has shrapnel in his neck and chest, and he has trouble turning his head to the left.
Cook said that a jump in Holland in September 1944 was worse for him than D-Day. Additionally, he was shot again in October 1944, which caused him to lose his left pointer finger. He also was hit in the back. This left him hospitalized for six months.
He grew up in Argentine, a small village near Hilliards.
Cook was drafted into the Army in March 1943, and he joined the 501st Parachute Regiment.“I guess I was just a young guy,” Cook said. “The thrill of it, I guess.”Jim Stark of Clinton Township went on the beach June 7, the day after most of the carnage took place.He was in the Army's 359th Engineer General Service Regiment, and part of its job was to keep troops supplied with gasoline. On D-Day, Stark's boat was behind most of the other boats, and he said the Germans mostly were shooting at targets closer to land.“We were prepared to do what we had to do,” Stark, 91, said.When they arrived, Stark and his crew could not get on the beach right away because there was too much action. They had to wait until it was more clear.His boat was about a half mile off shore. He could see and hear the chaos of the battle.“It was terrible. We knew there were lives being taken,” he said.Stark finally got on the beach the next day, which mostly was cleared.“They had it all cleaned up,” Stark said.Engineers, including Stark, cut a road up a cliff where German soldiers previously had been shooting from. When they got to the top, they assembled a tank, which took two days.Both Cook and Stark served in the Army until the war ended in 1945.After the war, Cook went to work for General Motors. He eventually opened a grocery store in Ohio, and later, one in Florida. He retired on disability in 1966 due to injuries received in the war. To keep busy, he works on his 50-foot-by-80-foot garden.“I've always done something to keep going,” Cook said.He married his first wife in 1945, and she died in 1991. He married his current wife, Margaret, in 1994. She has one child, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.Today, Stark lives on the farm he grew up on. After the war, he went to work in banks, and he retired in 1988 from the Bauman Bus Co. To stay busy, he works on tractors.His wife died in 2010. They had three children, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
The Normandy landings, commonly known as D-Day or Operation Neptune, took place June 6, 1944, and was the largest seaborne military invasion in history.On that day during World War II, about 150,000 Allied troops, primarily American, British and Canadian, landed on the beach at Normandy, France, to invade Western Europe that was occupied by Nazi Germany.The landing involved 5,000 boats, 11,000 planes and 50,000 vehicles.The Allies also coordinated with the French Resistance, which were groups of French people who fought the German occupation of their country. The resistance sabotaged infrastructure the Germans were using and offered military intelligence.The battle left 4,414 Allied troops dead, with 1,465 Americans killed. Between 4,000 and 9,000 German troops are believed to have been injured, killed or gone missing.By the end of the day, more than 100,000 Allied troops came ashore in France, and millions more would follow in the ensuing months. Paris was liberated from German occupation on Aug. 25.The battle is credited with helping to end Germany's occupation of European countries and the war.Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.
