D-Day Teton Pass Run: Mission Accomplished

D-Day, 2009. 65th Anniversary of the great event that changed the world.

5.9 miles, 2,200 vertical climb, 80 minutes, and the top was reached.

Thanks WWII vets! See more about this effort at my Teton Pass Weblog.

D-Day: June 6, 1944: Lest We Forget

Remembering D-Day: Frank Irgang's Etched in Purple

Omaha Beach, D-Day, June 6, 1944. The 29th goes ashore.
Omaha Beach today. France.

The following is the tentative final draft of a magazine article about my friend Frank Irgang and his experiences in World War Two as a medic and scout in the famed 29th Infantry Division. Story is copyrighted 2008 but please enjoy.

"When 23-year-old Frank Irgang returned from World War Two, he had the bone-tired, old-man look common to GIs who had seen heavy combat. His closest friends had been killed in action or were lying maimed in veterans’ hospitals. “An inventory of myself revealed a battered hulk, confused and restless,” he wrote. A 1945 photo of Frank as an MP in Berlin shows a war-weary man trying to smile.

He relived the war each night in his sleep, his nightmares filled with the ghosts of his comrades, of the maimed and dying he’d tended as a medic, of those he’d killed after becoming an infantry scout, and of the bodies of his comrades floating in the heaving sea off Omaha Beach on D-Day. Ensconced in a basement apartment on one of Idaho Falls’ numbered streets, Frank Irgang discovered that though he’d left the war, the war had not left him. Fortunately, his boss at Idaho Falls’ Daniger’s Furniture Store was a hardened World War One veteran who told of how he’d finally beaten his demons by writing his experiences down. He suggested Frank do the same. Each evening, Frank sat down with a lined tablet and let the words flow. It was, he says, “a catharsis”. The result is perhaps the finest infantryman memoir to come out of World War Two, Etched in Purple (Potomac Books, 2008. Reprint edition. Originally published by Caxton’s, Caldwell, Idaho in 1949).

When Etched in Purple came out in 1949, the Los Angeles Times called it “one of the most brutal war books published” and said that “Frank Irgang has succeeded in doing what at least a million others who served with the infantry during the war wished they could have accomplished.” The Cincinnati Enquirer called it “a taste of the brutal truth”. The small press run of 3,000 quickly sold out, and the book became a rare jewel that few Americans knew existed. In 2008, Etched in Purple was re-released by military publisher Potomac Books, available for the first time to a worldwide audience. This is the story of the man who wrote the book, and of the book itself, one of the greatest books ever to be written in Idaho Falls.

A native of Michigan, Frank Irgang was born in 1922 and raised during the Great Depression, a hardscrabble experience he credits with helping “the American soldier to beat the overwhelming odds he faced from time to time.” Before entering the Army, Irgang worked as a schoolteacher and a blast-furnace operator.

Drafted in 1942, Irgang received training as a medic, surgical technician, clerk-typist, psychologist, pontoon-builder, and finally as a heavy-bomber navigator. While in flight training at Santa Ana, California, he met his future wife, Virginia Daniger, at a USO dance. Virginia was from Idaho Falls, a 1943 graduate of Idaho Falls High School who had moved to California to attend Santa Ana Junior College. They were married before he shipped out. Santa Ana Army Air Base, California, during World War Two.

While in Santa Ana, “the order came through that we were preparing a full-scale invasion of Europe and that anyone with ground force training had to report,” Frank recalls. “They needed medics to support the invasion, so they gave me a seven-day furlough and then shipped me out to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where we got our shots and then headed for England.”

“We went over in April of ’44 in a convoy of ships as far as the eye could see. We ended up in a tent city at Bournemouth, England, somewhere in southern England, in big tents. All the roads, all the lanes, were loaded with half-tracks and tanks and equipment. You’d think the whole island of England was going to sink.”

“I was a replacement among thousands that had gathered for the invasion. I was assigned to the 175th Regiment of the 29th Division as a medic” The 29th had been rehearsing beach landings in England since fall of 1944. Before long, his new comrades were calling him ‘Doc’. Troops preparing to board ships on D-Day in Weymouth, England.

“On June 5, 1944, we boarded a troop ship at Weymouth, England. There were a couple thousand men on the ship. It took us across the channel until we were maybe 150 yards from the shore, then it lowered the nets. We scrambled down the nets into an LCI-Landing Craft Infantry—and then the landing craft circled until each unit was all on the water. All this time, we were being shot at.” An LSI similar to Frank's lands on a beach on D-Day.

