D-Day Plus 50 Years: O.C. Vets Look Back : War: Valor, death and drama of Normandy invasion are recalled by those who took part.

“We were in a (landing craft) when my troop got hit about 250 yards offshore by a floating mine. I had just gotten into a half-track when my boat blew up. I remember starting the half-track up, getting ready to go ashore and, before you can say, ‘Scat,’ the damn thing went down in 25 feet of water. I grabbed a wooden C-ration box and paddled my way to shore. I barely had enough time to get out. Of 32 men on board, only three or four--at the most--got ashore.”

--Edward M. England, San Clemente

Fifty years ago, Edward M. England was a young infantryman who survived the carnage of the D-day invasion on June 6, 1944. The bloody landing of Allied troops on heavily defended Normandy beaches was one of the epic military feats of all time, a decisive blow to liberate Europe from fascism and hasten the end of World War II.

The United States marched off to war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. By the time the enemy alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan surrendered four years later, 16.5 million Americans had taken part in the fighting. More than 1 million became casualties, including 292,131 dead. Many died in the fight to free Europe--an effort that began with the incredibly risky assault on D-day.

For England, now 74, and other aging D-day veterans in Orange County, the fear, the sacrifice, the love for lost comrades and the ultimate triumph of the invasion are forever burned into memory.

Serving with the famed 1st Infantry Division, known as the Big Red One, England was among 133,000 troops, carried by an armada of 5,000 ships, that stormed the deadly beaches while nearly 20,000 paratroopers landed behind the German lines.

At the end of the first 24 hours, the Allies--Americans, British and French--had established a beachhead, but at the cost of 10,000 killed or wounded, two-thirds of them American.

To reach the enemy, they had crossed the English Channel, 20 miles from southwestern Britain to northern France, on a flotilla that included everything from fast transports to rusty freighters and tired old tankers.

Action was everywhere. While Edward England struggled to reach the shore, bomber navigator Sargent Ableman of Fountain Valley saw enough boats below to virtually walk across the channel. And as paratrooper Frank Dennison of San Clemente had trouble controlling the sweats, Tustin resident Robert Malcolm Phillips’ dream of becoming a war hero was ending when he was taken prisoner. What follows are the D-day recollections of these and other Orange County veterans.

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In the turbulent crossing under dense, gray sky, troops were sick and vomiting as they sat, tightly wedged in small landing vessels packed with ammunition, tanks, explosives and gasoline. As they neared the enemy-held coast, England remembers, soldiers rechecked their gear, sang and prayed.

The landing craft plowed ahead through exploding German mines. Boats went down and men drowned. Still, the Americans kept coming, heading for beaches code named Omaha and Utah while British and Canadian allies steered for beaches known as Juno, Sword and Gold. There was intense artillery fire from concrete gun emplacements. Adding to the deafening noise were the U.S. warplanes that bombed German positions, hoping to soften up the defenses for the oncoming and terribly exposed infantrymen.

When England’s landing craft hit the mine and he struggled to reach the shore, his troubles were only beginning. The Nazis raked the Allies with artillery fire at the same time wayward bombs from U.S. warplanes landed near the advancing infantry.

“We were getting about 30 to 40 shells an hour,” England said. “A couple of shells killed two men in front of me. I remember as we advanced that most of the beaches were loaded with mines. You could see them, they were round like a plate and colored gray.”

“I was trackless and my antitank gun was gone,” he said. “We picked up one from another outfit three hours later from the 79th Division. We took anything we could to fight.”

Infantryman William C. Roberts, 70, of Anaheim, who landed a half-track on Omaha beach, recalls the engineers blowing up mines and beach obstacles sewn by the German defenders. These kept them from moving off the beach.

“It’s hard to describe. You smell the artillery powder. There were guys lying around all over and no way to evacuate them. The first night, it was pretty scary. Fortunately, no German airplanes were coming over, but we had to be sure we had our passwords ready. We used ‘April,’ then you waited for ‘Fool.’ And, Brooklyn . . . Dodgers.”

The incredibly loud shelling is something that Army Signal Corps Sgt. Gustave (Joe) Miltz of Los Alamitos, for all his 72 years, will never forget.

