RPCV Sam Nelson carries memories of invasion at Utah Beach at Normandy



Nelson recalled large shells fired from the battleship Nevada as being 'louder than a train' as they flew through the air, obliterating a German pillbox and 200 men. Ensuing days saw harrowing battles that included the taking of a French chateau. Roughly a third of the soldiers in Nelson's division were killed.

RPCV Sam Nelson carries memories of invasion at Utah Beach at Normandy

Ladson veteran carries vivid memories of war

BY CHRIS DIXON
The Post and Courier

If Sam Nelson of Ladson ever needs a reminder of the invasion of Normandy during World War II, he need only look at his right arm. From hand to forearm runs a long scar a surgeon left after an artillery shell blew up alongside him and a radio operator as they advanced toward Paris following the invasion.

The explosion put then-Lt. Nelson back onto a Normandy beach, where he underwent surgery alongside thousands of other American soldiers.

'I've still got shrapnel in my arm,' he said. 'And the one that hit me in the head went through my helmet, the liner, through my scalp and back out.'

The explosion marked the end of Nelson's combat in France. But as the 62nd anniversary of the June 6 D-Day invasion approached, Nelson could remember the fierce fighting like it was yesterday.

A New York native, Nelson was drafted into the Army in June 1941. He began his duty as a cook at Camp Croft near Spartanburg and was made a mess sergeant shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A captain thought he might make a good candidate for officer's school and ordered the young soldier to Fort Benning in August 1942.

'I told him, ?Captain, I'm happy where I am,' ' Nelson said. 'He said, ?You don't get to do what you want to do, you do what I tell you.' '

At Fort Dix, N.J., Nelson and his soldiers and officers were reassigned to the 4th Infantry Division and were trained for amphibious combat. They soon boarded a refitted luxury liner and sailed for Plymouth, England. 'All the first class rooms were for officers,' he recalled. 'We even had a salt water bath. Then the butler would come in with a pan of fresh water to throw on you.'

Nelson and his untested troops made three practice combat landings on an English beach called Slapton Sands while the Normandy invasion was planned. He recalled the mission as being so secret that when a civilian telephone repairman accidentally saw a wall map of the invasion, he was jailed.

Early in the morning of June 6, Nelson and his troops boarded landing craft for Utah Beach.

'The place was so loaded with boats,' he said. 'You can't imagine it.'

Soldiers going ashore at Utah Beach did not encounter the same level of deadly German artillery and machine gun fire that turned nearby Omaha Beach into a killing ground. It wasn't until they moved inland that they began fighting Germans from hedgerow to hedgerow.

'You could hear them the next row over,' he said, noting that many of the German soldiers were reluctant foreign conscripts.

Before leaving for England, Nelson had allowed a young enlisted man to travel home to visit his wife, whom he feared might die in childbirth. 'He was the first man I had killed in combat,' Nelson said. 'I walked up the line and he had been hit by an artillery shell.'

Nelson recalled large shells fired from the battleship Nevada as being 'louder than a train' as they flew through the air, obliterating a German pillbox and 200 men. Ensuing days saw harrowing battles that included the taking of a French chateau. Roughly a third of the soldiers in Nelson's division were killed.

Nelson said that marginally wounded soldiers were often returned to the battlefront. But his head injury meant that he couldn't wear a helmet. So he was sent to help 138 other soldiers manage a camp of 100,000 German POWs.

'We had to feed them three meals a day,' he said, 'I had a French liaison, and we were walking through the town,' he said, 'I asked him ?What the hell are all those buildings?' and he said, ?Those are three bakeries the Germans blew up.' Well, they'd only blown up one of them. I baked those Germans 50,000 loaves of bread a day!'

Shortly after he returned to the United States following the war, Nelson married and returned to his former life as a pharmaceutical salesman. He said that he didn't think the war fazed him too much, but on some personal sales calls, customers occasionally asked why he seemed so nervous. 'And I remember my wife telling me some nights that I'd get raving in my sleep, and I wasn't conscious of it at all,' he said. 'It was just a hangover you couldn't help.'

Nelson went on to own a Hickory Farms store in Columbia. In 1994, he went to Africa and became one of the oldest Peace Corps volunteers ever. At his last job at the True Value Hardware store in Mount Pleasant, Nelson said he was constantly reminded of his sacrifice and his appreciation of America. 'People would come in all the time and ask, ?Were you in the war?' ' he said. 'And they'd just want to shake your hand.'



Reach Chris Dixon at 745-5855 or cdixon@postandcourier.com.

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