In this captivating episode of America’s Veteran Stories, host Kim Munson sits down with Dennis Bush, a veteran and author focused on uncovering the untold stories of D-Day. Join us as Dennis shares insights from his new trilogy, ‘The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach,’ detailing the bravery and strategic ingenuity of 12 men who played pivotal roles on that historic day. Dennis explains how his personal journey from Vietnam inspired a lifelong dedication to military history, leading him to pen narratives that bring these silent heroes to the forefront.
SPEAKER 03 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s veteran stories with Kim Munson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans to Normandy for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. I returned stateside realizing that we need to know these stories of our military and our veterans, hence America’s Veterans Stories. I’m very pleased to have in studio Kim. Dennis Bush. We are pre-recording this. We’ll be broadcasting it on July 7th. And that will be shortly after one of his most recent books is published. Dennis Bush, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you very much. Glad to be here. It’s great to have you. Let’s start with you. You’re a veteran. Yes. And thank you for my freedom. I appreciate it. Well, thank you. So tell us your story.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Well, that’s a long one because I’m not young, as you can tell. My name is Dennis Bush, and that’s like the beer. And I like the ex-president. I grew up in southeastern Colorado, which is the Arkansas Valley. And it was once described… Now, there’s an alluvial plain down there, but up on most of that area is prairie. And it was once described supposedly by Thomas Wolfe as… A place where there are more rivers and less water, more cows and less milk, and you can look farther and see less than any place else in the world.
SPEAKER 09 :
I’m from western Kansas, so I understand.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, much different from me. So anyway, I graduated in 1964, so that gives you my age. A month later, I entered the United States Air Force Academy and graduated in 1968. with a degree in aeronautical engineering with an emphasis on propulsion systems, which technically makes me a rocket scientist. That’s awesome. Anyway, I became a pilot. Flew two tours in Southeast Asia, or Vietnam specifically. The first tour was in an aircraft called an O2B, and the second tour was in helicopter gunships. That was in 1970 and 1971. Both of those are documented in books that will probably be published sometime in the next year or two. They’re interesting stories in their own light. But I resigned my commission in 1973 and embarked on a career in what’s called project management, working primarily in aerospace. So I spent 19 years working for aerospace companies. And then I went out on my own and started my own training and project consulting company, which I did for 25 years until… my wife got alzheimer’s and i couldn’t travel anymore so i had to shutter my businesses the thing is through even though i resigned my commission i realized soon after that i was still a it’s something that a lot of people my in my situation are you you’re still a soldier in your heart In your mind, you don’t give that up. It’s not something that you can take off.
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s not a switch that goes off.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, it’s not a uniform either. It’s it’s a feeling. And so I developed this lifelong interest in military history. I studied the Civil War battles because they intrigued me so much for 25 years. A lot of, probably read over a thousand books on the subject. And then I kind of one day said, yeah, I’ve done that, so I’m going to move on to World War II. And soon after that, I kind of gravitated towards the Eastern Theater where my father served under Patton and then D-Day. And I started reading books about D-Day, and I think I had the same epiphany you did. My God, why don’t we know more about these guys? I know. What they did is the most incredible bunch of stories I’d ever read in my life. And I didn’t even know who they were. And I had studied history. And so I decided that I was going to write them. So I started writing a book. This was back after my wife passed. It was even before that. But it ended up being about 650 pages long. And I said, well, that’s way too long for people to, you know, if you’re, It can be daunting if people see a book that size. Well, it becomes a commitment. And I thought, so I broke it into three. And the battle actually breaks itself into three, naturally into three parts. And so I built, so what I’ve written is a trilogy, about 70, 75,000 words each. OK, that’s how you, you know, page size is variable. So it’s more appropriate to measure by words. But they’re fairly lengthy books in their own right. And this first book, which will be released somewhere around the 4th of July, finally. is about the eastern half of Omaha Beach. Because two divisions, they figured, you hear names like Eisenhower and Schaaf, the Supreme Headquarters, they decided that they needed, it was such a difficult place to go and so formidable that they assigned two divisions. The first was, infantry division which was the most experienced infantry division in the war at that time and the 29th infantry division which was completely green it’s a storied division it goes back some of the elements regiments within the 29th infantry division go back to the civil war one of whom was stonewall jackson’s infant but now was integrated into the united states army And so they were assigned the western half where the 1st