PFC Prestridge

Tales of survival from Omaha Beach

Story and photos by Jerry C. Smith
Submitted photos

General Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke of Operation Overlord as “a crusade in which we will accept nothing less than full victory.”

To back up this solemn resolve, the Allies mounted the heaviest seaborne invasion in world history on June 6, 1944, a World War II event that would become known as D-Day. Hilman Prestridge, a 19-year-old draftee from Clay County, Alabama was there and lives on today to share his experiences.

The numbers are staggering, especially to moderns who haven’t lived during an era when literally the whole world was at war. For this operation alone, more than 160,000 Allied troops, 13,000 aircraft, and some 5,000 ships mounted a concerted invasion of Nazi-held Europe, including a 50-mile stretch of coastline in Normandy, France.

There were five distinct areas of beachhead assault, code-named Juno, Sword, Omaha, Gold and Utah. Of these, Omaha was the most difficult because of its hilly terrain and high concentration of concrete bunkers sheltering German cannons and machine guns.

PFC Prestridge of the First Infantry Division was in one of the first boats to land on Omaha, in the face of withering gunfire from fully-prepared, seasoned troops who had been expecting them for days.

Many drivers of the amphibious landing craft, called Higgins boats, refused to go into the shallowest water, fearing entrapment by grounding or by metal objects placed by the Nazis to snag boats and prevent heavy vehicles from coming ashore. As a result, many soldiers perished from drowning due to the heavy weight of their equipment and a malfunction of their flotation devices.

 

In the thick of the fight

“We had these life preserver things called a Mae West around our waist,” he recalls. “They were supposed to float up under our armpits when you filled them with air, but because we were loaded down with so much stuff, they couldn’t do that and just hung around our waists.

“Lots of men died with their feet sticking out of the water because all that ammo and grenades and backpacks kept them from floating upright.”

He gives high praise to his boat pilot, a brave Navy man who knew what was at stake and carried them into much shallower water that could be waded. But that’s when the real horrors began.

As soon as the front landing door was dropped, heavy machine gun fire began raking his buddies as they stepped off into the water. Many died right in front of the boat. Hilman says those stories about men jumping over the side instead are true, and that some owed their lives to that decision.

“Fact is,” he adds, “we missed the best landing spots because of heavy fog and wind but did the best we could anyway.”

It took several days to secure all five beachheads. “I found a low spot behind one of those tripod tank traps and slept with bullets whizzing just inches over my head.”

The casualties were appalling by any standard, with some 10,000 Allied wounded and more than 4,000 confirmed dead. But it could have been even worse.

“Because the weather was so bad that week,” Hilman explains, (German Field Marshal) Rommel had left the area to attend his wife’s birthday party, thinking we couldn’t land with that kind of weather. The Germans needed aggressive field leadership, and with Rommel gone, they were left without.”

As Hilman spoke of the horrors of that operation during our interview, he had to pause occasionally to gather himself emotionally. One of his most touching anecdotes concerned a tank that had finally managed to drag itself onto the shore, despite most of its unit having foundered in deep water, drowning their crews.

“I heard that tank behind me with those two big engines roaring,” he said. “It came right by me where I was pinned down by bullets over my head. When it passed me, I saw the word, ALABAMA, painted across the back end, and knew things were going to get better. He knocked a big hole in all that barbed wire, so we could get through.”

He also tells of the destruction of a particularly wicked German gun emplacement that had wrought heavy casualties and nearly brought the Omaha Beach assault to a standstill. “We saw the (battleship USS) Texas out there, not far from shore. He put it in reverse and backed way out for a clear shot, then blew that pillbox to pieces with one shell.”

After the beaches were finally secure, an officer informed Hilman that his brother-in-law, Fred Lett, had also landed on another beach, and told him where he could be found. The officer refused permission for Hilman to leave the area but added that his own Jeep was parked nearby with the keys in it, and Hilman was to be sure nobody bothered it. Hilman and Fred had a joyous reunion a short while later.

Hilman’s military career began upon receiving “a letter from Uncle Sam” right after graduating from Lineville High School. His basic training took place at Fort Bragg, NC, where he was selected for Field Artillery training in Maryland. “I was real happy with that idea,” he said. “Artillery gets to stay way behind the front lines, so I figured it was about the safest place to be in a war.”

He relates that his gun crew got into a bit of trouble when they accidentally put seven charges of gunpowder in a field piece designed to use four. The gun survived, but the projectile went all the way into town, destroying a huge tree but luckily doing little other damage.

