{"id":813,"date":"2013-11-11T18:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T18:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bizexteam.com\/?p=813"},"modified":"2023-07-04T17:04:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T17:04:48","slug":"thank-you-dad-and-thanks-to-all-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bizexteam.com\/index.php\/2013\/11\/11\/thank-you-dad-and-thanks-to-all-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"THANK YOU DAD AND THANKS TO ALL VETERANS!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

2nd Lieutenant John MacAllister<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, as many of us take the day to thank all of those who have served our country in the United States armed services, I find myself thinking of my late father and his fellow servicemen from the \u201cGreatest Generation.\u201d\u00a0 Thank you, Dad!\u00a0 My father, John MacAllister, was in the R.O.T.C. at the Colorado School of Mines, when America became embroiled in World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. Upon graduating from the Colorado School of Mines with a professional degree in geophysical engineering, my father was inducted as a Second Lieutenant into the 121st<\/sup> Combat Engineer Battalion, 29th Infantry Division <\/i>of the United States Army. After a brief window of staging in Alexandria, Louisiana, he was parted from his new bride and was shipped to England.<\/p>\n

While preparing for the D-Day Invasion, he was assigned to support duties after a disastrous outcome to a secret exercise called, \u00a0\u201cOperation Tiger.\u201d \u00a0Operation Tiger was a then top secret series of practice sessions for the impending invasion of France.\u00a0 It would become one of the major disasters of the War, when fast-moving German E-boats intercepted a convoy of American \u201cLST\u201d vessels in the English Channel in Lyme Bay and decimated them, killing 749 Americans shortly before the real invasion was scheduled. (LSTs were ships capable of nosing up on a beach and landing tanks and other heavy equipment.)\u00a0Because of the potentially devastating effect on Allied morale, the incident was subjected to a total news blackout and most Americans had little or no knowledge of the incident until years after the war. My fathers support duties involved retrieving the bodies of those killed from the channel and other measures to keep the disaster away from public view.\u00a0 Because this operation was highly classified for many years after the war, it wasn\u2019t until much later that my father could even mention the exercise, but it had a profound effect on him.<\/p>\n

On D-Day, my father along with the rest of the 121st<\/sup> Engineers was assigned to the very first wave on Omaha Beach. Their assignment was to clear the beach obstacles so that the full invasion force could land.\u00a0 In preparation for this responsibility, each engineer carried an 80-pound pack, 40 pounds of which was \u201cC-4,\u201d an early version of a plastic explosive. \u00a0My father was among the first men off the LST, which had nosed up on the beach in rough seas.\u00a0 The German defenders began their defensive shelling of the ship.\u00a0 The ship was struck by a shell, and the force of the impact pushed the ship off the beach.\u00a0 My father and several other men were pulled back out into the water by the suction of the ship. The skipper managed to nose the craft in once again, but this time the ship \u2013 which I understand carried over 200 men \u2013 was hit directly in one of its fuel tanks and exploded.\u00a0 In the chaos, nearly all of the men were killed, either by the explosion and ensuing fire, by drowning, or by German snipers.<\/p>\n

\"\"My father managed to survive the landing because he was already off of the ship and, luckily, he decided not to inflate his life belt.\u00a0 He explained he felt that he was buoyant enough because he had wrapped the contents of his pack in oilcloth, which added some buoyancy. Not inflating his life belt kept him low in the water and he was less visible to the German snipers who were already actively picking off the survivors who had managed to wade ashore.\u00a0 Once ashore he said that he repeated the mantra of his training, which was \u201cget of the beach, men die on the beach.\u201d\u00a0 He scampered up the beach to a draw below the French village of Vierville-sur-Mer.\u00a0 Within minutes, he was up the draw and sitting in the remnants of the village, which had been heavily shelled by Allied naval forces in preparation for the invasion.<\/p>\n

