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One of the outstanding rememberances I have of the "D" day action,
was the foul up of Lt. Matthew Gregory, our platoon leader. Lt. Gregory
was a late commer in our outfit and the fellows never did take him seriously
or consider him one of the regulars. During our training at the Bronton
Assault Training Center in England he was assigned to our platoon as the
result of the training injury of one of our officers.
Lt. Gregory conducted himself very well during the early hours of
the action on the beach and up the bluffs into Vierville, it was shortly
after we left Vierville that the Lt. fouled up. Our Battalion mission was
to go down the coastal highway and attack Pointe Du Hoe, this we were about
to do. However shortly out of Vierville we were halted by machine gun fire,
and soon had two men killed trying to get the gun. A messenger from Capt.
Whittington told Lt. Gregory to cut off to the flank and get the gun from
the rear. I was platoon messenger and was sent to the rear of the platoon
column to tell the platoon Sgt., Sgt. Warich, of our intended move. When
I reached the rear of the column I found that Warich was missing and assumed
he had been hit in Vierville, so I gave the information to 2nd section
leader Sgt. Mc Ilwain.
We turned off the road and started inland. After crossing the third
line of hedgerows most of the boys felt that Gregory had gone off his rocker,
one guy suggested that Gregory must have thought that the Germans were
firing that gun from Paris. After going about another quarter mile inland
some of the boys decided to talk to Gregory to find out what he was doing,
so we paused in an orchard. It was while we were halted in the orchard that
an artillery barrage hit us, mostly tree bursts, Elmo Banning was killed and
Sgt. Mc Ilwain got a splintered forearm. Next to the orchard was an unimproved
road which we started to explore, when we saw a G I looking out from a
hedgerow extending east from the road. He asked who we were and who was in
charge, then told us that he was part of the group that had established