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This article expands on last week’s story about Lauren “Shorty” Johnson. Most of what appears below was transcribed directly from my tape recorded interview with Johnson in May 2004. My questions are in italics. His replies follow in plain text.
Do you recall leaving England in the dark of night? You bet. We loaded up sometime after midnight – probably around 2 a. m. We were already awake. We knew about where we were going, but nothing definite until shortly before we loaded the boats. The boats were flat bo ttomed and the sea was pretty choppy. Our boat was an LTC (Landing Troop Carrier). I don’t recall how many men were on each boat but we did have four guns and the trucks pulling them. What was it like on Omaha Beach? When we landed, there were sunken boats and bodies floating in the water. Lots of equipment was scattered around. And there were obstacles along the beach to prevent our boats from getting too close to the shore. We had tanks that went through and pushed them over. The Germans were dug in on the bluff overlooking the beach. They had taken some of their troops away because the Rus sians were pushing them from the other direction. That weakened their defense a little bit.
There was a high bluff facing the beach and they had pillboxes o n top of it. On the second day we were still taking fire. The Germans hadn’t backed off and we were still dug in on the beach. We hadn’t taken all the high ground yet.
There was a lot of smoke and artillery fire – small arms fire, to o. I’m sure there had been a lot more when the infantry landed ahead o f us. We were attached to the 30th Infantry but we came in behind them to protect them from German aircraft. We also protected the field artillery and the field artillery protected the infantry.
Were there many German planes? We had control of the air during the daylight. Night was when we had our trouble. We didn’t dare shoot at their planes or it would give away our position.
Once we started firing anti-aircraft, that would tell them where we were – and we’d get it, too. We had one gun crew that fired after dark and got killed. The Germans could follow the tracer trails back to our gun po sition. The tracers told us whether we were on target. Same with machi ne guns. You’d have a tracer every so many rounds.
How long were you on Omaha Beach? It was probably close to a week before we got to St. Lo although we were on the edge of it sooner. We were stuck on the beach for two or three days until we got more troops in there. The Germans also were pulling in reinforcements. When we moved off the beach and started moving towards St. Lo, the snipers got real bad.
There were a lot of mines, too. We called them shoe mines. When you stepped on them nothing happened, but when you took your foot off they blew up. That’s why you see so many veterans with missing legs. The mines were small but they caused a lot of damage. Sometimes the Germans put them on the bodies of their dead soldiers in case some one was looking for souvenirs. A lot of our guys would collect souvenirs. We were warned not to touch any of that stuff. Do you remember the hedgerows? Oh yes. There were hedgerows around every little town between the beach and St. Lo. Some were probably only 500 or 1000 feet apart. When the Germans were retreating, they knew exactly how far we were behind them because they kne w how many feet they had backed off. We would sometimes find a little book on German prisoners that would have the distance marked between each hedgerow. Then they could tell how far away we were and how far to shoot their rockets and guns.
How far was St. Lo from Omaha Beach? I really don’t know, but I’d say not over 20 miles. That was the first big resistance we encountered. There were some small towns between the beach and St. Lo. We stayed in these short time and then moved on.
The Germans kept pushing in more and more reinforcements. We were stuck in St. Lo more than a month. We finally came in with fighters and bombers. They didn’t come all at once. Instead, they came in different waves. I think there were 2500 bombers in one day alone. When they were through, they had practically leveled the town. Our engineers worked quite a while to even make a path through it.
Somewhere in the vicinity of St Lo, Johnson encountered another Laurel soldier. His identity will be revealed next time along with the names of a few others who were there.