“The 29th Division landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. The 175th landed about noon. The others had come in at around five or six a.m., and many of these men were dead and floating in the water.” Etched in Purple’s opening scenes follow seasick men plunging with full packs and equipment into the water as machine gun fire rakes the beach. When the men hit the beaches on D-Day, tens of thousands of water-logged packs of Chelsea cigarettes bobbed in the angry surf. Each man had been given a carton before boarding the invasion ships.

By the time the 29th had all come ashore on D-Day, casualties ran at 390 men killed, 511 wounded, and 27 missing. Among these were 19 men from the small Virginia town of Bedford.
The French have not forgotten. Omaha Beach in foreground, American Cemetery in background. France.
The following weeks saw the 29th engaged in fierce hedgerow fighting and in street-to-street combat in French towns. Afforded some protection by the red cross on his helmet, Frank struggled to treat the overwhelming number of wounded and dying men, often treating them under fire where they fell. An Army medic administers plasma to a wounded soldier in Sicily.

Shot through the hand in October of 1944, he was evacuated for treatment, but soon found himself thrust back into the front lines at the Battle of the Bulge, this time as an infantry scout, whose average life span could be measured in days or weeks. With a license to kill, and a burning anger at what he had seen, Frank often became one of the first Americans to enter contested towns and cities.
Fighting in sub-zero conditions during the Battle of the Bulge.

As the fierce fighting raged across France, Belgium and Germany, Frank found himself faced with the moral and ethical grayness of warfare. Prisoners on both sides were sometimes shot, as were civilians. A moment of great cruelty could be instantly followed by a moment of kindness, forgiveness and redemption.

Certain sights were etched into Frank’s memory, only to reappear in his book. A German tank drives on top of an American foxhole, locks one tread, and grinds the unfortunate Americans into the ground. A new GI fastens the strap on his helmet, only to have his neck broken by the concussion from an artillery shell. A buzz bomb hits a village, killing everyone in a three-block radius. A German pilot refuses to surrender to anyone of lesser rank. He is shot and a ring cut from his finger. Mere luck determines whether a man lives or dies. Every man feels as if his time is up, or past. Some of the injured manage to hang on despite gaping wounds and missing limbs. Men draw achingly close in battle, depending on each other and bonding in hardship, only to be wrenched apart by sudden and violent death.

In eleven months of fierce fighting, the 29th took heavy losses. 3,720 men were killed, 15,403 were wounded, 462 were missing, and 526 were captured. The total battle casualties ran 20,111 men out of a unit of 15,000. 8,655 non-battle casualties brings the total up to 28,776—a staggering casualty rate of nearly 200%, made possible by the fact that as men died, other fresh faces were thrown in to replace them, many of whom met a similar fate.

Trained as an MP after recovering from his injuries, Irgang spent time in Berlin at the end of the war. A photo of him taken in Berlin shows a man aged beyond his years, his smile belied by sad and haunted eyes.

“I took some notes during combat, but didn’t start to seriously write until I got home to Idaho Falls,” remembers Frank. “Virginia had moved back to Idaho Falls during the war. Housing was at a premium at that time. We lived in a basement apartment on one of the numbered streets. The home was owned by Eugene Pratt, who at the time was the superintendent of schools for Idaho Falls.”

Virginia showed Pratt several pages of Frank’s writing. Pratt was impressed and told Frank to type it up. Frank got a Montgomery Wards typewriter and typed the manuscript. Pratt took it to Caldwell, Idaho, to Caxton’s Printers, and showed it to the publisher, Frank Gibson.

“Gibson wasn’t sure about the book,” says Frank. “But he looked it over and about six weeks later I got a letter that said that with editing, we could get the thing published. One condition Gibson had was there could be no swearing and no sex.”

“The book came out in 1949. It sold 3,000 copies in the first printing. The original price of the book was $3.50. Over time, the book became more and more rare. Eventually, copies would go for two hundred dollars or more.”

Original book and dust jacket, Etched in Purple, Caxton Printers, Idaho, 1949.

Sometime in the nineties, the author of this article was shopping at the Idaho Falls Deseret Industries, and came across a worn purple hardback book. I noted it was a war memoir and that it had been signed by the author, Frank Irgang. I paid my forty-nine cents and took the book home and began reading. With the turning of each page I was more and more certain that I was reading a masterpiece. I tracked down Frank Irgang, who now lived in San Diego. A more recent photo of Frank.

