Everybody Made It But Me

We had quite a few trips on the English Channel to try how the landing would be. We went out on the English Channel for a day or two, on these LTC landing tank craft, and we float around. We didn’t know where we were going. All of a sudden we were back in England. Because they were learning how to land, to see how many guys were going to be so seasick that they wouldn’t want to fight. So anyway, the second trip that we landed, I hit a sandbar. And I was about 30, 40 feet from the shore. And all of a sudden, I hit this sandbar. I was going straight out to the beach, and everybody’s going by me, but I was on the sandbar. The water start coming up the windshield ’cause I got the heck out, and all of a sudden the wave came in and over the tank. Everything was floating around. So we had to swim to shore. So anyway we swim to shore, we’re soaking wet anyway, when we swim to shore. This was about, I would say about two o’clock in the afternoon because of the tide. I can attain that because the tide went out about five, and it was completely out around six o’clock because I ... we lit a fire, by the way, and we kind of dried some of our clothes. But I was laying down sleeping on the beach and I woke up. There’s my tank! The only tank left. Everybody else made it but me. So anyway I said, there’s always a sergeant with you or a ... so he says “Okay guys, I guess we’d better go back to the tank.” It wouldn’t run anyway, but they had to call help to pick us up.