Division was assigned the eastern half. And so I decided I would start with the eastern half. And it tells the story of basically when they say it was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division. A division is made up of three regiments. It’s called a triumvirate. You always had two units in combat and one unit in reserve. That was how they worked everything. Everything was in threes. So you have three regiments in the 1st. of which the 16th Infantry Regiment, again a very storied regiment, was assigned the initial wave. And even then, it was actually only two battalions out of the 16th Infantry Division that actually attacked. A regiment is broken down into three battalions, and then battalions are broken down into companies. And that was the central combat unit in World War II, was a company. About 200 men in infantry. It varies in size with parachutes, paratroops, and rangers. And so anyway, what really fascinated me was that I realized that though 35,000 men attacked that beach that day, you can actually attribute the victory… to 12 men. Really? Yeah. And I think that number, that’s what I say, but it may be 20, but it’s a very small number who actually made the difference. And I was just, you know, and I could read you the names and nobody even knows who these guys are. And they range from sergeants, there’s two sergeants, there’s two lieutenants, there’s two captains, there’s two lieutenant colonels, and there are two brigadier generals. And I say in the promotion is I don’t believe one person in 100,000 can name any of them. Well, what are their names? Well, the sergeant’s names, there were actually two Polish-Americans. One was named Strzysiek. And Strzysiek basically took out, you’ve probably heard of a German 88. 88-millimeter gun. It was one of their most effective artillery weapons. This guy took out an 88 on the beach with a bazooka that was shredded with holes. By himself. Now, a bazooka is actually a crew two-man weapon. But he was good enough that he was able to do it with one. And he took this thing out. And was one of the significant contributions to the beach. Actually… And Omaha Beach is geographically a slope, very steep. You can’t get tanks. You can’t get trucks. You couldn’t even get Jeeps up that slope. But there are four stream beds that come down from the plateau to the beach. And, of course, over the eons, they are a much shallower draft. And so they called these exits or draws. And they had to capture them because you couldn’t get anything off the beach that was mechanical unless you went up through one of those draws. You couldn’t take those up the plateau. And I go into it quite deeply in the book. The plan was actually very, very flawed for a lot of reasons. We don’t have enough time to go into all of that. But those were the keys. But these guys hit this beach. And virtually the Air Corps and the Navy hadn’t done any damage to the enemy. Those are two of the things that really led up to the horrific nature of the battle. And so the young doughboys, or GIs, or grunts as we call them today, they hit that beach and they were just slaughtered. In a lot of places.
SPEAKER 09 :
One of the guys that I went to Normandy with was 17 years old and he was a ramp operator on one of the Higgins boats, first wave. And he said that of the guys that on that initial delivery, he had only three of them even made it to the beach.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. I mean, it was horrible. If you saw Private Ryan, Saving Private Ryan, the first 40 minutes of that movie is actually fairly authentic. That’s what I’ve heard. But it’s only a very small part of the battle. The rest of the movie is fiction. But the first 40 minutes is actually, for Hollywood, a very accurate depiction of what happened. And if anything, isn’t as bad as it was actually.
SPEAKER 02 :
As what, uh…
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, I’ve come to the conclusion that anybody who goes through that has PTSD. The human being is just not meant to see things like that.
SPEAKER 09 :
I think that is true. And, in fact, we’ll go to break here in just a minute. I’ll just make a comment. One of the nonprofits that I really support is the Center for American Values. And just this last week, I was down there. They have these On Values presentations. And one of them, the presenter was Sammy Lee Davis, who’s a Medal of Honor recipient for actions he took during the Vietnam War. And he says that even to this day, he still has nightmares, which I think is to your point. No human being can see that. And I can’t understand combat. Nobody that’s ever, if you’ve not been in combat, you can’t understand it.
SPEAKER 06 :
No. And I mean, especially the infantry. I mean, you’re standing here. These guys are running up a beach and the guy five yards to your left explodes.
SPEAKER 09 :
I know.
SPEAKER 06 :
And you’re drenched in his blood and matter.
SPEAKER 09 :
And these are just young kids that are doing this.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and the guy five yards on your right has his head blown off. I know. How are you supposed to deal? And you’re charging up a beach, and they still did.
SPEAKER 09 :
I know. That’s what I find so amazing, Dennis, is… that with Frank DeVita, who was the ramp operator, I hadn’t really thought about it, what that day was like. He ended up making many trips back and forth, and it got to a point where they were then putting the dead and wounded in the Higgins boat, taking it back to the ship. The guys would take the dead and wounded off those boats, and they got in and went towards that beach. It’s remarkable to me.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. That’s why I said the courage is just undescribable.