Those in charge were not pleased, but this was during wartime, so allowances were made. Nonetheless, for no stated reason, they moved Private Prestridge into Amphibious Landing school, eventually thrusting him right into the teeth of the enemy.

“I was worried about it at first,” added Hilman, “but the transfer probably saved my life. The guys I trained with in Artillery were all later killed in battle.

“We loaded up onto the Queen Elizabeth (ocean liner) and wound up in Glasgow, Scotland,” he relates. “We finally were deployed to some place I can’t name in England. The people there were real good to us, and I even got to meet Princess Elizabeth while she was visiting troops in the fields around Dorchester. She was the same age as me, but not yet queen.”

Hilman said none of those in his outfit knew anything about the plans for D-Day; they were simply told they would ship out on June 5th, but their move was delayed until the 6th because of bad weather.

He said the English Channel crossing was pretty rough, and a lot of soldiers got sick, especially after boarding the landing craft. “They told us the waves were 12 feet, but the number I believed was more like 20, but it didn’t bother me. The rougher the water, the better I like it,” he explained.

“We were told to jump off the ship and into the boats when the waves went highest, but a lot of guys broke their legs when they timed it wrong because we were so loaded down with field gear and ammo.”

 Hilman’s outfit was stationed in France until all of Europe had been liberated, then they were transported by ship back to the United States for a 30-day leave before being reassigned to another duty. While America-bound on the destroyer SS John Hood, they were told that their next assignment would be an all-out attack on the mainland of Japan.

Fortunately, before this hellish invasion was launched, President Truman took more direct steps in 1945 to bring World War II to a close. Upon landing in New York, Hilman and his comrades participated in a ticker tape parade celebrating that victory and were soon mustered out of the service.

 

Upon returning to Alabama, Hilman married Vernie Cruise, his high school sweetheart, and settled down. He worked at various jobs that included 10 years at Dewberry Foundry in Talladega before settling down to a career as an electrician at Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, where “I actually did more work for the school’s athletic department than electrical stuff.”

Now, a 94-year-old resident of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City, Hilman Prestridge is far from retired. He’s been involved in many veterans’ activities, including group visits with his old comrades to various D-Day memorials in America and overseas.

While attending a 70th anniversary gathering at the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA, Hilman was greeted by a lady whose two brothers were with Hilman at Omaha Beach. They didn’t survive the landing. She was holding a Bible that one of them carried while serving, which had somehow found its way home.

He’s also revisited the actual spot where he landed in Normandy more than 74 years ago and has an album full of photographs he uses to illustrate their horrendous experience.

Hilman Prestridge is one survivor of only about 5,000 D-Day veterans estimated remaining. He is indeed an honored member of the Greatest Generation.

Thank you for your service, PFC Prestridge.

Honoring a Veteran

Special presentation adds local footnote to D-Day history

Story and photos by Carol Pappas

It would be hard to imagine that when William E. Massey, who enlisted in the Air Force at age 21, could have anticipated what he would witness during his time ahead in World War II.

But as June 6, 1944, approached, 1st Lt. William E. Massey of the 8th Air Force Mission knew he had just one job in mind – “keep the German Air Force out of the air,” he said.

In what would become known as D-Day, Massey, now 91, retold his story to a spellbound crowd at St. Clair County’s Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home with the patience and skill of a seasoned teacher.

By the numbers, 210,000 men took part as airmen, 26,000 were killed, and 28,000 were taken prisoners of war. “One out of every four airmen who went out didn’t come back,” he said.

Massey told his personal story of one of the ones that made it back to a crowd gathered at the veterans home for a presentation. One of his fellow residents, Joe Zeller, built a replica of the 4-engine B17 G called Channel Express, “like the English Channel,” Massey said, explaining that it was the same plane he flew during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France.

It carried three tons of bombs – a dozen 500-pound bombs called “blockbusters,” he said. In formation to cover the target, 54-81 planes would have flown. With that volume and power, “You can cause a lot of damage,” he said.

Zeller, 3rd class boatswain, served from 1951 to 1955 in the Navy. He built the plane before Massey even arrived at the veterans home, but when he learned that Massey had flown that very plane, he wanted to present it to him. What prompted him to build it? “I think the Lord told me to build that. I think God sent me here.”

In a formal ceremony, Zeller presented the model to Massey who then donated it to the veterans home so others to come may hold and examine a piece of history.

Massey’s son-in-law, First Sgt. Scott Leigh, in full Marine uniform was there for presentation. He couldn’t disguise his pride in his father-in-law. “He is one of the true warriors,” he said.

