The FReeper Foxhole Revisits the USS SAMUEL CHASE at Omaha Beach(6/6/1944) - June 7th, 2007

Exerpted from The U. S. Coast Guard at Normandy ^ | Scott T. Price

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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The U. S. Coast Guard at Normandy

The Coast Guard-manned landing craft LCI(L)-85 approached the beach at 12 knots. Her crew winced as they heard repeated thuds against the vessel's hull made by the wooden stakes covering the beach like a crazy, tilted, man-made forest.

Watercolor by Navy Combat Artist Dwight Shepler, 1944, showing German artillery fire hitting U.S. forces on "Omaha" Beach, on "D-Day" of the Normandy invasion, 6 June 1944. In the foreground is USS LCI(L)-93, aground and holed. She was lost on this occasion.

No clear channel existed where the commanding officer's charts indicated there would be, so he ordered the landing craft straight through the obstacles that had been covered by the incoming tide. The bow soon touched bottom, and as the ship ground to a halt, so did its luck. A mine exploded and ripped a gaping hole in the forward compartments, and then German batteries pummeled the LCI. Many of the troops on board were torn to pieces before they ever got off the ship. Those who were still able to disembark could not, because the explosions had destroyed the vessel's landing ramps.

The burning LCI backed off the beach as the crew fought the fires in the forward compartments. The ship then began to list as water poured in through the shell holes. Other landing craft approached to take off the uninjured troops while other crewmembers manned the sinking landing craft's pumps in a vain attempt to keep the vessel afloat. Then the crew sailed back to the transport area as the ship's list became more and more pronounced. They stayed with the listing LCI and managed to offload the wounded on to the Coast Guard-manned attack-transport USS Samuel Chase before they had to abandon their ship. The waters of Normandy washed over the blood-stained decks as the LCI settled deeper. She then capsized, exposing the bottom of her battered hull to the sky and now threatened to become a hazard to navigation to the thousands of ships and craft milling about the area. The crew of a salvage vessel took care of the problem by placing a mine in her hull and exploded it to force her to the sea floor, a final, ignominious end for a gallant veteran that had made so many successful combat landings against hostile shores. Slowly, as the water filled her hull, she turned her stern skyward and sank. The LCI(L)-85 was one of the many Coast Guard-manned ships that participated in the landings in France on June 6, 1944 - a day that would prove to be one of the bloodiest in the Coast Guard's long history.


U.S.S. Samuel Chase

Sixty years ago, U.S., British, Canadian and French forces invaded Adolf Hitler's Fortress Europe in an operation code-named Overlord. The Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, called it a "Great Crusade." The Coast Guard, along with the Army, Navy and Army Air Force participated in the crusade's onset, the greatest amphibious operation the world had ever seen. In August 1943, at the Quebec Conference the combined chiefs of staff agreed to mount an invasion of France in 1944. When finalized the plan called for the landing of five divisions along the French coast at Normandy. In addition, two divisions of paratroopers were to be dropped behind the coastline to help isolate the frontline German troops. Eisenhower was appointed the commander of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, known as SHAEF. He set the invasion date, D-Day, for June 5, 1944, when tidal and moon conditions would be most favorable.

Neptune was the code name given to Overlord's amphibious assault and naval gunfire support operations. These operations were divided between two task forces that would get the troops from ports all over Great Britain and land them on the beaches of Normandy, keep them supplied, and give them fire support. The Western Naval Task Force, under the command of Navy Rear Admiral Alan Kirk, transported the U.S. First Army to the American assault areas code named Utah and Omaha. The Eastern Naval Task Force, commanded by Royal Navy Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian, landed the British Second Army on assault areas to the east of the American landings, code-named Gold, Juno and Sword.


A Coast Guard-manned LCVP from the U.S.S. Samuel Chase disembarks troops of the First Division on the morning of 6 June 1944 at Omaha Beach.

The U.S. Coast Guard was an integral part of Operation Neptune. The service's presence centered around Assault Group "O-1" that landed troops of the famous First Division, the "Big Red One," on the easternmost beaches of the Omaha assault area. Commanded by Coast Guard Captain Edward H. Fritzsche, this assault group consisted of the Samuel Chase, the United States Navy's USS Henrico, the Royal Navy's HMS Empire Anvil, six LCI(L)s, six LSTs, and 97 smaller craft.

The deputy assault commander of Assault Group O-1 was another Coast Guard combat veteran, Captain Miles Imlay, who doubled as the commander of the Coast Guard manned LCI(L) Flotilla 10. Flotilla 10 was a veteran flotilla, as they had landed troops under fire during the invasions of both Sicily and Salerno. The battle-tested landing craft of Flotilla 10 were divided between the Omaha and Utah landing forces. Assault Group O-1 proved to be the largest Coast Guard command of Neptune but it was not the only.

