Former grid star rescues survivors of mined U.S. ship
By William R. Higginbotham
Aboard U.S. transport, off France – (delayed)
Navy Lt. John Tripson, former Detroit Lions football star, commanded a landing boat which helped rescue survivors from a small U.S. craft blown up by a mine 400 yards offshore.
We had started across the lines of ships through a shell-filled strip of channel from this transport, bound for the mainland beach when we saw the ship go up in a geyser of water.
Big John of Mission, Texas, ordered the landing boat around to help pick up survivors. While the stricken ship smoked and three other vessels larger than ours moved in to aid, we hauled from the water six oil-smeared survivors, two of whom were crying piteously for help. Big John scooped one out of a wave with one hand.
In the midst of the rescue, an officer on a bridge of a ship yelled: “Watch out. German planes overhead.”
“Twist her tail, coxswain,” ordered Tripson and we raced away from the concentration of ships with our survivors crouched on the deck.
One man who pulled away the stricken vessel in a rubber boat was stripped naked. Others had been blown at least 30 feet.
McMillan: Nazi retreating so fast they fail to bury their dead
By Richard D. McMillan
With the Allied invasion army, France (UP) - (June 8, delayed)
The Germans got out of here so fast they didn’t even stop to bury their dead.
On D+2 – 48 hours after the invasion assault – the biggest phenomenon of the battle of Western Europe is still the amazing lack of Nazi resistance in this large slice of French soil around Bayeux, which the Allies have liberated.
By letting us grab off Bayeux, a vital point on the Bayeux-Caen highway, his troops farther out on the Normandy Peninsula have been placed in grave danger.
Why didn’t the enemy try to hold out? One theory expressed by officers here is that we succeeded in landing so much material – tanks, anti-tank guns and other armor – the Germans are withdrawing their isolated panzer units to mass them for a resounding counterattack.
That may be, but meanwhile the Allies are consolidating their grip on the very considerable hunk of territory we’ve already sliced off and it seems unlikely the Nazis would be able to resist the steel jaws we are closing upon them.
Everyone was asking, “Where is the Luftwaffe?” Back on the beaches, thousands of supply vessels are disgorging infantry divisions, stores, munitions, gasoline and food with the regularity of an English port in peacetime. It all seems very mysterious.