 

Eye-witness to history

As Massey began to tell his story, the audience’s attention to every detail was evident. His crew’s mission leading up to one of the greatest conflicts in history was to block the route in the Far East, he said. They flew to Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Syria with the purpose of preventing oil and gas to get to Hamburg for the Germans

On D-Day, he flew two missions to bomb bridges and cut off the possibility of the Germans to reach the beach and combat the invasion.

Massey flew directly over Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. Overhead he could see there was “not room for another canoe out in that water.” The critical factor in the mission’s success was to be dominant from the air. With more than a little hint of pride showing, he proclaimed, “Not a single German plane came up to contest the invasion.”

He spoke of his bombing mission to Berlin a month earlier – on May 7 and May 8. “On May 8, we turned around and went back to Berlin and bombed it again. You can’t imagine the devastation.”

He flew his fourth mission on May 29 to Berlin. The plane was loaded with incendiary bombs. When they were through, there was “no need to come back. Berlin had to be rebuilt from the bottom up. The Germans were defeated actually before then.”

Quoting German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to Hitler, he prophesied, “If you can’t stop those bombers, we can’t win the war.”

Looking back to that fateful day in June, Massey reflected, “It seemed to be impossible. Those young men gave their all. When you hear what they did, what they accomplished…young men, some only 19, they weren’t afraid. They manned their post and did an excellent job.”

Thirteen days later proved to be a more formidable challenge for Massey. He wasn’t supposed to fly that day, but he had to replace someone who couldn’t go. His plane was shot down. “The plane was on fire. It was filled with black smoke,” he said. “I couldn’t see the instruments.”

The crew was forced to bail out, and he jumped free of the plane but in doing so, he didn’t have on his chute. It was in his hand. “The ground was coming up mighty fast.” He got one side of the chute on, managed to pull the rip cord and the chute opened about 3,000 feet from the ground.

Guardian angel? “Somebody pulled that cord,” he mused.

Once he hit the ground and made it past the enemy, he connected with the French Underground and stayed with them until the end of the war.

His interrogator told him: ‘Lieutenant, your promotion to captain was sent in on the date you were shot down.’ He asked the interrogator if he knew the status, and he told him, ‘Don’t worry. You go home. It will catch up with you.’

“It never did.”

 

St. Clair Remembers

Epic tales from the men and women who went to war

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Graham Hadley
Contributed Photos

It may be cliché, but if the walls of the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home could talk, my, oh my, the stories they could tell.

But short of talking walls and such, Discover writers and photographers visited the veterans home just weeks before its fifth anniversary in Pell City to record those stories. The 254-veteran capacity home is full now, and stories abound from different wars, different perspectives and different walks of life. The common thread of this band of brothers and sisters is service to country first.

These are real veterans, and these are their stories.

 

World War II seaman

went to ‘save the country’

Leo “Cotton” Crawford was only 17 when he boarded the USS Storm King as a seaman in World War II. He was 19 when he came home.

While today’s teens might lean more toward cars, careers or college, Crawford enlisted – like his two brothers – to, as he put it, “keep the Japanese from whooping us and take care of our country.”

Before he reached the age of 20, he knew all he needed to know: “We went to save our country, and we did.”

Crawford served in the Philippines. His two brothers – Herbie and Harold – had joined the Navy as well. “All three of us came out alive,” Crawford said, a hint of pride showing in his wide grin.

He doesn’t talk much about the war. Soldiers and sailors of his time rarely do. “We were in war,” he said. “It was expected” that you would serve. “They will take you if you’re a young kid ready to go. They took me. I enjoyed my time.”

Col. Robert Howard’s Medal of Honor on display at the Veterans Home in Pell City.

When he returned home to Alabama, he was hired by the telephone company and stayed there until retirement as a cable repairman. “Ma Bell hired all of us,” he said of him and his brothers.

Now living at the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home, he dons his USS Storm King cap most of the time, covering up the locks of grey he has rightly earned. It’s not quite clear how he got the nickname, Cotton.

It could have been the blondeness of his hair as a youngster or that he was partial to picking cotton at the farm of his “kinfolks” in Cullman, he said. They would see him coming and say, “ ‘Here comes ole Cotton,’ and it stuck with me.”

 

Teen joins Navy,

stays for career

It would be 25 years before Bill Waldon would leave the US Navy after bidding farewell to his native home near Carbon Hill. The son of a miner, he left the service as an officer. “I’ve been around the world twice,” he said.

He married at 17, and he remembers his brother-in-law coming home on leave from World War II. Inquisitive, he asked him what it was like to serve. The brother-in-law put it this way: “ ‘The Army is doing the fighting. The Navy is getting the pay. And the Marines are getting the credit.’ So, when I joined, I wanted to fight in the Navy. We were old country boys. We got the best deal we could.”