Once in the village, my father said he really had no idea what to do, so he sat at an intersection waiting for others to arrive.\u00a0 Amazingly, the first person to arrive was Brigadier General Norman Cota, along with his staff officer, and two other soldiers, who had landed further up the beach to the north. They met my father by walking south down the road above the beach bluff.\u00a0 He greeted my father saying, \u201cGood morning Lieutenant, where the hell\u2019s the rest of the invading army?\u201d\u00a0 My father responded that he didn\u2019t know. \u00a0General Cota noted the engineer corps castle insignia on my father\u2019s collar and asked why the beach exit had not been cleared.\u00a0 Again my father was without an aequate answer, and General Cota responded, \u201cWell suppose you go and find out.\u201d\u00a0 My father began to leave to return to the beach, when the General told him to wait, and that he and the other men would come with him.<\/p>\n

\"\"The band of five men returned to Omaha Beach back down the Vierville Draw, which my father had scampered up minutes earlier.\u00a0 Amazingly in the process, this small band captured German prisoners on their way back down the draw.\u00a0 Once back down on the beach, my father was assigned to rally all surviving engineers and to clear the beach exit.\u00a0 Of the multiple corps of engineers that landed on the beach that day, Dad said that there were only about twenty or so men that survived the landing in condition to help with the assignment.\u00a0 They scavenged for explosives and equipment and cleared the way off the beach.\u00a0 My father was always proud that he and the others had accomplished this critical role that enabled the allied forces to move forward off the beach.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As an engineer, my father remained in the front lines of the war from Normandy clear into the heart of Germany.\u00a0 The day after D-Day, he came to the rescue of twenty-five men who were about to be trapped by a German counter attack.\u00a0 His citation reads that \u201che braved a hail of enemy machine gun fire\u201d to reach them and to guide them to safety.\u00a0 In the process, he was shot.\u00a0 He explained that he probably would have been killed but for the fortune of wearing a smoke grenade.\u00a0 While he was shot and seriously wounded, a bullet hit the smoke grenade and knocked him down.\u00a0 The grenade went off in the process, shrouding him in smoke.\u00a0 This gave him the opportunity to gather his wits and quickly assess his injury and get on the move to safety.<\/p>\n

\"Silver<\/a>

The Rocky Mountain News Article – Proud “Denverites”<\/p><\/div>\n

As the allies moved across France, the 121st<\/sup> Engineers were always in front of the lines because they had to blast open hedgerows and build river crossings.\u00a0 Once across the Rhine and into Germany, my father, along with a few others, was assigned the duty of blasting open German vaults and confiscating all the currency and gold of the Reich.\u00a0 He had entertaining stories to tell about the trial and error method of learning how to become a bank robber for the Army, and figuring out the right amount of plastic explosives to use.<\/p>\n

Throughout the war, my father was remarkably lucky.\u00a0 He narrowly escaped death on countless occasions. The experience profoundly affected his thinking about life, and he came to believe that that one\u2019s destiny is largely out of one\u2019s control.\u00a0 He carried this \u201cfatalist\u201d philosophy through his life \u2013 \u201cwhen your number\u2019s up, it\u2019s up!\u201d\u00a0 He seemed to find this comforting in a strange way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As with most of the veterans of that era, my Dad never spoke much about the War, and it was not until his later years, that people were able to pry open his recollections.\u00a0 He was always somber and withdrawn on D-Day anniversaries, but likewise, he was always proud too of what he and his brothers in arms accomplished for the world.\u00a0\u00a0 My father died in February of 2002.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s Omaha Beach experiences were described in part in Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944, <\/i>by Joseph Balkoski, 2004. \u00a0In Mr. Balkoski’s book, he titles a section Chapter 12 of his book, “Suppose You Go Find Out.” My father is also mentioned in the Steven Ambrose books on D-Day.<\/p>\n

BJM, November 11, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, as many of us take the day to thank all of those who have served our country in the United States armed services, I find myself thinking of my late father and his fellow servicemen from the \u201cGreatest Generation.\u201d\u00a0 Thank you, Dad!\u00a0 My father, John MacAllister, was in the R.O.T.C. at the Colorado School…<\/span><\/p>\n

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