Oldest Military Blogger 5 Days Before D Day

Oldest Military Blogger 5 Days before D Day.


D Day Minus 5 days

I left England on June 1,1944 on the Liberty ship, SS George E. Pickett. This was the third dry run we thought,so the speech we got before we went aboard, by some nameless General, was taken in stride.

After being under sail for 12 hours, we started to consider the possibility, of this being the real thing.The following day, still moving around in the Channel off the coast of Brest, more vessels joined our group.We kept moving together. A convoy without any visible Naval escort. We all stayed on deck as much as we could because it was extremely hot below.

All the hatches were covered but we finally found that our cargo was composed of Sherman tanks, Jeeps with trailers filled with gear, DUKWs piled high with rope cargo nets, two and a half ton trucks with canvas covers tied down and thousands of 5 gallon Jerry cans filled with gasoline and guys from the 90th Infantry
at a loss as we were.

It turns out that the General with no name turned out to be Ike, who I wouldn't know from a hole in the ground, and later realized it was he, when his picture was in the Stars and Stripes.

This was no “dry run”.....This time, we knew, it was the real thing!
Little did we know that we would spend 5 days
aboard this vessel.