“The sound was deafening,” Miltz said. “The Germans had started sending off their big 88s, huge artillery shells that began being lobbed at us. I looked up, and in the air, there were hundreds of planes. I was worried about friendly fire, which now is a familiar phrase. It was scary. I was hopped up. The adrenaline was flowing. You get caught up in the whole gosh-darned thing, with the time, the situation. Your mind is racing. Then they give the order and you GO!”

The shells didn’t make just any sound. They made distinctive sounds.

“After a while, we knew what kind of artillery was being fired,” said Tony Lujan, 69, of Santa Ana. “You would hear American tanks, which only had 75-millimeter cannons, and they would ‘Bang!’ Then the shell would travel through the air going ‘Wooooooo.’ But the German 88s had such a high muzzle velocity they would go, ‘Phomp!’ Then immediately go, ‘Bang!’ It hits right there, right now.”

England said exploding shells from German 88s blew holes in the sand. For all the danger from artillery, some troops were more afraid they would be hit by off-target American bombs.

“It wasn’t too bad until we got close to shore,” England said. “Our biggest problem was our own damn planes dropping (bombs) on the beach.”

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Overhead, Sargent J. Ableman of Fountain Valley, an Army Air Force navigator, was inside a B-17 bomber, nicknamed “Homesick Angel,” that had just banked and dipped low over the channel. He looked out a window.

“You could see 15-inch-gun shells from our battleships flying through the air!” Ableman recalled. “They go through the air like a corkscrew and we saw them spinning by headed for the beach in a big arch.”

Ableman was a member of the 92nd Bomber Group, which left England before 6 a.m. on June 6. The mission was to bomb the Germans by daylight in front of advancing troops.

“There were so many planes and boats around that you didn’t know what was going on,” Ableman said. “We knew there was an invasion. But I was busy, that’s why you never get afraid because you’re too busy. You don’t have time to get scared.”

“We went toward the northeast of Normandy, then went in, bombed, made a circle, and came home. It took less than 30 minutes to cross the channel. The whole operation didn’t take more than an hour. We reloaded in England and made a second run.”

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Ableman’s job was planned by another D-day veteran from Orange County, former Army Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Headrick, 77, of Irvine. He was a special weapons and tactics expert who worked with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander.

Headrick said he and other tactics officers had talked with Eisenhower about bombing ahead of the troop ships.

“I told him we could bomb several hundred yards ahead of the troops,” Headrick remembers. “But I returned to Italy the day before the invasion. We didn’t know Eisenhower was planning for D-day (on June 6) because we weren’t told. He did not like any leaks.”

Headrick said the poor weather had fooled the Germans about the airborne strikes.

“Because of the weather, (bomber pilots) flew in on instruments, then formed up above the clouds. There was very little resistance. I don’t think they expected us to come over on a bad weather day. I think the Germans thought we wanted a clear day for visual bombing.”

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While England and other infantrymen were digging in for dear life on the beaches, paratrooper Frank Dennison, 70, of San Clemente had already landed behind enemy lines. His troubles that day began in the airplane.

“You feel cold one second and the next you’re sweating. You pray and you quiet down and then it starts all over again,” said Dennison, who served with the 101st Airborne Division, a legendary unit.

As they sat in their plane, “a medic we had opened a can of alcohol and he had a can of grapefruit juice and we sat and passed that around. We were really happy for a while there. Then it got very quiet. We were told to hook up and I stood up and started walking toward the door.

“I remember when I got out of that plane, it looked almost beautiful with what was being shot up in the air. There was ack ack everywhere. And tracer bullets were arching up at us like some modern-day laser show.”

Dennison quickly found that his worst enemy was his gear. It weighed 150 pounds and included a gas mask, hand grenades, Mae West flotation vest, heavy demolition explosives, K rations, reserve chute, his helmet, several big knives and his M-1 rifle.

He hit the ground so hard, his legs went numb and he couldn’t walk for several days, although no bones were broken. “I crawled on my hands and knees in hedgerow country. Some guy had to help me by rolling me out of my chute because of all the gear I had.”

