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Extracts from the unit history of the 404th Fighter Group, July 1944

1 Organization : Nil

2 Strength:

Officers 30
Enlisted Men 82

3. Ground Echelon departed from Station 414,England on 3 July 1944 and arrived at Site 5 on the continent 6 July 1944.

4. Losses in action (Group Headquarters):

Pfc. Joseph L. Hickman killed in the bombing of Site 5, 24 July 1944. Examination of duds showed that they were American.

5. Awards and decorations:

Colonel Carroll W. McColpin was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

On the 19th of July 1944 the 404th Fighter Group was given a Battle Credit for Participation in the "Air Offensive Europe".

Awards to pilots on the 6 July 1944:

Capt. John A. Marshall 2nd Oak Leaf Cluster
Lt. Col. James K. Jameson 3rd Oak Leaf Cluster

Narrative:

Slow drizzling rain and fog coupled with a decided drop in temperature, kept the planes on the ground and generally made life miserable for all concerned during the 1st and 2nd July (The Group was on standby for escort duties and/or movement, - drop tanks but no bombs to be fitted) . By noon of the 2nd, the area immediately surrounding the old red brick barn which for the last three months had housed the Operations and Intelligence Sections, had been turned into a lake varying in depth from three to eight inches, thus greatly increasing the discomforts of those who were forced to wade as they went about their daily routines. Captains Harold R. "Abe" Lyman and Delmer E. "Sandy" Sanburg, Lts Ted L."Crosswind" Crostwaite and Jack "Geronimo" Edack were huddled around the little pot bellied stove in the corner of the S-2 office, generally whiling away the time until chow and debating whether it would be better to build a bridge or establish a ferry service between Headquarters and the Officers Mess, when Major Nichols, the Group Ground Executive officer came with the news that the rear echelon had been alerted and would move to the Marshalling Area at 0700 the following morning.

The base was soon humming with activity as officers and men trudged through the mud and water, soaked to the skin, they openly cursed the incessant rain which had turned the normally difficult job of packing for an overseas movement into a horrible nightmare. Captain Lucas, the Ass’t Materiel Officer, in charge of the move, spent the night dressed in raincoat, hood, and hipboots. charging up and down the line of trucks and trailers being loaded by flashlight, giving final instructions on the loading and waterproofing of all vehicles.

At 0715 on July 3rd the vehicle party departed for the marshalling area, C-8 on the outskirts of Southampton. The marching party followed at 14:00 leaving behind only the pilots and aircraft which were to be flown over the next day. After an uneventful trip by train the Group arrived in Southampton, and departed for the Staging Area via "G.I. Taxi".

Independence Day, the 4th, was spent in the Staging Area, picking up shortages in equipment and trying to find room in personal luggage for the many cartons of cigarettes and candy which were so generously passed out to all personnel. The marching party left the staging area on the morning of the 5th July and around noon of the same day went aboard the British Commando ship "HMS Prinz Albert" (a former Belgian steamship, on the cross channel run from Ostend to Dover, the Prinz Albert, had been turned over to the British after the fall of Belgium, and after being refitted had seen action at Dieppe and in many other famous Commando raids). The officers were welcomed aboard by the Captain who stated that this was the first time that American troops had ever been on board the Prinz Albert and that he hoped it would not be the last. The officers were then shown to the officer’s lounge where drinks were poured and introductions were in order. After all the men were aboard and all the gear stowed below, everyone settled down and wait for the tide which would carry them to France. (see pictures)

At 0300 on the morning of 6th July or D plus 30, the rear echelon of the 404th Fighter Group sailed for the Omaha beachead and as soon as it was light the decks were lined with men in OD clothing, leaning over the side, eager for their first glimpse of France. The Channel failed to live up to its reputation and the trip across was very smooth indeed. There were ships of all sizes and types all around us in such numbers that it would have been impossible to even estimate their number and allied aircraft of all description formed an umbrella overhead.

The "HMS Prinz Albert" arrived off the Omaha beachead just north of the St Laurent Sur Mer, and dropped anchor at approximately 1300. The LCIs were lowered and the men clamored abroad eager to get ashore. This desire was considerably increased in the case of several individuals, when the small boats were in the sea, and they began to get "that old feeling" as the small landing craft pitched and rolled in the surf. The men were all standing and were literally "all eyes" as they passed through the breakwater made up of some forty to fifty ships which had been sunk to form a temporary harbour, and past barges and amphibious vehicles of all types coming in to the beach, from the dozens of ships lying off shore. The impression received can be summed up in the comment of one Pfc who could only say "Gosh". After disembarking upon a floating steel dock. The men were led up to the narrow path which scaled the face of a large bluff and climbing it was a very exhausting feat, which caused many men to insist that it must be at least a mile to the top. But somehow they all made it, and as they stood on the crest looking out over the panorama of water, ships, and cluttered beaches below they felt that at last they had arrived in an active theater of war. Most of the group received their first glimpse of "Jerry" as they passed a large prisoner of war stockade in route to the transit area. Here they were picked up by Quartermaster trucks and transported to site 5 …………………….

