Las Vegas man tells father’s D-Day story
When Tom Cameron went looking for photographs of his dad in D-Day, he came across one that soldiers seldom talked about that was taken before the allied invasion 71 years ago today.
“I had been searching for 30 years for some image of all those World War II photos that there might be a photo of my dad. And I found it on the Internet. That’s my dad right there,” the Las Vegas resident said, holding a black-and-white photo of Army Pvt. Allan J. Cameron, with rifle in hand and about to jump into the surf from a landing craft.
At first he thought the photo was taken at Omaha Beach on France’s Normandy coast, where Pvt. Cameron of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division had landed June 6, 1944.
Instead, the photo was taken in late April 1944 along the south coast of England during training for the D-Day invasion, an exercise code-named Operation Tiger. What began as a dress rehearsal for the massive assault on Normandy ended in a tragedy when more than 940 U.S. troops were killed by torpedoes and cannon fire from high-speed German enemy boats, or “e-boats,” and friendly fire as well.
Those who survived Operation Tiger were sworn to secrecy for fear by allied commanders that leaks would compromise the planned invasion.
The June 6, 1944, invasion became known as D-Day for the military term denoting the “day” of the attack. It had been planned by Allied military leaders under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The attack’s code name was Operation Overlord, but the landings were orchestrated under Operation Neptune.
“The butcher shop was Omaha. It started about 6 a.m.,” Cameron said. “He was in the fifth wave. The fifth wave would have happened somewhere between noon and 2 o’clock in the afternoon.”
While his dad’s unit didn’t face as much resistance as those in the initial waves, Cameron said his father, who died in 1990, “didn’t like to talk about it because it was just not something that soldiers did of his generation.”
It would go down as the largest amphibious invasion in history and a turning point in World War II that led to the defeat of German dictator Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces.
In all, about 2.7 million Allied troops gathered in southern England for the assault. The 150,000 who participated in the Normandy landings crossed the English channel on board some 5,000 vessels that also carried 30,000 vehicles to the beaches.
In the air, more than 300 aircraft dropped 13,000 bombs to clear the French coast for the invasion. Hundreds more fighter planes were involved in escorts and attacks. Spearheading the assault were more than 800 transport planes, some towing gliders, that delivered six parachute regiments totaling some 13,000 paratroopers.
By the end of what’s known as “the longest day,” about 10,000 Allied troops had been killed or seriously wounded.
While trudging through the sand of Omaha Beach, Pvt. Cameron came across a bunker that had been abandoned by Nazi soldiers. In it, he found an odd war souvenir — a 2-foot-tall bronze statue of David. It depicted the biblical character returning a sword to its sheath with one bare foot perched on the nose of the beheaded giant Goliath.
“All my life this statue was in my dad’s den,” he said. “I never really understood much about the story of the statue. The Germans would pilfer any art … in the homes, museums, churches, whatever.”
To Tom Cameron, the statute is symbolic of the valiant effort by U.S. soldiers who faced the Nazis that day “because we went in the underdog and just by perseverance and courage and faith we prevailed, and I’m very proud of that.”
It wasn’t until later in his life that he found out how it wound up in his home.
“He went to his commanding officer, and he says, ‘Sir, I found this in the bunker, but what should we do with it?’ He says, ‘Son, we’re not collecting anything. You can either drop it in the sand or you can send it home to Mom, whatever you’ve got to do, but we’re not collecting anything,’ ” Cameron said, recalling his father’s story.
“He carried it about 10 miles and … that evening he had it boxed up and sent it home,” he said.
Pvt. Cameron served as a combat engineer, “the guys who blew everything up to move everything out. There were a lot of anti-tank and anti-ship crosses in the ocean,” he said, referring to large metal objects set up as barriers to keep ships and troops from getting to the beaches.
“The engineers were the guys who had to move them, and there was only one way to move something that weighed a couple tons. They had to blow them up and tow them out.”
Tom Cameron said that as his father continued on from Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge “it was not a pretty sight. But that’s what they did. They did what they had to do, and America prevailed. There were a lot of men who gave their life for freedom.”
Later, with casualties mounting in the Army Corps as more and more B-17 bombers were shot down, his dad filled in to repair B-17s, a skill he carried on in civilian life as a mechanic for aircraft engine maker Pratt and Whitney for 30 years.
“All the way through high school I remember wearing my dad’s World War II Army Air Corps flight jacket. I felt pretty cool,” he said.
He said he’s not sure which Nazi concentration camp his father helped liberate “but he made it all the way to Berlin where they liberated a Jewish death camp.”
“It made quite an impression on him because when you go through the butcher shop of D-Day; then you’re in the Battle of the Bulge, some of the worst casualties in American history; then you end up helping to liberate the death camps … you’ve seen more death than any undertakers do,” he said.
Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2