Well, I was a co-op in the Georgia Tech
in December the 7th 1941
when the war broke out Japanese bombed Pearl harbor.
One day when I was walking home from my job I noticed the
Navy recruiting station the Navy recruiter had a sign that he had printed himself. I've never seen it advertised. It said
join the Navy three hot meals a day so I proceeded to go in and join the navy and
I became a charter member of LST-357
my job was to take care of the
Navigational charts to keep a log
of everything that took place everywhere we landed and so forth which I have and
Take care of the chronometer and the psychrometer and the weathervanes to do to determine
You know what the weather was going to be what the current is and I had to take I did take terrestrial sightings, I took
celestial sightings of Stars sun lines and determine the latitude and longitude of the ship all this was reported to the
Officer of the deck as he came in to take over the tower
And I parted courses on the charts and he would verify what I did them correctly or not
Which mostly I did. well the LST when we went into the beach
about two and a half links
We would drop the the stern anchor that said the anchor chain that the cable is 900 feet long
so we didn't want to lose the anchor so we would make sure we knew what the tides were and
And we knew what the beach was like
And then we went to several ports all over the coast of North Africa went to
Or and and finally we proceeded to go to our home port
Bizarie North Africa it so happened as we went into Bizarie
the Germans and the Italians
Were leaving they were flying out and we took shots at and I'm not too sure whether we hit a couple of planes or not
gunners rate tells me. We shot at least two two of the planes down
these were guys that Montgomery's was driving the
Germans in toward Bizaree there and Patton was coming in the other way
So that was our home port and we did our training and going into phoenician Toneesah
practice landings there for the invasion
Carter sicily
That was where [we] made our first invasion
we were very fortunate in that the British were very very smooth and trying to deceive the germans on where we were going and
fooled the germans into believing that we were going into Greece, so the Germans were vacating Sicily and
It made it an easier invasion for us otherwise. I might not be here today
So we made about 18 trips I guess back and Forth between North Africa and before we made arrangements to go into
Salerno Italy when we
Went into Salerno, Italy
tried to get into the beach twice, but the German 88's up in the hills was so
Fierce that the beachmaster waved us off
And we couldn't get in so we went out and we thought we were out of range of the eighty-eights
and we dropped anchor out there and
When we were out there
Stratton was coming down like black rain our ships role was to carry
American Troops into the beach at Omaha Beach on D-Day June 6
I think the Germans thought we were going to Calais or whatever we were going to go into another invasion point
Because we made a turn at 90 degrees like we were headed toward the Calais and then I guess
actually Hitler pulled his troops back to Calais and
It was on account of that and a primary on account of a dummy
Invasion by my General Patton that we would
We were going to hit Calais, but we also aided him in that
directed our ship in that direction, so then we were directed straight toward the
Beach at Omaha
I Wasn't on the beach of course. I couldn't see the fight there, but I saw a lot of ships
I saw other guys floating in the water a lot of people that were
casualties on the Beach which we our ship almost became a hospital ship carrying people back and
prisoners [too] and
so what we did we we would load down with prisoners and
wounded people and take them back to to England Portsmouth usually
so so we we enjoyed the every trip [that] we made because
There was no time for anything but work