He worked in the communications section aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Valley Forge. “I was very fortunate. I didn’t hear a bullet.”

Later, as he rose through the ranks, he began to give the orders. “If they were shot at, I’d tell them what to do,” he mused. “If they’re shooting at the ship, stay pretty close together.”

He talked of his own good fortunes taking orders through the years. “I had good people telling me what to do.”

 

World War II vet

dodges bullets as messenger

“They called me a messenger,” said Dyer Honeycutt, who served in the US Army in World War II in France and Belgium. “I called myself a runner.”

It was his job to get messages from one camp to another. So, run he did. “Bullets sounded like a whip, a pop” as they raced past him.

“I was shot at a lot of times,” but he was never struck. “I’d get about the length of a football field, and they started shooting at me. I had a lot of good buddies get killed. I still believe the Lord above was taking care of me.”

He was the son of farmers in Attalla and joined the service after high school. His method of carrying messages without getting hurt? “I’d go one time to the left and two times to the right. Then I’m hitting the deck. They’re shooting at me.”

The dominant thought throughout was, “If the Lord wanted me to die, I would. If He didn’t, I wouldn’t.”

 

D-Day an ‘awesome’ experience

For James Majors, D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, could only be described as “awesome.”

From his vantage point on a troop carrier ship, “the sky was like a swarm of blackbirds. It was full of everything that could fly.”

His ship was on the first wave. Rockets were shot onto the beach. “The ocean behind me was full of ships. The sky was black with airplanes.” There was a church on top of the cliffs being used as a lookout by the enemy. “Our job was to knock it out, which we did.”

Ahead, he could see the cliffs up from the beach. Germans stood at the top shooting down at American soldiers as they climbed. “They were shot down, but our boys kept going. It was heartbreaking. They just kept going. I still have bad thoughts.”

After the initial invasion, it was Majors’ job to be a diver and clear the entanglements of  barbed wire and wood the enemy had left to block the beach. “We cleared pathways for the big ships to come in.”

Majors was a motor machinist mate, running the diesel engines – “everything mechanical on the ship except the refrigeration.” It was the farthest away from his Gadsden home he had ever been.

He jokes about his trip from England to Normandy, which could be measured in the space of 48 hours. “I aged a year,” he mused. “I was 19 when I left England, and I was 20 when I got to Normandy. His birthday was June 4, 1945. D-Day was June 6. “I don’t know how many Germans we took out, but we dug a lot of foxholes,” he said. “If there is anything that will break your heart, it is remembering what went on that day.”

At the same time, Majors says he has “a sense of pride I was able to be part of the crew. We carried the mission out with pride. I would go back again if it was under the same circumstances. I would not go back in the mess our boys are in now. In Normandy and Southern France, we knew who the enemy was. They don’t know who our friends are.”

He has talked to his younger counterparts at the veterans home. “The people they’re training are killing the trainers.”

But as for his own experience that fateful day in June 1945, “I was proud to have served in the greatest battle ever fought, and I was right out front. That was something.”

For more stories about our veterans, the Veterans Home and the community that supports them, read this month’s edition of Discover The Essence of St. Clair either in the digital edition or in print.

D-Day Veteran

veteran-dulaneyMemories of the War

Story and photos by Jim Smothers
Submitted Photos

For a half century, Howell Dulaney would not talk about World War II. He tried to shut it out. He didn’t want to think about the horrors he experienced in the war, and he wanted the nightmares to stop.

“It just gets so real. It leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling,” he said.

“It was 50 years after the war before I thought about talking about it,” he said.

That happened after he joined the George S. Patton, Jr., Chapter of the Battle of the Bulge in Birmingham, an exclusive group of veterans of that battle.

Besides their monthly meetings, there was an annual Christmas party. At one of those events, the chapter president went to each veteran and asked him to tell an experience he had during the war.

“When he got around to me, I was about the last one, and I didn’t know what I was going to say. But when it was my turn, I asked, ‘Do you know about Bear Bryant, that they claim he could walk on water?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that.’ I said, ‘Well, I walked on water.’ ”

Then he told how he almost drowned, but was saved by a German soldier.

Part of his engineering group was assigned to ferry infantry soldiers across the Moselle River to prepare for an assault on a German division. The other engineers were to replace a span in the bridge for the rest of the army to cross, but that couldn’t be accomplished if the Germans were there to stop them. So, an attack was planned.