SPEAKER 09 :
It is. So we’re going to go to break here. But the Center for American Values is located in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk. And it was founded for several reasons. One, to honor our Medal of Honor recipients. And they do that through over 160 portraits of valor of Medal of Honor recipients. But additionally, they are teaching these foundational principles of honor, integrity, and patriotism through many of their educational programs. and also their On Values presentation. So for more information about the center, go to AmericanValuesCenter.org. That’s AmericanValuesCenter.org. We’ll be right back with veteran Dennis Bush.
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SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories, and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier, and thank you for listening. Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I am talking with Dennis Bush. He is a Vietnam veteran. He did two tours in Vietnam, and he was a pilot. One tour was on an O2B, is that right?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, that’s what it goes.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. And the other was on the helicopter gunships. And we’ll have to talk about that at some point in time. Right now we’re talking about your book that was scheduled to be released the week of July 4th. And so we thought that we would broadcast this on July 7th. What’s the name of the book?
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, the name of the book is actually, I wrote the book and it was so long, I decided to break it into a trilogy. And I kept the name of the, the trilogy is called The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. And that is also the name of the first book in the series. The other two are written. I’m just going to, you know, delay their releases for like three months in sequence. Okay. And then I’m going to publish my two Vietnam books after that. And then I just finished a novel. which is totally out of my wheelhouse. It’s a love story.
SPEAKER 09 :
That’s awesome. Well, I’m excited. And this is so great that you’re putting this on paper and sharing it with people. You clarified during break, you said that there was really 12 men involved that made the difference that day, July 6, 1944. And you clarified for me. You said two sergeants, two lieutenants, two captains, two lieutenant colonels, two full colonels, and two generals. So that’s your 12 men. I can only think that there was another time that 12 men made a real difference for mankind as well.
SPEAKER 06 :
And when you understand what they did, it’s incredible.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well…
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, where do you want to go with this? I’m going to follow your lead on this.
SPEAKER 06 :
The battle actually is won. Most people think probably D-Day didn’t weigh into the evening before it was over. But the reality is the battle was decided by lunchtime.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, what time was the first wave?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, 7 a.m. literally, 6.30 to 7, dependent. I mean, they were coming in so fast, and it’s pretty hard to time that kind of thing to the minute. But H-hour was supposed to be 0630. Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
What about the paratroopers that jumped in behind?
SPEAKER 06 :
There are no paratroopers on Omaha Beach. The paratroopers were on Utah Beach. And actually, they were in the Cotentin Peninsula behind Utah Beach. That’s another trilogy I’m going to write after I finish this one. So there are no paratroopers involved in Omaha. What’s involved in Omaha are rangers. The Rangers, yes. And they are incredible. And their story is picked up a little bit in book one, a lot in book two, and totally in book three.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. I think we’re going to probably have to do a trilogy of interviews, Dennis Bush. Okay, so you mentioned one of these 12. Who do you want to talk about next?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, let’s talk about what happened, is that… After the initial shock, these guys figured out how to attack the German line. And basically, they had these five stream beds that came down from the plateau down to the beach, which were required to capture if you wanted to get vehicles off the beach. Well, you don’t want to. The thing is, the Germans could read a map, too. And so that’s where they put their heaviest fortifications was on the on on those five points. But where they were weakest was between them. And these guys figured it out that that’s where they wanted to hit. Now, in book, there are in by 10 a.m. That’s only three hours. They had breached the German lines in seven places. Okay. These guys, these 12 men, basically, were the instruments that did that. And those seven breaches then allowed the other troops, as they came in on the second, third, fourth, fifth, twelfth wave, like I said, there were 35,000 that hit that beach in one day. 35,000 at Omaha? Mm-hmm. Goodness. In one day. The whole plan was basically jam as much onto the beach as you can, as fast as you can, and get inland as far as you can.
SPEAKER 09 :
Now, that sounds to me, I’m a layperson, that seems like a good plan.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, it is, but the devil’s in the details. True that. Okay. And so these guys then created these breaches, and then this enabled the guys in the follow-on to get through with much less casualties and then assault the German heavy positions from the rear where they were completely defenseless. And that then ended up breaking the back. And that all happened in the afternoon, but the breaches occurred in the morning. Okay, okay. The first draw was captured at noon. um and and that’s a major part of book two of what happened there uh but at any rate uh these seven men and i can and so in book one we’re only going to talk about three of three or four of the breaches okay uh and then then book two will cover the rest and then book three is about point to hawk okay uh And that is the most incredible story probably in world history. And a much misunderstood story, actually.