We began a correspondence. Many years later, after my own book had been published, I suggested to Potomac Books that they look into re-publishing Etched in Purple. I sent one of my prized copies to Don Jacobs at Potomac. He read it and was awe-stricken by it as I had been, immediately negotiating with Frank for publishing rights. The book was re-released by Potomac Books in May of 2008. The Re-discovered classic infantry memoir, Etched in Purple (Potomac, 2008)

“I wrote… of my experiences and the experiences of my comrades with the hope that our witness of war’s senselessness might be known and recognized,” Frank explained to his publisher nearly sixty years ago. In the book’s final paragraph, he writes: “I looked at the lights (of New York Harbor) and…tears came to my eyes. ‘Welcome home; thanks for a job well done’. Yes, we had helped do the job, but many were not here who had given more. To them we should all be forever grateful. As long as I lived, I would never forget my brothers-in-arms, who fell like leaves from the trees among which they fought. They memory of them would stay with me forever and a day—it had been etched in purple.”

First Flag Ashore on D-Day

While touring the Pima Air Museum, I came across this flag, which is labeled as the first American flag to come ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day.

Frank Irgang's Etched in Purple Released by Potomac

The Twenty-Ninth Infantry goes ashore on D-Day. Frank was there. He tells about it in his book.

One of my most prized possessions, a signed, First Edition of Etched in Purple, published back in 1949 by Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho. Frank sent me the pristine dust jacket, over fifty years old.
The new edition of Etched in Purple. If I could write one book as good as this, I could die a happy man.

The book I consider to be the greatest memoir of World War Two was released yesterday by Potomac Books. Frank Irgang wrote Etched in Purple shortly after returning from his hellish tour of duty as a medic, and, after attrition killed many of his comrades, regular infantryman in the famed 29th Infantry Division. Frank landed on the Normandy beachhead on D-Day and fougth his way through Europe, through the Battle of the Bulge, before being wounded.

What makes Frank's book so special is that he pulls no punches in relating what happened, from D-Day onwards. One of the most disturbing scenes in the book involves a German woman pouring boiling water on a wounded American soldier, as Frank watches. What would you do?

Frank has become a good friend over the years. I have no qualms admitting that my friend is also one of my heroes and mentors. His book is better than anything I could ever attempt to write. It is, in my opinion and that of Potomac Books, a 're-discovered classic'.

Don't pass this book up. It will change you forever. Frank tells it like it was, and believe me, he also proves that, in the words of General Sherman, 'War is Hell'

Who were the 29th Division? Here are some facts from the net:

Some stats and history on the 29th Division

The 29th Division was reactivated on 3 February 1941 and departed for the United Kingdom on 5 October 1942 where it continued training in Scotland and England from October of 1942 up to June 1944 in preparation for the invasion of France.
Teamed with the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Division was in the first assault wave to hit the beaches at Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944. The division itself landed on Omaha Beach on the same day in the face of intense enemy fire but soon secured the bluff tops and went on to occupy Isigny on 9 June. The division cut across the Elle River and advanced slowly toward St. Lo, fighting bitterly in the Normandy bocage (hedge rows).
After taking St. Lo on 18 July, the division joined in the battle for Vire, capturing that strongly held city on 7 August. Turning west, the 29th took part in the assault on Brest from 25 August to 18 September.
After a short rest, the division moved to defensive positions along the Teveren-Geilenkirchen line in Germany and maintained those positions through October. (In mid-October the 116th Infantry took part in the fighting at the Aachen Gap.) On 16 November the division began its drive to the Ruhr, blasting its way through Siersdorf, Setterich, Duerboslar, and Bettendorf, reaching the Ruhr by the end of the month.
On 8 December, heavy fighting reduced Juelich Sportplatz and the Hasenfeld Gut. From 8 December 1944 to 23 February 1945, the division held defensive positions along the Ruhr and prepared for the offensive. The attack jumped off across the Ruhr on 23 February and carried the division through Juelich, Broich, Immerath, and Titz to Mönchengladbach on 1 March. The division was out of combat in March, however in early April the 116th Infantry helped mop up in the Ruhr area and on 19 April the division pushed to the Elbe River and held defensive positions until 4 May. Meanwhile, the 175th Infantry Regiment cleared the Kloetze Forest. After VE Day, the division was on military government duty in the Bremen enclave.
The 29th Infantry Division had spent 242 days in combat during campaigns in Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland and Central Europe, earning four Distinguished Unit Citations in the process. Two soldiers of the division were awarded the Medal of Honor. Also awarded were 44 DSCs, one DSM, 854 Silver Stars, 17 Legion of Merit, 24 Soldier's Medal and 6,308 Bronze Stars.

The 29th in Popular Culture
In the 1962 film The Longest Day much of the action of the 29th on Omaha Beach on D-Day is depicted, with assistant division commander Brigadier General Norman Cota portrayed by Robert Mitchum.
Close Combat, part of a Microsoft Series of wargames during the 1990s also portrayed the actions of the 29th Division from Omaha Beach to the capture of St. Lo.