His battalion was split into three parts, two to get the infantry across the river to attack, and one to fix the bridge. Two engineers would be in each boat to ferry six infantry soldiers at a time across the river on a dark, moonless night. The soldiers were instructed to paddle without raising the paddles from the water to maintain silence during the crossing.

“We gave them wooden pegs and told them to use those to plug holes in the boats in case we were fired upon,” he said. “That really got their attention.”

On one of the crossings, they found the infantry had taken some German POWs, and the engineers were tasked with taking them back to the other side.

“On that crossing, our boat capsized. We learned later that we had tipped over on an old ferry cable,” he said. “I had all my uniform on, my helmet and my rifle, and I was not a good swimmer.”

He dog paddled, trying to stay afloat, growing more desperate by the second until, just at the point of giving up, a hand reached down and lifted him up.

“When that happened, my feet hit bottom, and I realized I was only in about four feet of water. We were almost at the bank, but it was so dark I didn’t know that. I looked up and it was one of the POWs we had just brought across. He was taken away with the others, and I never even found out his name.”

Dulaney hasn’t liked the water ever since.

But after telling his story to his fellow veterans, he decided it was OK to talk about the war. He developed an outline for sharing his memories, and gave speeches to a number of schools and church youth groups.

He shared many of his memories with them, but tended to leave out some details—like the bloody water at Utah Beach. He didn’t tell them about young soldiers, his age, who were injured and crying for their mothers, or the horrible injuries some of them suffered.

But he did begin sharing his story with other people.

veteran-building-bridgeDulaney grew up in Eastaboga as one of 15 children in the family. He never finished grammar school because farm life was so demanding. They raised cotton and row crops on an 80-acre farm, as well as animals for slaughter. His mother made dresses for the girls from flour sacks, and shirts for the boys from fertilizer bags. Shoes were a luxury and mostly worn about six months out of the year.

“It was hard work, but it was a good life,” he said.

He joined the Army at 17 and trained at Fort McCain in Mississippi, where he and his fellow engineers practiced bridge-making methods on the Yazoo River. He made bus trips home to see his family, and on one fateful trip he sat next to telephone company operator Robbie Reynolds from Columbus, Mississippi. They wrote to each other during the rest of his training and throughout the war.

After completing training in Mississippi, his group went by train to Boston where they boarded a ship for Great Britain. They sailed around Ireland, up the River Clyde into Glasgow, Scotland, and then traveled by train to Dorchester near the English Channel. About a week later, they loaded their supplies and themselves into a Higgins Boat (made in Mobile, Ala.) and spent the night crossing the Channel for the invasion.

“In Dorchester, we received our combat equipment and began to attend classes, learning what to do if wounded or captured and what information to give the enemy if captured,” he said.

“Once aboard the landing craft, we were told we would be crossing the English Channel into enemy territory within hours, and our destination would be Utah Beach…we knew this was D-Day. Some thought it might be their last day. As the boat was moving out everybody was real nervous. Some of us were trigger happy and ready to fight. Some were praying. And some were crying.”

They landed less than half an hour after the infantry and Marines first landed.

“As we approached the beach, as soon as our craft landed we began to leave any way we could, out the front or over the sides. It was really frightening with all the noise from big guns, rifle fire and mortars exploding all around. The water was waist deep, and it was bloody. There were dead bodies floating everywhere and wounded soldiers crying for help. The only thing we could do was help them out of the water and help them get to a medic.”

Shortly after Dulaney’s battalion arrived in Europe, Eisenhower brought in Patton to be the “fighting general” the Third Army needed, and Dulaney’s battalion was part of that army.

“Patton was an amazing general. He was a great leader, always in the battlefield with his men. He had proved he was a leader on the battlefield in World War I,” he said. “Patton’s theory was once you the get enemy running, don’t give them time to stop and fire back, and it worked.”

Patton moved so quickly Eisenhower told Patton’s commander, General Bradley, to slow him down before he got so deep into enemy territory he would be surrounded and cut off from the other armies. Bradley started rationing Patton’s gasoline to limit how far he could go.

Patton responded by taking his supply trucks to find a gasoline storage depot. “Now, when a four star general pulls up in his Jeep with his supply trucks and says ‘fill ‘em up boys,’ do you think he’s getting his gasoline?”

Patton’s speed helped rescue the 101st Airborne Division when they were surrounded early in the Battle of the Bulge. Eisenhower called Patton to see how long it would take him to get his army to Bastogne, Belgium, to help, and Patton told him 24 hours. He then moved his army without a break, except for refueling, pushing through Germany and Luxembourg to get there.

