Page 12 - Aerotech News and Review, June 16 2017

Two D-Day veterans in one D-Day anniversary
by Dennis Anderson
Special to Aerotech News and Review
LANCASTER. Calif.–Seated in my office at High Desert Medi- cal Group on June 6, 73-years after D-Day, Henry Ochsner hardly looked to be 94. He could pass for a kid of 80 years.
On June 6, 1944, 73 years ago, Henry was busy as could be. He had just parachuted into Normandy, an infantry paratrooper with the famed 101st Airborne Division.
He wears a black baseball cap that tells part of his story: “World War II Veteran — Screaming Eagles,” with the embroidered unit, “E Co. 506th Parachute Infantry,” the real-life “Band of Brothers.”
We were chatting and Henry looked at his wristwatch. It was mid-morning in Lancaster, 73 years later.
“About this time, I had been on the ground around eight hours,” he said. “I’d used up two clips. It was hard.”
On June 6 it was a long time from darkness until dawn. Dark, but loud.
If you were up on the bluffs and hedgerow fields of the Nor- mandy coastal area, you could hear the big guns of the U.S. and Royal navies, pouring battery fire to give cover to the troops wading ashore at Omaha and Utah beaches, for the British and Canadians, at Juno, Gold and Sword beaches.
Like the thousands of paratroopers who survived the jump, and the controlled crashes of gliders descending on the French farming country, Henry was keeping his head down and counting his M-1 Garand rifle’s ammunition.
“It was very hard,” he said. “It was all very hard. It took a long time to get to daylight.”
D-Day veterans, in fact, all World War II veterans, are leaving the
“About this time, I had been on the ground around eight hours,” he said. “I’d used up two clips. It was hard.”
Henry Ochsner, 101st Airborne
world stage at a continuously accelerating rate that in recent years was counted by the Department of Veterans Affairs as about 1,000 a day. Surely, it is more daily, as even the youngest World War II veterans have pushed past their 90th birthdays.
But 90 isn’t what it used to be. Good genetics, good care, taking it easy. At Christmas my Vietnam veteran buddy Michael Bertell and I joined in a 100th birthday celebration for Felix Jamison, who was not at D-Day. He was with MacArthur in the Philippines, and he is still here.
Instead, Felix, the master sergeant of an all African-American quartermaster company rolled ashore with Gen. Douglas MacAr- thur when the American caeser made good on his promise, “I shall return.”
So, we still have a few World War II veterans among us, and we must treasure the time spent among them.
“The USS Quincy was a good ship ... We were there at D-Day.”
Art Ray, World War II Navy veteran
On this 73rd anniversary of D-Day, before meeting with Henry, I headed over for the weekly Coffee4Veterans hosted at Crazy Otto’s restaurant on Avenue I in Lancaster. I sat in a booth for coffee with Art Ray and his bride of many years, Debbie. They are there most Tuesdays.
I knew Art had served on a battle cruiser during World War II, and tried to remember the name. Battleships are named for states, the USS Iowa. Cruisers are named for cities.
“It was the USS Quincy, and it was a good ship,” Art said. “We were there at D-Day.”
Art was there. And pushing past his 90th birthday, he is here, too.
The USS Quincy was part of an armada of 5,000 ships that sailed from England in heavy chop, catching up with the more than 13,000 aircraft that dropped Allied paratroopers and strafed and bombed enemy positions.
Those thousands of ships were seen through field glasses on the horizon line by thousands of defenders of Adolf Hitler’s forces of the Third Reich.
“We were firing six-inch and eight-inch guns,” Art Ray recalled. “There was a lot of noise.”
During the period June 6 through 17, in conjunction with shore fire control parties and aircraft spotters, Quincy conducted highly accurate pinpoint firing against enemy mobile batteries and concen- trations of tanks, trucks, and troops, according to the Dictionary of American Naval Vessels.
The rounds were cascading onto the bluffs above the landing beaches, trying to chip away at the bunkers and Nazi artillery, try- ing dislodge the enemy from their machine guns and barbed-wire fortifications while Americans, British and Canadian troops waded ashore under heavy fire.
See D-DAY, Page 13
Courtesy photograph
Art Ray center, Debbie Ray, and Chris Ward, veterans representative from Congressman Steve Knight’s office.
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June 16, 2017