…………… The 7th of July was spent in pitching tents and generally getting supplies and equipment in shape for coming operations. The planes and pilots had arrived on schedule but rain aand continual bad weather had turned the new runway into a sea of very sticky red mud and thus keeping the planes on the ground during the 6th and 7th.

On the 8th the weather was much improved and the first mission was flown from Chippelle (in Normandy, near the small town of St. Martin de Blagny)...................

506th Fighter Squadron
404th Fighter Group
Site 5
Chippelle, France

UNIT HISTORY FOR THE MONTH OF JULY
(Extracts from)

By

Capt. Joseph Cohn

On the morning of July 3 the ground echelon left Station 414 England, crossed the channel and hit the beaches of France near St.Laurent – Sur – Mer on July 6. They then joined the air echelon, which had arrived on July 30 and July 3. The new home for the squadron was among the apple orchards of Normandy near the village of Chippelle, at Strip A-5.

France! The land of light laughter, delicious vines and beautiful women! The squadron had looked forward to their "Mission to France," and not a few men thought of Wine, Women and Song. The wine, however, turned out to be apple cider and the potent calvados, the women were not beautiful and the only songs came from the men themselves. For the most part there wasn’t time for such diversions, and work was the order of the day.

Extracts from the

Unit History - - 507 Fighter Squadron

Installment for 1-31 July 1944

Prepared by

Andrew F Wilson
Capt., Air Corps
Historical Officer.

Organization

New Pilots assigned to the squadron during the month were Flight Officer Arthur T. Stemmerman July 1 (as per Par. 2 SO 98, Hq 404th Ftr Gp, 1 July 1944), and Second Lieut. Lee A. Branch the 26th (per Par. 1, SO 104, Hq 404th Ftr Gp, 26th July 1944)……..

Movement

The marching party of the air echelon, having landed in France the last day of June, arrived at Site A-5 between Chippelle and St. Martin de Blagny, Normandy, July 1st. The vehicle party of the air echelon arrived there July 4th, and the entire ground echelon leaving Winkton July 3rd, reached Site 5 at 2100 July 6th.

Casualities

First Lieut. Robert W. Green died in hospital early July 1st, as a result of injuries received in a landing accident June 30……..

Decorations

Narrative

………for the first week of the month, the squadron was non-operational, from a combination of bad weather and movement to Normandy. The ship-borne and truck-borne air echelon, which reached the French coast the last day of June and spent the wee hours of the First of July squirming under other peoples trucks in a transit camp near St Laurent sur Mer to get out of the drizzle, moved in borrowed Quartermasters trucks to the new station the afternoon of the first. The route ran along the new GI road into Formingny, on south through Trevieres to Cartigny L’Epinay, at which point the paddlefeet of the outfit came unawares closer to the enemy than at any time before or since - - -three miles to the Panzer Grenadiers at Airel to the west. A short stop at an artillery CP, sandbagged and buried within the walls of an old grist mill in a hillside and briefed with new directions, on to Site A-5.
Gawking and gaping at Trevieres, its church, its shops and one street completely closed by rubble, and a young French woman in the midst of it all walking solemly with a market basket, Capt McCartney and Capt Wilson .missed a right turn but quickly discovered their error and got back on the right road.

We approached the field from the south, up an old stony dirt road, looked across a break in the hedgerows and saw a broad brown scraped area, lined with regular mounds of dirt; a bulldozer; a windsock. With some local assistance, Capt. McCartney found Major Grey commanding the incumbent airdrome squadron, who found us an orchard to sleep in and even provided the baggage-less officers with sleeping bags—and the marching party settled in to wait for the missing vehicle party.

According to Staff Sergt. Harry C. Beckett, Intelligence section chief, the adventures of the vehicle party went something like this:

"We spent just one night in the marshalling area at the back of "beastly Eastleigh", and that was in the rain. The ‘first driver’ on each vehicle had to stay with his vehicle whilst the assistants were assigned tents in the transient camp. Sergt. Horace D. Ethridge, Operations Clerk, and I stayed with our vehicles, and to keep dry during the night we tied our shelter halves to the back of a quarter ton trailer and the front of a jeep. We backed up the jeep to make the shelter taut, and slept on two litters from the ambulance. The next day, the 27th of June, we left the marshalling area, a full day ahead of the marching party and moved down to Southampton. We spent most of the day parked in a side street, moved round the corner and slept in an ambulance that night in another street. The next day we moved down to the docks, and finally onto a Liberty ship that evening. We spent two nights on that boat in Southampton harbor, and one anchored off the French coast. We finally unloaded and de waterproofed in a transit area July 2nd and I had our shoes off for the first time in four days on the barge that unloaded us on the beach; dipped our feet in the channel on the way in.