Dulaney earned his Purple Heart during the Battle of the Bulge when he was hit by a piece of shrapnel from a “Screaming Mimi” artillery round. It was a minor wound, treated by a medic on site, and he returned to duty without being sent away for additional treatment.

His battalion’s last action under fire came at Regensburg, Germany, where a bridge was needed across the Danube. It was built under fire, but not without the loss of four men killed and seven wounded.

After that, Patton moved toward Prague, but was called back to Regensburg when the war ended. Their new orders were to build barracks for a prison camp.

While in Regensburg, Dulaney’s older brother “Doc” from the 7th Army, stationed in Munich, paid him a surprise visit on a three-day pass.

“What a happy three days that was,” he said. “We received a big write-up in the Stars and Stripes magazine. After World War II, my younger brother was in the Korean War. Thank God we all came home safe and whole.”

He said the Germans had superior equipment, but the Americans were better fighters

“I’m proud I was a soldier in Patton’s army, and I thank God every day for sparing my life. I think Gen. Patton was the greatest general ever. He also had the ‘Greatest Generation’ fighting with him and for him…his 3rd Army fought across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and into Czechoslovakia. His army crossed 24 major rivers, liberated more than 82,000 square miles of territory, more than 1,800 cities and villages and captured 956,000 enemy soldiers. His army destroyed 3,000 tanks, 500 artillery pieces, 15,000 miscellaneous vehicles and 2,000 German aircraft.

“I’m not proud of the things I had to do in the war, but war is war. It’s kill or be killed, and we must win all our wars, at all costs, in order to continue to keep and enjoy our freedoms.”

He is a contributor to the National WWII museum in New Orleans, and he encourages everyone to go see it to gain a better appreciation of what it was about.

“I want people to understand what war really means,” he said. “I just want the young people to know what our freedoms mean to us, and we are slowly losing our freedoms.”

Upon his return home from the war, his first destination was to see his family in Eastaboga. But Robbie was on his mind, too, and it wasn’t long before he traveled to Columbus, Mississippi, to see her.

They married within weeks and built a life together. After a 40-year career with Alabama Power, he retired as a district superintendent. They built their “dream home” at Rock Mountain Lake below Bessemer and lived there for 10 years before moving to Memphis to be near their daughter, Eugenia Bostic and her husband, Gary. They were in real estate, and after the real estate crash, they relocated to Florida, and the Dulaneys moved to Pell City, splitting the distance between family in the Eastaboga area and friends in the Bessemer area.

Robbie passed away six years later. Then Eugenia developed inoperable cancer and moved in with her dad to live out the rest of her life. Dulaney was 90 when she died, and decided to sell his home and move to the Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City, where he lives today.

For Our Veterans

Veterans-Memorial-1

Pell Citian a part of history in Iwo Jima

Story by Jim Smothers
Photos by Jim Smothers
and Michael Callahan
Contributed photos

veterans-george-boutwell-2You’ve probably seen the famous photo of the five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. It’s one of the most famous photos ever taken, and is a reminder of some of the deadliest fighting in any battle ever fought.

Retired Sgt. Major George Boutwell of Pell City knows the photo well, but before he saw the picture, he saw the flag in person from his ship. That happened on the fourth day of the battle, the day he left his naval transport ship to help establish the Marines Fifth Division Medical Battalion’s hospital on the island.

Boutwell returned to the island earlier this year as part of the 70th anniversary of the battle. It’s not an easy place to get to, and no civilians live there today. It’s an isolated Japanese military outpost with few amenities and few visitors. But veterans and family members of both nations have been having annual observances there for the last 30 years. A monument on the beach was erected in 1985, written in Japanese on one side and English on the other. “On the 40th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima, American and Japanese veterans met again on these same sands, this time in peace and friendship. We commemorate our comrades, living and dead, who fought here with bravery and honor, and we pray together that our sacrifices on Iwo Jima will always be remembered and never be repeated.”

The order of the day was, “We met once as enemies, now as friends.”

Boutwell said he made the return trip thanks to the non-profit organization The Greatest Generation Foundation. Since 2004, the group has offered the opportunity for war veterans to return to their battlefields at no cost to them. The TGGF programs back to the battlefields are often emotional, but provide veterans a measure of closure from their war experiences, the chance to share in the gratitude for their service, and a venue to educate others.

Boutwell had returned to the island once before, in 1970, when he was stationed in Okinawa. The commanding general of his Marines division at that time authorized all personnel who had been there in 1945 to fly in for a one-day visit. There was a very small group there then, nothing like what he experienced this time.