While the Allies prepared to assault Fortress Europe, the Germans prepared to throw them back into the sea. In November 1943, Hitler turned to his most trusted army general, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, nicknamed by his admiring British enemy as the "Desert Fox," to inspect and improve German defenses from Denmark to the Spanish border. Here, the man who nearly drove the British out of North Africa energetically went to work inspecting the "Atlantic Wall."


UNSUNG HEROES: Coast Guard Captains Edward Fritzche (left) and Miles Imlay (right) discuss the invasion of Omaha Beach on a relief map laid out in the hold of the Samuel Chase.

At every stop Rommel urged the troops to greater effort. When one officer told Rommel that he was working the men too hard, the Desert Fox snapped, "Which would your men rather be, tired, or dead?" To strengthen the defenses he devised a number of sinister devices that would tear the bottom off a landing craft or wreck a glider. These included sharpened wood poles that the Germans nicknamed "Rommel's asparagus" and a more lethal trap of three steel bars welded together that came to be known as "hedgehogs." Behind these beach obstacles the Germans placed 4 million mines, dug bunkers, built concrete pillboxes and flooded fields.

Although formidable, Allied intelligence kept a close watch on the German preparations and noted two oversights. First, as expected, the defenses were concentrated around the Pas de Calais, France, well away from Normandy. Second, the beach obstacles along the coast were set to repel an invasion at high tide and as such they lay exposed during low tide. It was not until May that Rommel realized his error and ordered them extended past the low tide mark. But it would take time to add the extra obstacles.


Ashore

The planners at SHAEF took advantage of these oversights by setting up a phantom army, under the command of George Patton, whom the Germans believed would command the invasion. The planners included bogus radio traffic and dummy vehicles placed at Dover, Great Britain, directly across from Pas de Calais, to reinforce the German conviction that the invasion would land there. They also scheduled H-Hour, the time of the first landings, to begin one hour after low tide, when all of the obstacles would be exposed and therefore easier to destroy.

Underway on the "Great Crusade"

On May 28, the crews were "sealed" aboard their vessels, and the troops were kept within their camps. The heavily-laden soldiers began loading into their water-borne taxis on Friday, June 2. They would be aboard for nearly three days before D-Day and to combat sea-sickness each soldier was provided with motion sickness pills and bags which the Army listed as, appropriately, "Bag, vomit, one." They would be needed.


Bound for Normandy: U.S. Army troops on board a Coast Guard-manned LCI(L), during the night of 5 June 1944.

During the cramped weekend, the troops managed to stay busy cleaning their weapons, writing letters or just resting while their Coast Guard, Navy and the British Royal Navy hosts prepared their ships for the channel crossing. The invasion fleet restlessly sortied from their British ports on June 4, but the weather worsened to the point that Eisenhower postponed the invasion for 24 hours. The ships returned to their harbors.

Early on Monday, June 5, Eisenhower attended a conference with Allied meteorologists. They predicted that the weather would partially clear for two days and then worsen. If they postponed the invasion again it would be nearly two weeks before the tide and moon conditions would be right. He thought for a moment and then at 4:15 a.m. looked up and said, "OK, We'll go."


Two RAF flight crew members from a Mosquito bomber that crashed in the English Channel are rescued by the crew of a Coast Guard 83-foot cutter of Coast Guard Rescue Flotilla One.

In the transports, the men who would man and pilot the assault craft filled with troops through rough seas, enemy fire and underwater obstacles received their final instructions. Just like their comrades aboard the LCIs, they studied highly-detailed relief maps and memorized landmarks that would guide them to their assigned landing areas. They had trained hard for Neptune and many were veterans of previous landings but their responsibilities still lay hard with them. It was their job to get the soldiers to the beaches in order for the invasion and liberation of Europe to succeed; the assault troops were useless unless they made it ashore in a condition to fight.

Dedicated to SAMWolf's ex-Father-in-law,
who served aboard the USS SAMUEL CHASE
crewing an LCVP bringing in the demolition teams

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[Professional Engineer]

It’s East of the Mississippi, and South of the Mason-Dixon Line. Beyond that COMSEC comes into play.

[snippy_about_it]

East of the Mississippi, and South of the Mason-Dixon Line

Hey, that's where I am. :-)

[Professional Engineer]

Last weekend, Spiderboy and I built a bug-resistant bed. He is at scout camp for the next few days, so will need it.

Bittygirl swiped daddy's hat.

I had an old computer to scrap. The Knackster wanted to help. BTW, that is a phillips screwdriver she successfully twirled.

[snippy_about_it]

Cool bed. I’ve often said if it weren’t for the bugs I could sleep outside here in the deep south. Now I have no excuse. :-)

BittyGirl is starting to look like mom instead of you now. What a cutie.

[Soaring Feather]

Awwwww, this is such a treat!!

Thanks so much.