SPEAKER 09 :
I can’t wait.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And it’s all Rangers. These guys were just really unbelievable soldiers. They were highly trained. One of the Rangers at the 50th anniversary of D-Day assaulted and climbed the cliff. Yeah. it must have been in his 70s or 80s and yet he still was physically fit enough to to ascend a rope because that’s how they had to climb those cliffs was those ropes i know and uh just amazing guys in terms of courage and and strength and uh ingenuity ingenuity Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s a ton of that in this. Yeah. Of how they figured out how to get through the through the mess. But but basically, we’re going to talk about the if you look at a map, these draws had names. OK, well, and so in book one. We’re talking about the E1 draw, which is the St. Laurent draw, the E3 draw, which is the Colville draw, and the F1 draw, which was KBORG. All right, so the K-Borg draw was basically assaulted by Love Company. They used, of course, they used the phonetic alphabet. So when you hear Abel, Bakel, Charlie, that means ABC, right, in civilian lingo. So Love Company of the 16th Infantry Regiment was attacked through the F-1 draw. And the lieutenant, the hero on that beach is a lieutenant by the name of Jimmy Monteith. Jimmy Monteith, M-O-N-T-I-E-F? T-E-I-T-H. Okay, got it. Monteith. Okay. He actually won, he was killed, and he’s only one of the 12 that was. And he’s the only one of the 12 that was awarded the Medal of Honor. Certainly, rightfully, once you understand what he did. But he and this group forced their way through that and ended up capturing two villages on D-Day, or by this morning of the 7th, actually. So that’s one part of this book.
SPEAKER 09 :
Was one of them St. Mary Eccles?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, no, you’re talking Utah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, excuse me. Okay. Okay. So which villages did they?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, one was called La Grande Rameau. Okay. And the other one was called Kayborg, which is the draw name. Okay. Kayborg’s an interesting story.
SPEAKER 09 :
And how do you spell that?
SPEAKER 06 :
C-A-B-O-U-R-G. Okay. They get to a road after they get past the German lines. And the lieutenant that takes over, the captain is shot in the assault. The company commander is shot in the leg. ends up losing his leg, and, of course, he has to turn over his command. And the lieutenant that took command decided that he was going to send a patrol down to Legrand to Mew, and he sent out a patrol to Kaborg to kind of scout it out before they attack them. They knew they were both held by the Germans. And so these three guys go down to Kaborg, and they get captured. Ha! And they put them in a house with about half a dozen German soldiers during the night of the 6th and early morning of the 7th. And one of the guys speaks German. And he starts telling the Germans that the 1st Division… which is the Germans know who the 1st Division is. I mean, they were infamous to them because they had been in Africa, they had been in Italy, and so they were a legend. And he said that soldiers of the 1st Division were going to come down and kill them all. They don’t take prisoners and stuff like this. Basically, he talked these guys… Into surrendering. And not only the guys in the house, but the entire garrison of this village surrenders to three guys who are coming up down the road the morning of the 7th with 50 or 60 German soldiers being guarded by three guys with an M1 rifle, which has eight bullets in it. But the Germans, they scared them so badly that they surrendered.
SPEAKER 09 :
What a story.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And those aren’t even the guys in the 12. They were just an aside story. These are not one of the 12. No, no. They’re something else. So I could say 12 is kind of a number, but there’s a lot of bravery in this whole thing. But that’s the first draw. The other draw, the irony is most people probably saw Saving Private Ryan. And Saving Private Ryan begins with a battle of men attacking across a beach, which is presumed to be Omaha. And actually was. And what it turns out to be that that depiction is fairly accurate in terms of what actually happened to the Charlie Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Now, that’s not so clear from watching the movie that these guys are actually rangers. They were given a secondary assignment. Their job was not Omaha Beach. In fact, they didn’t even land on Omaha Beach. They landed on the beach to the west. And their job was to get up the cliffs. Point to Hawk, right? Well, no, these are cliffs that are adjacent to Omaha. Okay. On each end of Omaha Beach are cliffs. Got it, okay. And then between is this steep slope. But these guys actually had to ascend cliffs. Now, you don’t see that in the movie. You see them ascending a slope. But that’s okay. I mean, it’s still fairly accurate. They get up on the cliff. And their job is to go take out this German observation post slash artillery battery called Pointe de la Perse. Okay. Excuse my French.