In addition to his TGGF group of about 25 veterans, other groups also made the trip. The Japanese Cabinet came to this year’s observance for the first time.

veterans-george-boutwell-1Vehicles took visitors to the top of Suribachi to see monuments erected there, and for ceremonies marking the occasion.

This was quite unlike his previous two visits to the eight square mile island.

Reflecting back on the invasion of the island, Boutwell said he was ready to get off of the transport ship, which had been home for more than two months. While in Hawaii, his group had practiced beach landings, but it wasn’t until they went to sea that they were told where they were going. He was ready.

“Back then, I was nothing but a 20-year-old kid that was just like all the military personnel in the service now, 18-19-20-year-old kids. They know that nothing is ever going to happen to them,” he said. “And that’s what makes a good military force – you’ve got kids like that who think nothing’s ever going to happen to them.

“I could see the shore, and boats and amtraks (amphibious tracked personnel carriers) that had been destroyed, and some of them floating out there because the Japanese had hit some of them. We knew there are people who had been wounded and killed on the island there,” he said. “We had heard that John Basilone, who had won the Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal in 1942, had been killed on the first day.”

Basilone had been sent back home as a hero after Guadalcanal to help raise money for bonds, but after a few months wanted to get back into action.

When Boutwell went to the island on a landing craft mechanized (LCM), he drove a Jeep with a trailer off of a ramp where he found himself sitting still with all four wheels on the Jeep spinning in the volcanic ash.

Tractors pulled vehicles onto metal strips put into place by engineers to create a drivable road.

His battalion moved to the other side of the island to help set up the hospital where he subsequently served as a guard. He recalled an incident when an unarmed Japanese soldier walked down a dirt road into their area smoking a cigarette. He was quickly taken prisoner and held for questioning.

veterans-george-boutwell-3Boutwell saw some of the tunnels on the island, which were part of an elaborate defense system designed to help the Japanese fight against an expected invasion. Three days of shelling that took place before the Marines went on shore did some damage to Japanese defenses, but still the Marines took heavy casualties. Most of the 21,000 Japanese troops fought to the death or took their own lives during the battle. The American force of 60,000 Marines and a few thousand Navy Seabees on the island suffered 26,000 casualties, including 6,800 dead in the 36 days of fighting.

Boutwell was unaware if there were any surviving Japanese soldiers from the battle at the ceremony, but the widow of one of the soldiers sent him a gift of “peace beads.” At age 97, she makes the gifts to American veterans every year at the memorial ceremonies.

Boutwell said Iwo Jima was important because of its impact on the air war. Japanese forces there were detecting U.S. bombers flying from Guam to Japan. They in turned alerted Japan, and fighters were scrambled to meet the bombers before they arrived. Iwo Jima was also needed as an emergency landing area for aircraft returning from Japan that had either been damaged on the mission or had other problems.

veterans-george-boutwell-4While the focal point of the trip was the visit to Iwo Jima, most of his time was spent on other islands. Guam was home base. Boutwell was taken by surprise by the public outpouring of appreciation by the people of Guam toward the veterans for freeing them or their ancestors from Japanese oppression during the war.

His group also stayed on Saipan, and traveled from there the short distance to Tinian. There, they saw where the atomic bombs that ended the war were stored and loaded, and the runway from which the Enola Gay took off to make its historic flight.

Boutwell and his family have enjoyed attending service reunions in different cities over the years. He served in the Marines for 28 years, including time during the Korean Conflict and service in Vietnam.

He also served as a drill sergeant at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, a job he said was probably the toughest in the Marines as far as the hours and intensity involved.

These days, he is an avid golfer, with a goal of walking 18 holes two or three times per week.

For more on our Special Veterans Coverage, pick up a print version of this month’s Discover The Essence of St. Clair or read the magazine in digital format online.

Col. Robert L. Howard

col-robert-howardThe legend behind name of veterans’ home

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Submitted Photos

The military heroics and achievements of Robert L. Howard are no secret.

They earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor, among many other medals and awards.

However, what may not be so well known about this man — who is the namesake of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City — is that he appeared in two John Wayne movies, said his brother Steven Howard.

During his 36-year Army career, Robert completed multiple tours in Vietnam and received a commission from master sergeant to first lieutenant in 1969. He was a Ranger, Pathfinder, Paratrooper, Infantryman and a member of the Special Forces. Ultimately, he rose to command positions. He also was involved in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.

Information from the veterans’ home website reveals that he was an honor graduate as a Ranger, Pathfinder and parachute rigger and was deemed an “outstanding” Infantryman in his class. The site gives an extensive list of medals and awards Robert received, among them the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valor, eight Purple Hearts, Legion of Merit and four Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry.