Hedgerow country. The distinctive borders of France’s farms are mounds of dirt piled five to six feet high, and on top of that, trees and hedges. From the air, farmland looked like postage stamps. From the ground, hedgerows could hide whole companies of men and equipment from the foe.

“We heard a vehicle coming down a road. We knew it wasn’t ours and we opened up on it and saw later we got ourselves some (German) medics in an ambulance.

“The same night we heard those big boots and saw 10 Germans. We shot again. We didn’t know what we hit, but the next morning we saw a bunch of Jerrys laying on the ground.”

Two weeks later, Dennison had recovered and enjoyed his first bath since leaving England.

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Pilot Ben O. Ward, 75, of Mission Viejo released his big glider from its tow aircraft and prepared to set down with a load of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers early on D-day, about two miles from the beach.

But he was coming in too hot. His landing gear was extended, flaps were down. The five-acre field he had chosen was 500 feet below and coming up frighteningly fast.

“We were traveling about 90 miles an hour in a small field,” Ward said. “It was rolling terrain and then trees and hedgerows. If it was longer, I could have stopped easier.”

But he didn’t.

“We ripped through the hedgerows at the end of the field, probably doing about 70 miles an hour. At the last instant, we went between two trees and tore off the wings. I had no way of stopping and I was still going too fast. A tree sliced right through the fuselage, cut it right through, killing a paratrooper.”

“Fortunately, all but one survived. My co-pilot and I were thrown out the nose. First thing I knew, I was out on the ground with my seat belt still hooked to the seat.”

He joined up with an infantry outfit and slowly worked his way back to the beach.

Glider accidents were common in the chaos, noise and frightening distractions of combat.

“It was dark, but illuminated by tracer bullets coming in the air,” said another glider pilot, James P. Townsend, 74, Huntington Beach. “Everything was erupting on the ground. Everything the Germans had went by. I remember the glider ahead of us smashed into a stone wall and ground back the first 10 feet of the glider, killing both pilots.”

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Troops had secured the beaches, and the paratroopers had all landed, when, five days after the invasion, nurse Virginia Russell Reavis of Villa Park was sent into France to pick up wounded men and return them to England.

Aircraft used for the pickup, like the C-47 in which she flew, carried no Red Cross insignia and were fired on by German fighters.

“We were doing medical evacs of casualties,” Reavis said. “We would carry ammunition, gasoline and all kinds of equipment on board from England to Normandy, land, unload, and then drop down these supports inside the plane for litters and the soldiers would be brought inside.”

Reavis, now 73, vividly recalls tending a wounded German soldier. “I remember looking at his record and he had been injected with morphine. Then he burst out speaking German. An American soldier in the next litter tried to get up--you have to understand that it had been only a short time earlier that he was in battle--and wanted to kill him. I couldn’t keep him down and I had to call another nurse to help me calm him down.”

Enemy fighters weren’t the only danger.

Twice her crew had brushes with death--both times in England. Carrying a planeload of gasoline cans destined for Gen. George Patton’s tanks, Reavis’ plane crashed on takeoff after ice settled on the wings. She survived, but a crew chief died.

Then, while Reavis and her crew were on the Tarmac, an airplane crashed while landing, careened across the runway like an out-of-control bowling ball, blew up, and smashed into a line of parked airplanes.

“Not too many women were in Normandy or seen at the bases,” Reavis said. “I remember that after the second crash, a ground officer saw us and said, ‘What the hell are these women doing here!’ Our crew chief said, ‘They were ordered here, they’re nurses.’ And the officer told him, ‘Well, get them out of here.”’

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Army Sgt. Walter D. Ehlers said his 12-man reconnaissance squad’s mission was simple: Go into the French town of Treviers several miles inland and monitor German troop movement.

Three days after the invasion, on June 9, 1944, Ehlers, 73, who lives in Buena Park, was a war hero.

At 10 a.m. that day, Ehlers and his men were racing across an open field when rifle and machine gun shots rang out. Ehlers and his men crouched and dashed for a hedgerow.