SPEAKER 09 :
You’re doing well.
SPEAKER 06 :
But anyway, they get up on top, and this captain, his name is Gorenson. Is this one of our guys? This is one of the guys. Okay. And he is portrayed in the movie by Tom Hanks.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
But in the movie, he’s called Captain Miller. Okay. But anyway, Gorenson decides that he has to alter his plans. And he takes out, he attacks from the rear the German positions that are holding the Vierville draw and takes them out with basically 50 guys. going up against, well, the next day they find 69 dead Germans. Goodness. Wow. And so they’re outgunned, and they just figure out how to do it. They’re just good soldiers. They’re rangers. And the Rangers were highly trained. The Rangers had been in the U.S. military from day one. I mean, you go back to Merrill’s Marauders. Well, that’s in World War II. But there were Rangers in the French-Indian War. That’s where the name comes from, actually, because they ranged into the woods going after the enemy. And so, you know, there are units that were in the Revolutionary War. what was it the great and then there was certainly in the civil war there were several different kind they call asymmetric unit for fighting small unit fighting okay okay which actually was derived from the american indian
SPEAKER 09 :
This is so interesting. Dennis Bush, we’re up for a break here. Before we do that, I want to mention the official Marine Memorial is located right here in Colorado in Golden at 6th and Colfax. It was dedicated in 1977, and it is time for a facelift. And the USMC Memorial Foundation is working diligently to to raise the funds to make that happen. And a great way that you can honor our military, to say thank you to those people who have put their lives on the line or have given their lives for our freedom, is to support the USMC Memorial Foundation. And you can do that by going to usmcmemorialfoundation.org. So we’re going to be right back with this fascinating story. Dennis Bush, these books are just amazing. And the book is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. So we’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
All Kim’s sponsors are in inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 07 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories, and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier, and thank you for listening.
SPEAKER 03 :
that I love thee.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. I am just thrilled to have in studio with me Dennis Bush. He is talking about his book that was just released the week of Independence Day week. And it is titled The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. You said there was so much heroism that day, but there are 12 key guys there. that you attribute to really helping win the battle. So we’ve talked about these draws, and we were talking about Captain Goranson and what he did. So where do we want to go from here down to this?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, the rest of the book deals with the half of the beach that was assigned to the 1st Division. Okay. Okay, and I don’t know if we talked on air, but we talk about Sergeant Strogeny. I think you’d mentioned him, yes? Yeah, Strogini is a tech sergeant who comes ashore. He’s already fairly highly decorated, both from Africa and Sicily. But he finds himself within the first hour in command of a company because everybody else is dead. He’s company commander, several of the senior lieutenants. He’s a sergeant, and he’s now a company commander himself. And his men are kind of cowering. They’re hiding in a trench, and he tries to get them fired up and go. And he sees that there were tanks on the beach as well. A lot of people don’t know about that, but we brought tanks in. And that’s a whole story unto itself of how we got tanks onto the beach. But he watches this German 88, which is their primary close artillery piece. It was actually an anti-aircraft gun that they found was very effective anti-personnel and anti-tank. So they take out three tanks.
SPEAKER 09 :
So he’s watching this. They’re taking out three American tanks.
