Memory Factory

For all the World War II equipment set up Friday in the yard of Jim and Diane Ellis’ east Ventura home, it could have been a bivouac for Patton’s Third Army.

Which was exactly the idea. Diane Ellis’ father, 79-year-old Verl Carpenter of Ventura, is one of seven remaining veterans of a 200-man company that waded ashore on Omaha Beach on July 5, 1944, nearly one month after the D-Day landing on the Normandy beaches.

The men--who served in Company A of the 134th Infantry Regiment of the First Army--travel yearly from their homes around the country to surviving members’ homes to catch up on grandchildren, take inventory of their ever-increasing ailments and--especially--to reminisce.

For this year’s reunion, friends turned the Ellises’ yard into a memory factory--tents, cots, tables of deactivated rifles and grenade launchers, a Jeep and even an amphibious “duck” landing craft. After 56 years, the equipment was a little weathered, but still exactly what the veterans would have known in their Army days.

“I couldn’t believe what was going on--it was like we were liberating Paris again,” said 76-year-old Bob Brunolli of Madera, in Northern California, looking over the scene with tears. “That big duck that looked like a two-ton truck and that Jeep and all these people--amazing.”

The people were friends of the Ellises, including Mike Held, who owns Santa Paula-based Rhino Props & Studio Vehicles. His company helped outfit “Saving Private Ryan” and other war movies.

Inside the Ellis house, there was more. As Glenn Miller music filled the air, the men gazed at field hospital equipment, pinup girl posters, camouflage nets, rifles, helmets, tough canvas leggings.

“Those leggings were the best darn thing,” said 77-year-old George Daugherty, who came to the reunion from San Antonio. “You could hook them together by the loops and they really did the job.”

The vets were clearly delighted with the makeshift playground, smelling the tent’s canvas, trying on helmets, climbing slowly into the Jeep with the help of canes and grandchildren, pretending to take it for a spin.

Wives, children, neighbors and even officers from the Ventura Police Department--who came to honor the soldiers with certificates of appreciation--all looked on, video equipment whirring and cameras clicking.

Picking up old rifles, turning them over in their hands, it was clear the soldiers still felt close to the battlefields of France. All were wounded in action, one was captured by the Germans.

All lost many friends.

In 1944, after three days on Omaha Beach--with only 35 of their original 200 left--the company headed inland to meet with Gen. George Patton’s Third Army and march across France.

Eighty-four-year-old Frank Porter, who traveled to the reunion from Stanfield, Ore., was wounded in the buttocks--shot through his canteen--on his first day of combat but later returned to Company A. He was wounded again, this time in the neck.

Daugherty survived three months of fighting before a piece of shrapnel pierced his helmet and tore into his skull. Brunolli was hit in the leg on Aug. 8, 1944, the same day his unit was surrounded by Germans. He spent nine months in a prisoner of war camp.

But all the veterans say they are the lucky ones. They are still around, nearly 60 years later, to laugh together once a year, sip punch and look over tables of old photographs, set up next to a koi pond in a Ventura backyard.

Diane Ellis said she and her husband wanted to make the reunion special because she knew there might not be many more.

“They’ve all been through so much, this is the least that I can do to show my gratitude,” Ellis said.