elsie item issue 66 - USS Landing Craft Infantry National Association

At one point, close to the shore, our bow was
aimed directly at a sunken truck with two wet,
forlorn-looking soldiers clinging to it. At the last
moment, we changed course to avoid them.
With a look of great relief on their faces, they
waved to us as we lurched past them on our
way to the rather improbable landing spot our
Skipper had chosen out of necessity - a
broached British LCT.
The noise, smoke and confusion grew as we
threaded our way through a mass of wrecked
landing craft, tanks and beach obstacles. The
nice, tight directions of our Group Commander
as to our order of landing disappeared as the
confusion of the beach made it totally impossible.
It was every ship for itself.
I was told years later by a crew member of the
508 that their Captain had his eye on the same
landing spot for which we were headed, and
cursed our Skipper roundly as we beat him to it.
Our landing resembled none of the multitude of
practice landings we had made. We scraped
over some submerged object for the length of
the ship but suffered no damage.
Gold Beach on D-Day: LCI 502 with her bow up
against HM LCT 857
HM LCT 857 was stranded, parallel to the
beach. She had taken a good pounding and
was in no shape or position to disengage herself
from the beach. but she did make what our
Skipper considered the best possible place for
disembarking our troops, so he ran our bow
right up on to the broached LCT.
The ramps were extended, dropped onto the
LCT at somewhat perilous angles, and our bicycle-toting
Tommies struggled down our ramps,
clambered over the LCT and finally dropped off
onto the beach itself.
While our troops were disembarking we became
involved in two rescue missions. With no threat
from German aircraft (and much too small to
consider challenging German 88s!), we on the
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