SPEAKER 06 :
And he’s angry, obviously, from watching this. So he yells out for a bazooka team, and nobody raises their hand. So he goes back down to the beach and scrounges around, and he finds a guy who has been attended to somewhat, but is obviously seriously wounded, and he’s got a bazooka. And so he pulls it away very gently, whispers to the guy, I need to borrow your bazooka. And the guy, of course, is unconscious. But anyway, he gets the bazooka, and then he gets three rounds. And he takes him back to his position. Now, a bazooka is a two-man weapon. You have a loader and a shooter. And the weapon has to be held level, or the rocket will fall out the front or the back. So you have to hold the weapon level, and it’s kind of tricky to load and do all that. But he does, and he fires three shots, and he doesn’t get his target. He hits it, but he doesn’t destroy it. So he yells out, I need more rockets. And, of course, nobody’s paying attention. They’re all kind of cowering. And so he goes back down to the beach. And, of course, all this is being under fire. And he finds five more rockets, brings them back, and he fires five more into this and takes out this 88. Well, then he’s starting to try to get these other guys engaged. And he’s firing now. He’s out of rockets, so he’s using his M1. And he takes a round. It hits him in the head, blows a hole through his helmet. And somehow, this almost defies physics, the bullet tracks around the helmet and exits out the back. And if you look at where the two holes are, his brain was in the middle of that. And somehow this bullet missed him. And he takes his helmet off. And, of course, this kind of galvanizes all the guys around him because he shows them to him. And they said, you know, you couldn’t have had the helmet on. But he shows them where there’s a red trace around his head. And this gets the guys engaged. And so then they go on to attack up this draw line. OK, which is the Colville draw. That’s another major. That’s one of these other 12 guys. There is another guy by the name of he’s a lieutenant. Now, is this another one of the 12? Yeah. OK. And his name is he’s Lieutenant Spalding. And he’s from George Company of the one of the 16th Infantry Company. And most of George Company lands right in front of the Colville draw. Well, if you look at the German positions, they’re heavily defended. And so a lot of George Company gets annihilated. But for some reason, what’s called a boat section, which is basically a load of an LCVP boat of troops, lands to the west of there where the enemy defenses are lighter. And he’s able to get across the beach. And he’s got this sergeant. He’s kind of new. He’s a green lieutenant. And the advice my dad told me when I went off to join the military is, get in with your sergeants. They’ll keep you out of trouble. And I think that’s an axiom that goes into all military. And he had this sergeant, a guy by the name of Strzysiek, another Polish-American. And Strzysiek was kind of infamous. And how do you spell his name? S-T-R-E-C-E. S-T-R-E-C-Z-Y-K. Got it. You know these poems. Yeah, I know. But Stresik is kind of like the soldier’s soldier. And he’s helping his lieutenant. Because the lieutenant’s formally in command, but everybody really knows it’s the sergeant. And even the lieutenant does. He leans on this guy. And so Stresik goes and starts scouting out the front. He said, we can’t attack forward because there’s a minefield. But he finds this path. And if you’ve ever been to Omaha, there is a place. They mark this path that he comes up. And they bring this boat section, which was pretty much intact. They’ve only lost a few men. And they go to the top of the hill, and then they decide that they’re going to attack one of these German strong points from the rear. And they do, and they take it out. While he’s doing this, just as he’s getting ready to go off on that, another unit, which is Captain Dawson’s, unit which is a company they ascend basically the same path and they’re intact and his assignment is to take out coleville which is a village uh on on the coast but inland a bit and so he tells strisic he said i’m going to go or uh He said, I’m going to go take out Colville. You’re welcome to help me. But Spalding says, well, I want to take out these German positions first, and then I’ll join you. How old are these guys? They can’t be that old, can they? Well, they’re probably 18. Some of them are probably underage, but most of the sergeants are probably 20 to 24, I would guess. Captain, probably 22, 23, you know, your age. Okay. Young and therefore immortal. Right. They don’t they don’t think they’re going to die. But anyway, he gets into this huge battle in Colville and it takes up a lot of the first book. And what happened was he he was told that there were something like 40 Germans in this village. Well, there turns out to be over 200 Germans. And during the battle, the Germans decide to counterattack. And they center their counterattack on Colville. So they’re sending in companies to take, you know, and of course the Americans are totally unaware of all this. And they end up holding them off, he and his men. And then Spalding joins him after he takes out this other German position. He comes up and goes on to his flank. And so they hold out for the night, laying in fields, after they had stopped a major German counterattack, the only significant one on the whole Omaha Beach. The Germans were notorious for counterattacking. Tell me counterattacking. I should know this after all these interviews, but what is that? You get hit and you get pushed back. And so you reform, and you go back, and you charge back. Okay, got it. Basically, they’ve been attacked, and now they’re going to counter that attack. And the Germans were good military units. I mean, they were tough guys. But anyway, those are the major… Elements of the first book take place there, and what I’ve just described. And it’s a fairly long book, so you read about it in these three or four breaches, along with several other things that we talk about, like why was this so bloody? Why was it so bloody? Poor planning, which sounds ridiculous because they had spent literally hundreds of thousands of hours trying to plan, planning for this operation. But the thing was, much of the attack was based on the assumption that the Air Corps and the Navy were going to take out the strong German fortifications. And for reasons, fairly a lot of reasons, they failed. And so when the guys came ashore, they were basically facing the same German forces from three days before. There was virtually none of the German defenses had been destroyed by either the Navy and the Air Corps.