The awards and medals that Robert received during his military career are, in fact, too numerous to fit in the shadow box display at the veterans’ home.

In 1956, 17-year-old Robert entered the U.S. Army, continuing a family military tradition that dates back to the Spanish-American War, Steven said.

In between Robert’s enlistment in 1956 and his retirement in the fall of 1992, the Opelika native earned degrees from the University of Maryland, Texas Christian University and Central Michigan University and graduated from the National War College.

Robert was also named to the Military Hall of Fame of the Hoover Institute; Military Hall of Fame of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Alabama; State of Texas War Memorial; Ranger Hall of Fame, and posthumously to the Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame.

Robert earned “every medal for combat courage in what is known as the military ‘pyramid of honor’ at least once and, in some instances, multiple times,” Steven said in a speech July 11, 2014, on “Colonel Howard Day” at the veterans’ home. That date was Robert’s birthday.

Col-Howard-carry“From rifleman in the Infantry, he rose to become a recon team leader … with the most elite of America’s special operations units, the Special Operations Group or SOG, as it is commonly known today,” Steven recounted in his speech. “Fifty-four months in Vietnam, 380 combat patrols, 1,683 parachute jumps and eight awards of the Purple Heart. It should have been at least 14 instead of just eight. But many incidents Robert just quietly shrugged off as insignificant and unworthy of another medal.”

Robert’s many acts of battlefield bravery and determination, especially in circumstances when the soldiers were surrounded or outnumbered, earned him nominations for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Oftentimes, Robert put himself in danger to rescue wounded soldiers, Steven said.

One time, Robert executed a daring mission in which he entered an enemy camp and captured a North Vietnamese Army colonel. During later interrogation, the enemy colonel gave vital information about troop placement that aided U.S. strategy and saved the lives of many American soldiers, his brother recounted.

As a result of the capture, the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong placed a bounty on Robert, said Steven, who, himself, is a two-time Purple Heart recipient in Vietnam.

Prior to that, Steven had served alongside Robert in Vietnam. After a price was put on Robert’s head, the Army separated the brothers out of security concerns, Steven said.

From battlefield to big screen

During one tour while Robert was a Ranger, he was wounded and sent to a hospital. President Lyndon Johnson and John Wayne visited the hospital. Johnson remarked to Wayne that Robert was a good-looking Green Beret. Wayne agreed and sought to have Robert take part in Wayne’s upcoming movie, Steven said.

Thus, Robert appeared in The Green Berets. He played the role of an Airborne instructor, according to the website, www.rlhtribute.com.

It was not long before World War II hero-turned-actor Audie Murphy joined Wayne in trying to convince Robert to become an actor, Steven said.

To tout the movie The Green Berets, Wayne, Murphy, Robert and Steven were seen going about New York City together for two nights.

“They were all so much alike,” Steven said of the two actors and Robert. “All of them were nice guys, the kind you’d like to hang out with.”

Steven was elated when he saw his brother on the movie screen the first time. “He was amazing!”

Robert also made a parachute jump in another John Wayne movie, The Longest Day.

Ultimately, Robert decided against a movie career in order to be involved in one of the most elite and covert of the Army’s Special Forces, Steven said.

“He had made the decision that the Army was for him,” said Steven.

Author John Plaster took note of Robert’s deeds and battlefield actions and has recorded them in two books, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam and Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG, Steven said.

After Vietnam, Robert’s service concentrated greatly on teaching and training soldiers preparing for Airborne, Infantry, Ranger or Pathfinder assignments. He was also an instructor at the Special Warfare School, and Command and General Staff College.

“He loved his men,” Steven said.

Upon his retirement from the military, Robert settled in Texas and worked with the Department of Veteran Affairs. He retired in 2006.

“He was a straight-up guy. He was easygoing. You’d never know he was in the building, unless someone told you. My brother was the kind of guy I always wanted to be,” said Steven, who relocated to Pell City from Prattville to volunteer at the veterans’ home.

Robert – who was a husband, father and grandfather — died Dec. 23, 2009, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Much has been written and said about Robert’s chest full of medals — both U.S. and foreign,” Steven said in his July speech. “But I will never forget one statement that he made to me, and it was profound indeed. Looking down briefly at the left side of his uniform, he said, ‘I would trade all of these to train one soldier.’

“To many, he will be remembered as a larger-than-life Green Beret,” Steven continued. “And this, he was. But to me, he will be simply Robert, my brother.”

Additional assistance with this article was provided by the staff of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home.