That bed is so neat. PE, does Bittygirl have her own Pink tool kit yet, or does she prefer Dad’s tools? ;)

[alfa6]

Great Pics of the Kids Y’all :-)

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Quick project update, Saturday we got almost 200’ of trenches dug with the excavator. Trenches were about 18” wide and 24” deep on average.

Saturday Night we got a litle over an INCH of rain so we had about 200’ of moats on Sunday :-(

We are still slightly ahead of schedule, however. OOORAH Today we have the plumber coming for the new water line. We are swapping out the excavator for a Bobcat and there should be about 20 tons or so of gravel delivered.

Will have a pic or two tomorrow

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Professional Engineer]

BittyGirl is starting to look like mom instead of you now.

That's probably a really good thing.

[Professional Engineer]

That bed is so neat. PE, does Bittygirl have her own Pink tool kit yet, or does she prefer Dad’s tools? ;)

So far, we're still in the "if it comes from dad, it's good" phase. Dad's toolbox, dinner plate, drink cups, etc. etc.

[Professional Engineer]

Sir, thank you , sir.

[alfa6]

Tuesday Evening Project Update.

The rain last Sunday has proven to be a real headache. The ground is just now starting to dry out enough for the Uni-loader to be of a help. Yesterday, Monday, was spent waiting on the plumber to run the water line. He was all set to make the connection when he discovered a leak on the city side of the shut off. We had too wait for the city to get there and asses the problem. Lucky for us the water main was right next to the shut off, that meant that they did not have to dig up the street. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy! The water got back on about 2:30pm The Kid and I were able to make two runs to the dump get rid of some of the junk we had generated. All in all not much got done due to water issues, both rain and city.

Here's what the project looked like this morning before we got started.

We were able to get almost all of the large wall down to the ground today. This ment several trips in the Uni-loader to move the rock that we could salvage for the garden wall across the street. Also this morning we got the gravel deliveries. We now have about 23 tons of gravel in the neighbors driveway. After lunch we were ready to get started on the footings but we had problems when the hill side started to collapse on us. DARN RAIN. Then we got a window at the dump so we made 3 more trips to the dump. Spent the rest of the day working on the hill side. This meant on average about a 8 minute round trip around the block to dump the dirt in the neighbors back yard.

If you are so inclined you can see a few more pics. go to (http://www.dad.incomingwormhole.com/WallProject/Wall2R.jpg) There are a total of 7 pics so just change the #2 to 3 and so on. #2 is an uphill pic from this morning, #3 is the trench, aka moat, for a drain in the neighbors yard, #4 is the 100' moat, I mean trench for the side wall in The Kid's yard. #5 is after lunch, #6 is the 23tons of gravel and #7 is what it looked like tonite when I left. I sure hope it looks like that tomorrow :-)

Gotta go hope to have walls going up tomorrow.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Soaring Feather]

That’s a big project you have going there alfa, looks like it’s coming along well.

I looked at the pictures, thanks.

[snippy_about_it]

Geez, that’s a lot of work. It’s going to look great when you’re done. btw, that’s a real pretty blue she chose for the house paint.

[Nailbiter]

ping for later

[alfa6]

I take it that the directions made sense then on looking at the pics. I will have to see about putting in a text file to make sense of the pics. Provided I can still move when I get home tonight :-)

Have a great day, I will be off to the project in a few minutes.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Soaring Feather]

I take it that the directions made sense then on looking at the pics.

Yes, absolutely worked fine. Huge project to do, it is going to look very nice when done. Labor on alfa!

[alfa6]

Wednesday Night Wall Update. We had to call for backup this morning as we were not able to get the old footers out of the dirt. Backup is on the right side of the picture:-)

We had an excavator delivered just in time for lunch. After lunch in about an hours time I was able to have all of the footers out of the left side and have the rest of the short wall knocked down as well.

Tomorrow we will start laying the blocks, which were delivered today. Unfortunately the fine folks at the yard got the deliveries backward and sent tomorrows delivery today. This would not have been that big a deal except that we needed the landscape fabric in order to set the bricks. At least it hasn't rained since Saturday.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Flag Day Post for the Freeper Foxhole

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Soaring Feather]

Flag Day~June 14, 2007

[alfa6]

Sunday Night and the ongoing saga of The Kids retaining wall.

After a pretty dreadfull Friday which once again validated Mrs Murhpy's Law..."Murphy was an optimist" we had a pretty good weekend. One of The Kids neighbors wanted some of our excess dirt so he hauled off about 6 pickup loads between Saturday and Sunday. And we now have 90% of the first wall up :-)

There are now 21 pics in the Wall Project folder labelled Wall1R to Wall21R. There is also a text file that describes the pictures and a bit of what has been going on.

(http://www.dad.incomingwormhole.com/WallProject/Wall_Project.txt)

Y'all have a great day Monday, I will either be in court to testify in a matter or I will be running the Uni-Loader excavating for the second wall.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}