SPEAKER 09 :
It wasn’t because they hadn’t tried, but…
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, the Navy only was, you know, they shelled Tarawa with 12 battleships for like seven days. And when they hit the beach, the Japanese were still pretty much entrenched. And same with Iwo Jima, right? Yeah. You have to understand that they’ve got to see this stuff to hit it. You know, how do you fire a gun from a ship like a destroyer or even a battleship? Right. How do you know where you’re shooting? Good point. You’ve got to almost have spotters. And spotters in radio contact with the gun unit, telling them to correct up 50, left 50, right 50. And so they are actually hitting the targets. So the Navy was shooting blind.
SPEAKER 09 :
So question, Dennis, and I should, I’ve never asked this question, because in 2024 America, we can pick up a phone and communicate. But during World War II, didn’t they have to put wires out?
SPEAKER 06 :
What was that? Radios were, most people probably know what I’m talking about, were used vacuum tubes. That was before – transistors were not invented until 1948. Okay. So we had – instead, all electronics used tubes, glass tubes, that performed the same function. And the radios were notoriously – They, I mean, number one, if they got wet, you had to take them apart and dry it out in the sun. And they came ashore, and this was a major failure, was there was terrible communication between the ships and the shore. Yeah, that’s what I was wondering. How did they communicate? They didn’t. I mean, basically, COTA decides to go in. That’s how he got involved. General COTA. Yeah. He just said, I’m going in. And basically violated the directives that he wasn’t supposed to go in until two hours. He went in after one hour. Because he was watching what was happening? But what they did was they sent boats in with guys with binoculars. And they had radio contact with the ships, but all they could see was what was on the front end of the beach. Right, they didn’t know what was happening. They couldn’t see what was going on behind. So the guys back in the boats… Bradley and the commanders back there were really in the dark. They used the term the fog of war, but the communications was just terrible. We didn’t have the electronics. What you’re talking about are field telephones, and that was the most prominent way to do it. But you had to have guys drag wire.
SPEAKER 09 :
Exactly. I actually have a friend that that’s what her father would do. Yeah. It hadn’t registered with me that that’s how they had to communicate. And if those wires got cut, they had to go back out and repair them.
SPEAKER 06 :
And the Germans had cut them, and then they had to redo them. I would venture to guess you could still walk around Europe and still find those wires.
SPEAKER 09 :
I’m sure that you can. Dennis, this is just so fascinating. We have one more segment after this. And a sponsor that I greatly appreciate for America’s Veterans Stories is Hooters Restaurants. They have locations in Loveland, Westminster, and in Aurora on Parker Road. And great specials Monday through Friday for lunch and for happy hour. Great place to get together with your friends to watch the sporting events and just have some great food. In particular, their fish and chips and their nachos are delicious. I hear that their fish tacos are quite good as well. So again, thank you to Hooters Restaurants for their sponsorship of the show. But we’re going to be right back with Dennis Bush.
SPEAKER 04 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you so much for listening to America’s Veterans Stories. We are rebroadcasting some of the shows that we have recorded in the past because we have these amazing guests and these amazing stories and we need to hear them. And so we thought that it would be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear our history and know our history because it is so important. So again, this is something that was recorded earlier and thank you for listening.
SPEAKER 03 :
From the mountains to the prairies.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. In studio with me is Dennis Bush. We’re talking about his book, The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. It sounds like it’s so well-researched. You said there were 12 veterans. men that really made a difference that day. We’ve talked about this first, these first few draws, but during the break you said there was one more that we should talk about.
SPEAKER 06 :
These were, they’re leading small units, companies and what’s called boat sections. A boat section is just how many guys they can stuff in one of those landing craft. And so they organized around that Which is another story. They built the boats. The Army was in platoons. And once you break down a company, it’s in platoons. And the number of men in a platoon is three more than would fit on a landing craft. So they had to basically reorganize the units to center them and how many guys they could get on a boat as opposed to what a platoon was. And so they had three extra guys. They were moving those guys around. Yeah, they were on some other boat, right? But they stayed in boat sections until they got through the first couple of days, and then they reorganized around the platoon structure. Okay. But anyway, we’re talking about the eastern side of the beach, which is under the responsibility of the 1st Infantry Division, and specifically the 16th Infantry Regiment. Now, the commander of the 16th Infantry Regiment is Colonel Taylor. And he comes ashore about two hours after H-Hour. And he is astounded. Now, H-Hour is what?
