The story about Ray Alm (Tempo, July 30), the U.S. Ranger and his experience landing on D-Day, and the water cooler talk about the movie “Saving Private Ryan” brought back vividly my memories of D-Day.
Just a few months previous to June 6, 1944, my company, the 1255 Military Police, was stationed in Wantage, England, assigned to the 8th Air Force. England had so many GIs and equipment ready for the invasion the joke was that it would sink. While waiting, many of the soldiers “wandered off,” as my commanding officer said.
One day we received orders that for three days there would be no leaves or passes in all of England and anyone away from his station, unless on urgent duty, would be arrested. The idea was to find all of these men who had “wandered off.”
At the end of the third day, our confinement was full and I was assigned to take nine of the more serious offenders to military jail just north of London. After turning over our prisoners, the sergeant in charge took us for a tour. We were told that all the prisoners confined were convicted of very serious offenses and they would be serving their sentences well after the war was over.
We noticed that many prisoners were practicing climbing walls, running with full packs, crawling under obstacles and tossing what looked like small telephone poles. When questioned we were told that these men had volunteered to be in the first wave when the invasion began in exchange for a pardon if they survived. There were 25,000 men in that first wave I am told. I often wondered how many of those were ex-prisoners and if some of the survivors made it back home with a clean record.
My company landed on Utah Beach Sept. 9, 1944, at night, and we never even got our feet wet thanks to Sgt. Ray Alm and those men in the first wave, who I still think were some of those prisoners we saw in London that day.