When he got there, he encountered a German patrol. Ehlers, a combat veteran of campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, killed four enemy soldiers. He ordered his men to fix bayonets.

“I was ahead of my squad when I came upon a machine gun nest and knocked it out,” he said.

Ehlers kept going. “I came upon a mortar section with five or six people. That’s where my bayonet came in handy. They looked horrified and started running.”

Then Ehlers single-handedly knocked out another machine gun nest, killing or driving off the Germans. Ehlers and another man found themselves surrounded. The two Americans stood almost back to back on a dirt mound and fired in semicircles, providing cover for the retreating squad.

Ehlers spotted a machine gun in a nearby hedgerow and knocked it out. But as he and the other squad member turned to withdraw, a bullet hit Ehlers in the back.

As the impact swung him around, he spotted the sniper who shot him. He fired and hit the German. Despite his wound, Ehlers picked up another wounded soldier and carried him to safety.

His citation for the Medal of Honor reads: “Staff Sgt. Ehlers repeatedly led his men against heavily defended enemy strongpoints, exposing himself to deadly hostile fire whenever the situation required leadership. Ehlers knocked out numerous strongpoints, including a machine gun nest, then carried a wounded member of his squad to safety, even though he had been wounded.”

Ehlers won his nation’s highest honor for valor, but he lost his older brother, Roland, who was killed while storming the beach with his Army unit.

Ehlers will participate in French celebrations of D-day’s 50th anniversary as a guest of President Clinton.

The invasion, Ehlers said, was so dangerous he put his mind and body on automatic pilot. He knew men were dying around him, but to stop and think about catastrophe would have imperiled him and his squad.

“When we landed, my commanding officer’s (landing craft) got hit and our sister company’s boat was hit by mines and artillery. . . . I remember I managed to get my whole squad up into the hedgerows without injury. I remember I had tunnel vision on what I was doing.” It kept him alive, he said.

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While Ehlers led his squad to safety at Omaha Beach, paratrooper Robert Malcolm Phillips, 71, of Tustin parachuted into France hoping to return home a hero. But he was captured by a German patrol, became a POW and was part of a labor crew until the war ended in Europe 11 months later.

On the afternoon of June 7, Phillips was point man for a ragtag mortar squad. Antiaircraft barrages the night before had forced their pilot to drop them 15 miles from the intended landing zone.

In the confusion that followed, the squad joined other paratroopers and searched for their main units.

While they were walking through a small French village, Germans opened fire on them. Phillips stopped to help a wounded GI and then heard his lieutenant say, “Put down your arms!”

“I wasn’t aware that Germans had surrounded us by that time,” Phillips said.

From conquering invader to POW, within 12 hours. He was interrogated, then marched to a northern French town and put on a boxcar wedged in so tight that prisoners could only sit with their knees pressed to their chests.

“We were hardly ever fed and the Germans kept moving us from town to town into Germany,” Phillips said.

Water was rationed. He was taken to eastern Germany and later joined about 40 other American POWs as prison laborers. They manufactured blackout paper to hang over windows. They worked 12 hours a day, 5 1/2 days a week, he said.

“We would eat things like potato peel soup. Not enough to really nourish you. Over the months, I lost nearly 60 pounds and weighed about 90 pounds. We all lost weight and were weakened by hunger. I think the Germans wanted it that way so they could handle us easily.”

On May 8, 1945, they woke up in the German countryside without German guards, Phillips said. Several days later they were liberated by American soldiers.

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At the end of D-day, all five targeted landing beaches had been secured by the Allies. After staging a fierce resistance, the Germans withdrew inland. In the days ahead, tens of thousands of Allied troops and massive amounts equipment and materiel poured ashore as the first troops to land pushed forward and captured the much-needed port of Cherbourg.

The U.S. 3rd Army blasted through a gap near St. Lo in northern France and headed east toward Paris, which was liberated on Aug. 25. Coming from the other direction, the Soviet Army advanced through Romania and Bulgaria. The Allies mounted a final assault on Germany in early 1945. On May 8, 1945--11 months after D-day, Germany surrendered and victory was declared in Europe. Later that year, Japan was defeated and the war was over.