SPEAKER 1 :
630.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. H-Hour means the time of attack. Got it. Both D-Day and H-Hour are misunderstood what they really mean. But anyway. He comes ashore, and he doesn’t see the progress that these guys have made behind the lines, getting up onto the Normandy Plateau. All he sees is the total chaos on the beach, and it is. Total pandemonium, and blood everywhere, and body parts everywhere, and men cowering and trying to find cover everywhere. And he is so angry. that his own men would not… So he basically walks up and down the beach. epithets and challenging their manhood and everything else and in the most vile language you can think of trying to get these guys back into the fight and over a span of about an hour he does a lot of them not all of them but a lot of them and they become then the second wave that gets up onto the plateaus but he was instrumental in and basically reorganize a very disorganized bunch of men because the shock of what they hit when they hit the beaches demoralized a lot of them. And so he has to be attributed to a lot of the success because he risked his own life to get these guys back into the fight. Well, that’s really what leadership is, though, right? Yeah, exactly. And when you find out, I mean, leadership in the heat of battle is probably the toughest of all because you have to, you know, he has to expose himself. And he’s walking along the beach erect. He’s not crawling. He’s not, you know, getting behind obstacles. He’s just walking up and down the beach yelling at his men, trying to get them, you know, back into the battle. And he does to a great extent. And so you have to attribute his courage and bravery in this in this as well. So I talk about him. And like I said, I have to rate all my books are because of the language, because I like I use the language of soldiers and the the the. The violence, I think, is the other reason I’d rate it R. So I would warn people that are going to read it, be prepared to read a war story. And I don’t want to offend people, but if you want to understand this stuff, you’ve got to understand it. This is what it really was. Exactly.
SPEAKER 09 :
I think that’s important. Dennis, one of the things when I was in Normandy, I realized I really do want to go back. People say, Kim, you need to go back. And I will because I didn’t understand it like I do now after all of these interviews. But one of the things that I’ve heard from many different interviews is the ingenuity of And you’ve mentioned this sergeant that all of the commanders had been killed. And so now he is in charge of the company. And these men stepped forward. And it’s something somewhat unique, I think, about the American soldier.
SPEAKER 06 :
Mm-hmm. Well, Goranson, if you think back now when he decides to go deviate from his orders to take out a German position is in effect breaking, you know, violating his orders. No, he never gets called on it. But the fact is most armies, the German army would not have done that. Right. They followed orders. I mean, that was one thing about the Germans, that if they were given an order, that’s what they did. If he was a German captain, he would have not deviated. He would have gone on with his original mission. And so that’s one of the things that I think makes the American military unique, is that we’re not automatons. We’re soldiers. And it’s extremely illustrated on Normandy as to why that is. When I say you think of the heroes that I’m talking about, two of them are sergeants, two of them are lieutenants. That’s the low end of the organizational structure. You think of generals and all that, but these guys are young and full of vinegar and tough. I mean, they grew up in the Depression, so they were hardened. Most of them have led tough lives. Very few of them came from money or privilege. They came from regular people, and that’s amazing to me. The farms and the cities.
SPEAKER 09 :
And during the break, you had mentioned this, and that is that— These men, these American soldiers, World War I, World War II, you said the Cold War, we’ve really, really saved Europe really three times and haven’t really been thanked for that, right? That’s exactly right. Yeah. And now they got us in another mess. I know. I know. I know. And I think we really have to think about it before we… Put our blood and treasure on the line. But World War II, Omaha Beach, and there were other landings as well. Omaha is so famous. But we’ve got about a minute left. How do you want to button this up? And then we’ll do another interview when you release each of your next books.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, my intent in writing these is to try to inspire patriotism. I see a waning in the patriotism of this country. Some people don’t think we’re exceptional. And we are. And it’s because of the people, not because of the government, not because of anything. It’s because of the people that make up this country. And yet these guys that I’m talking about are just average people. Most of them came from poverty. I mean, they were they they’re coming out of the Depression. And so they’re. They didn’t have it easy, and some of them are farm boys and some of them are city boys, but it doesn’t matter. They came from tough bringing, and what they did was exceptional.
SPEAKER 09 :
It was so exceptional, and I thank you for telling these stories. So I can’t wait to get your book out. when that’s published. And again, the book is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. Dennis Bush.
SPEAKER 06 :
They’ll be able to get that on Amazon.
SPEAKER 09 :
On Amazon. Okay, good to know. And Dennis Bush, thank you. So we’ll do an interview as you release each of these books, and I greatly appreciate it. Sure. My friends, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and these books are going to share many of their stories. So my friends, God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
SPEAKER 02 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