That night I slept in the front seat of my jeep under the steering wheel, while Ethridge slept in the back on top of six cots, a case of Ten-in-One rations, and three five-gallon cans of gas, oil and water. Plus personal equipment of course, with a raincoat for warmth. We finally lit out for the field July 3rd, and caught up with the marching party in an orchard that afternoon. Incidentally, our first night in the transit area in France, seven men including the Group Adjutant, Capt. Walther McCarthy, slept on the top of that pile of boxes and barracks bags in the H.M.S Honeybucket (the Squadron intelligence trailer-van so christened before departure from England).

Late in the afternoon of July 4th, the first batch of our pilots began arriving, after being transported by C-47 to St Laurent-sur-Mer. They were full of tales about the morning celebration of the National Holiday back at Winkton when Tom Weller (then a First Lieut.), for lack of legitimate firecrackers, tried to light a heap of black powder with a strip of toilet paper for a fuse. The stuff started to go, Weller turned his back to run, and by the time he looked back the explosion and fireworks were over. The rest of the boys lit smoke pots to screen their activities from the rest of the field.

Already expressions are changing from "jolly good" to "tres bien" and some of the boys had discovered that "cidre", "Calvados" and "eau-de-vie" would be adequate substitutes for "mild" and "bitter". And at night American artillery introduced us to battle sounds, with loud whamming bursts apparently in the next orchard, followed by a rattling deep echo across our heads and off to the south beyond us, like the afternoise of the Burlington Zephyr disappearing down the track at maximum speed. As long as the express was loud at the start and gradually grew fainter we remained more or less at ease.

July 3rd, Capt.McCartney picked out a bivouac area for the squadron and sent Capt. Wilson to dicker with the owner about moving in.

Pierre Engeurand was a rather stout Norman of about 35 "ans", with blue eyes, one rather glassy, a round red face, and a friendly manner, who wore a black cap, black jacket, light blue shirt without necktie, and light striped pants stuck inside knee boots. He had once owned forty acres he told us, and now was down to 15, but - - "if it will help to win the war". All this with the help of Sergt. Teerebonne of Louisiana and the 506th squadron, our interpreter during these negotiations, embelished with the characteristic eye-brow lifting, pursing of lips and shrugs.

So the squadron set up its bivouac in M. Engeurand’s backyard - - a broad orchard with enough room to disperse and enough trees to conceal all three hundred of its personnel - - hustling to be ready for the squadron commander and the majority of the pilots.

On the line we discovered an old two-room clay barn with a small hay-loft, walls a foot thick and crumbly, a large fire place and a filthy litter of hay, muck, dust, empty wine bottles, old clothing, rusty farming tools and undressed rabbit skins. With the aid of Master Sergt. Clyde J Howell, a genius with a Cletrac if there ever was one, the HMS Honeybucket was manoeuvred under an apple tree near the barn, and the work of sterilizing the barn began. Sergts Beckett and Ethridge, aided by Capt. Wilson and such passers by as Sergts James V. Ford Jr. and Bill Maxam, Corporals Ray Millar aand Bill Coogan. And Pfc Ralph P. Gray, cleared out the debris. Then the chemical warfare people were called in - - Sergt Anthony J Augustin and Corporal Edward L. Crittenden – who fixed up a chloride of lime brew in a portable chemical spray tank, and took turns with Corporals Emil A. DelBoccio and Charles A Cascata spraying the interior. Thus deloused, it was ready for our first Normandy based mission July 8th, when the weather and the runway became simultaneously favourable.

We thought we’d heard everything a few days later when two elderly impoverished Frenchwomen paid us a visit aand told us in laboriously translated French that they had actually lived in that pigpen of a house for "trente ans" until evacuated by American Officers a few weeks ago.

The pilots and planes arrived on the 5th, with Lieut. Floyd "Ramblin Wreck" Blair exclaiming gleefully "Do we get combat time for this"? The 6th in came the ground echelon, and we were all set to get operating again.

Extracts from the official history of

508TH FIGHTER SQUADRON
404TH FIGHTER GROUP AAF

SQUADRON HISTORY
(early) JULY 1944

July 1, 1944 to July 3, 1944: Old bugaboo weather in and deluged Winkton field making it a veritable sea of mud. this greatly hindered our efforts to get our equipment packed and get ready to go to France. However our pilots turned into a skilful detail of men and before long they had moved all our unused bombs, a herculian task, and struck our camp site. All this work had to accomplished by the pilots due to the fact that the majority of our enlisted men already were in transit to France.

July 3 1944, departed Winkton Field, Hants, England 1330 hrs; arrived Camp C-8 1800 hrs. July 5, 1944; departed camp C-8 0600 hours; boarded Prins Albert 1200 hrs; July 6, 1944, disembarked from Prins Albert 1330 hrs., arrived R&R Strip A-5 2100 hrs.

July 4, 1944: This was our last mission flown from England and we escorted B-26s to South Rouen. The B-26’s attacked a bridge over the Seine with good results.

July 8, 1944: Our pilots arrived in France on the seventh and the next day we started supporting our ground forces………………………….

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