In the 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan", many of the soldiers seen in the Omaha Beach sequence are from the 29th, identified by their shoulder insignias. Corporal Timothy E.Upham, for instance, is portrayed as a soldier serving with the 29th Infantry Division. Upham was drafted to serve with a squad from the 2nd Rangers. The 29th, along with the 1st Infantry Division, were grouped with a few companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion to storm Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944.

Order the book from Potomac here: http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=180789

Order the book from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Etched-Purple-One-Soldiers-Europe/dp/1597972045/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205633371&sr=8-1

Abandoned World War II C-47 Gets New Lease on Life

Nov. 20: French air mechanics dismantle a Douglas C-47 at Rajlovac airbase near Sarajevo, Bosnia.

AP-----A U.S. Air Force plane instrumental in saving Normandy from the Nazis during World War II has re-emerged in Bosnia and soon will be put on display as a war hero, the Houston Chronicle reported Monday.

The Douglas C-47 was found at an air base near Sarajevo, Bosnia, after a search that began last January. It will be shipped to a museum in Merville, Normandy, as a symbol of D-Day, the Chronicle reported.

Click here to read the Houston Chronicle report.

"We want to restore this plane to its original glory," Beatrice Guillaume, the administrator of a museum, told the Chronicle, "to explain the story of her crew members and how difficult it was for them to risk their lives to save a country they didn't know."

Nicknamed the “SNAFU Special,” the C-47 flew unarmed to a supposedly impenetrable German artillery battery to silence gunners for the D-Day invasion. It last was flown 13 years ago during Bosnia’s war for independence.

More on 'Etched in Purple' by Frank Irgang

I found the following book description online, and think it sheds light into the motivations and meaning of Potomac Books' upcoming re-release of Frank Irgang's classic 'Etched in Purple'. Enjoy.

The wartime experiences of Frank J. Irgang

Frank Irgang's personal record of his experiences as a combat infantryman of World War II has its beginning on the dawn of that famous day when the invasion troops landed in France.

We know the outer facts of that invasion - what was planned, how it was executed, and what happened - but what we do not know are the innermost thoughts of those crawling bits of humanity who fought their way across France and into Germany. What were they thinking? How did they meet the terror of each new day?

In this well-timed revelation of one infantryman's experiences are to be found the inner facts we have wanted to discover. And they are revealed truthfully and with a freshness of reality which it would be impossible to recapture unless the observations had been jotted down, as they were by Frank Irgang, soon after the events took place.

Frank's keen eye for seeing, his unliterary terseness, his sometimes blunt way of stating brutal truths, all contribute toward making this book more than one man's record of the war. In its unpretentiousness it says effectively and vividly what hundreds of other soldiers would have said had they found a means of expression.

ETCHED IN PURPLE The Caxton Press, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho, 1949

Young Frank Irgang, newly returned from the bloody fighting in Europe with the 29th Division.
A more recent picture of Dr. Frank Irgang, Professor, San Diego State University

Coming soon from Potomac Books.

Visit Frank's homepage at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/firgang/index.html

World War Two Glider Pilots--A Rare Breed

American and Allied glider pilots did much to help win the war in Europe. Their fragile planes, towed behind C-47s or other powered aircraft, were responsible for putting large numbers of infantry troops on the ground during major assaults. Pulled behind their tow-planes, these pilots often found themselves released early or off-course, often under fire, and had to put down wherever they could find an open space. Landings were dangerous and frequently fatal.

This Horsa glider crashed in France on D-Day, killing its pilot and passengers.

The following is quoted from the website of the World War Two Glider Pilots' Assocation (website at http://www.ww2gp.org/index.htm)

This is an excellent website and you could easily spend a few hours here learning about the bravery of the glider crews.

"American glider pilots, along with airborne forces, spearheaded all the major invasions, landing behind enemy lines in their unarmed gliders in Sicily, Normandy, Southern France, Holland, Bastogne, Rhine Crossing, Luzon in the Philippines, and Burma.

Gee....sounds like fun to me! Where do I sign up?

One veteran American glider pilot painted a vivid picture of the stark terror they experienced. "Imagine", he said, "flying a motorless, fabric-covered CG-4A glider, violently bouncing and jerking on a 11/16 inch thick nylon rope 350 feet back of the C-47 tow plane. You see the nervous glider infantrymen behind you, some vomiting, many in prayer, as you hedge-hop along at tree-top level instinctively jumping up in your seat every time you hear bullets and flak tearing through the glider. You try not to think about the explosives aboard. It's like flying a stick of dynamite through the gates of Hell."

A Waco glider underway, its tow-line visible to the left.

After D-Day, Allied forces attempted to recover as many of the gliders as they could. Here, a C-47 snatches the first glider to be picked up in France and returned for future use.

A museum mock-up of the interior of a Waco glider.

There were only about 6,000 American military glider pilots, all volunteers. They proudly wore the silver wings with the letter "G" superimposed on them. The brash, high-spirited pilots were not a bit bashful about letting everyone know that the "G" stood for "Guts".

American glider pilots were scheduled for "Operation Eclipse", the Allied airborne offensive planned to capture Berlin. But, the glory went, through political default, to Russian ground forces. They were spared an invasion of Japan when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima.
They suffered heavy casualties and their ranks have thinned through the years until now only about 1,400 are banded together in The National World War II Gliders Pilots Association with its headquarters at 21 Phyllis Road, Freehold NJ 07728. They are a vanishing breed. There will be no future generations of American military glider pilots. The Defense Department ended the military glider pilot program in 1952.

World War II Glider Pilots; none had ever been before and probably none will ever be again; a hybrid breed like jackasses with no need to reproduce themselves; definitely one of a kind understood only by themselves and some completely beyond understanding. A few more years and military glider pilots will be an extinct species remembered by few. But they did exist and were involved in some mighty important and exciting military actions in WWII. "

A salute to the brave glider crews of World War Two, and thank you for doing the tough job.

Brits Remember and Honor D-Day Veterans

Aviation historian John Havers sent me this write-up today about a special event in England honoring D-Day veterans. I reproduce it here in its entirety:

"Remembering D-Day and St Mere Eglise

It was from Upottery airfield, locally known as Smeatharpe, on the Blackdown Hills above Honiton, Devon, England, that the 81 Douglas C-47s of 439th TCG (91st, 92nd, 93rd and 94th Squadrons) took off for Normandy in the late evening of June 5th, 1944, led by Colonel Charles H Young. On board were paratroopers of 101st Airborne Division heading for a DZ near St Mere Eglise. Glider missions followed on 7th June, as well re-supply tasks during ensuing days.

During the past weekend of July 28th and 29th this long inactive airfield was temporarily re-opened so that a “Commemorative Gale”, organised by The South West Airfields Heritage Trust and the Blackdown Hills Radio Control Flying Club, could be held to raise funds for the establishment of permanent memorials at both the nearby Exeter International Airport and Culmhead airfield; Upottery already has a memorial. The principal aim of the day was to stage a re-enactment of a Gala Day held in July 1944 by the 439th TCG, which then consisted of field events from cycling to flying demonstrations.

Star of the weekend was undoubtedly C-47 315211 coded J8-B, a veteran of WW2 in Europe; quite a homecoming! This was shared with a Beech 18 in Royal Air Force SEAC colours, a N2S-5 Kaydat in US Navy colour scheme, two former British Army Austers, a former French Air Force Broussard and a number of modern light aircraft. Many outstanding radio controlled model aircraft were also flown throughout the day.

Re-enactment was very much a part of the event, with Jeeps and other former USAAF vehicles, encampments, as well as personnel appropriately dressed in the uniforms of the time and civilians in 1940s attire. A Service was held to remember all those that gave their lives flying from Upottery and to remind us all of the great sacrifice they made that we might be free today."

Sounds like great fun! I wish I could have been there, but through the efforts of John Havers, we can all enjoy that special day. Thanks, John!

Highly Recommended Reading on World War Two

Etched in Purple--The Greatest WWII Infantryman Story, by Frank Irgang

Technically, the story of an Army infantryman doesn't fit in a blog on World War Two airmen, but since it's my blog, I can break the rules.

Frank Irgang's Etched in Purple is my favorite book about the U.S. infantry in Europe in World War Two. Frank, who still teaches the occasional college class at San Diego State, landed on D-Day as a medic with the 28th Infantry. This unit took such heavy casualties that he ended up becoming a scout. He fought in the major battles of the European campaign, and saw some terrible things. After the war, he returned, and as part of his catharsis wrote his outstanding recounting of his experiences, Etched in Purple. The book was published by Caxton Printers in Caldwell, Idaho in 1948, and sold several thousand copies.

About ten years ago, I was in a thrift store when I came upon a copy of Etched in Purple, signed by Frank to its former owner in 1952. I bought it, read it, and the book touched me as few books have before or since. It is raw, honest, and disturbing. I tracked Frank down in California, wrote him, and we began a correspondence that has lasted to this day. