Wingett pulled himself to dry ground, but he was now without a rifle and had few supplies. The heavy German anti-aircraft fire left airborne troops scattered all over the French countryside. Units struggled to find members. Wingett also was separated, but joined up with a group of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. Less an hour after he had landed, the lanky 20 yearold met death face to face. Three German soldiers had set up a machine gun nest 15 feet from him. “The two guys with me had rifles, but they didn’t shoot them. I killed the first guy with a knife,” Wingett recalled. “He had a machine gun pistol and as I hit him, he went down shooting. He wounded one German and killed the other one. It was him or me. That’s when I got a rifle.” It would not be the last time Wingett would face life or death, and while he survived some of his close friends did not. Burt Christenson, Bill Dukeman, and Everett Gray were close friends of Wingett’s even after Wingett had been transferred from Easy Company to the Headquarters Company three days before D-Day. “Gray and I were both machine-gunners. He was killed a couple of days into the Normandy fight. Dukeman was killed later while fighting in Holland. Gray was elsewhere when he died. I’ve always felt that if we’d been together he’d have survived the war,” he said.
Wingett rejoined Easy Company in February 1945, and was part of the march deeper into Germany. What the U.S. Army found next would stay with Wingett the rest of his life. The 506th and other units began encountering something they had never expected to see – German concentration camps. It was now the Army’s job to provide humanitarian aid and protection for Jewish and other political prisoners.
Ironically, within two years, Wingett rejoined the Army and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. During the next 18 months he made 167 jumps. Years after leaving the Army a second time, he swapped uniforms in 1964 to join the U.S. Naval Reserve. After 17 years of honorable service, he retired as a Petty Officer 1st Class. Wingett and many other Easy Company soldiers not portrayed in the mini-series have since been discovered at reunions and special events. Yet, since 2001, many have passed on. Today, at nearly 92, Wingett still lives in Salem, but life has slowed down. He smiles when asked to sign autographs, and his pen has often been for hire. Recently he signed nearly 700 posters and small cards for a D-Day history publication. “It’s fun to sign these items as there aren’t many of us left.” For Wingett the war was a job. “We didn’t go to war to become heroes,” he said. “I was no hero. The ones we left behind, the guys who lost their lives, they are the heroes in that war.”
bob sHotWell omaHa beacH lanDing by Leon Pantenburg Reprinted by permission of The Bend Bulletin.
As a member of the Army’s 149th Amphibious Combat Engineers (116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division), Private Bob Shotwell, 90, of La Pine, Oregon, landed in the first wave on the Dog Red section of Omaha Beach.
Photo courtesy of bill WiNgett
Following the successes of the Allied breakout in Normandy during July and August, Wingett and the 101st Airborne prepared for a second jump – this time into occupied Holland for Operation Market Garden on September 17. Unfortunately when he hit the ground, Wingett broke his leg and was evacuated to a hospital in Belgium for recovery. He missed the bitter cold fight to secure Bastogne in December and January during the Battle of the Bulge and later when the Army advanced south to Adolf Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” compound in the Bavarian Alps.
Nov. 23, 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism and three Purple Hearts for wounds in France and Holland.
inch of the beach presighted for accurate firing of mortars, machine guns, and 88mm cannons. The slaughter started before the soldiers disembarked, and the first wave was almost decimated. “Bits and pieces pop into focus…a hand, an arm with nobody around it, a foot. A helmet with a head still in it,” Shotwell said. “I wondered if the next shell would be mine. I will always remember the loss of my best friend as we stepped off the landing craft. Suddenly I realized we were fragile humans and that a shell from a German 88 could take a man’s head off very easily...which it did,” Shotwell said. By late-afternoon, enough equipment had come ashore that the engineers could start clearing the wire. In the face of heavy fire, Shotwell and other engineers blew holes in the wire and advanced to the bluffs. They stopped at nightfall. Exhausted, Shotwell “slept fitfully” about halfway up the cliff. At days end on June 6, about 175,000 Allied military personnel were ashore in France. But the cost had been very high – some 4,900 died on the beaches and in the battle further inland that day. Of the 40 combat engineers who landed at Dog Red in the first wave, only four were alive at the end of the day. The next morning, Shotwell reached the top of the cliffs. He looked out to sea, over the armada of 5,000 anchored ships, with a sense of disbelief, and surprise that he was still alive. “So this is France, I thought. I had no idea of what I had just been a part of,” he said. Shotwell went on to fight in four major combat actions including the liberation of Paris before the war was over. In the weeks and months after the invasion, Shotwell helped clear the way for tanks and rebuilt roads and bridges. He was recommended for the Silver Star for his part in the crossing of the Rhine River in Germany.
Photo courtesy of bob shotWell.
shot as they descended, or while hanging by their chutes in trees, power poles and street lamps.
Like many veterans, Shotwell rarely mentions his service, and initially, was reluctant to let me interview him for the “Vanishing Heroes” project.
Left: Bill Wingett, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Right: Bob Shotwell, 149th Amphibious Combat Engineers, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division.
“We liberated five camps and kept the sick and dying inside the camps. Sadly we couldn’t feed them much food or they might die, but many did anyway,” Wingett recalled. “It was a sickening, maddening experience and not one that anyone would ever want to go through.” Weeks after the Germans surrendered in May, American soldiers began serving as an occupation force. The 506th PIR remained in Bavaria and were preparing to fight the war in the Pacific, but in less than two months, the Japanese had surrendered. These soldiers now awaited their trip home. Before leaving Europe, Wingett would make two classified and potentially dangerous train trips in the Fall of 1945 with other American soldiers to transport displaced civilians to Budapest, Hungary. Soon after his return, Wingett was honorably discharged on
Shotwell doesn’t dwell on his memories of that day, but added that June 6 remains seared into his mind. His memories have “thankfully softened,” he said.
Dawn was breaking as the Higgins landing craft he was in dropped its ramp. Under a deadly hail of enemy fire, Shotwell and his fellow soldiers quickly ran to the beach.
“War memories are best held in limbo,” he said. “They take on a softer glow that way. Most of my memories of World War II are of the pleasant things. I try to forget the bad things.”
“The noise was deafening. Big guns fired, engines on vehicles roared, men shouted and geysers of water erupted around our craft.” he said. “It seemed like mass confusion.”
But Shotwell does remember an attitude which helped him and his buddies get through the hell of Omaha Beach.
Still, Shotwell said he wasn’t really scared. He was in the first wave that landed at 6:30 a.m. “I felt excited, probably because I had no combat experience at all,” he said. “Like most kids, I had this feeling of invincibility and thought nothing could happen to me. We found naval gunfire and pre-landing bombardments had not softened German defenses or resistance. ” That feeling “evaporated” as the boat stopped and the front ramp went down. The Germans had every 13
“We didn’t want to make a D-Day type landing on some American beach, and we didn’t want to make a combat crossing of the Mississippi, and we didn’t want that kind of fighting going on in some small town in America,” Shotwell said. “We were thankful we could be the line of defense between our enemies and our homes.” A notable character in central Oregon, Shotwell is a retired writer, journalist and photographer. With family and many friends nearby, Shotwell celebrated his 90th birthday on April 6 with a party in his honor in Bend. VETS NEWS // SPRING 2014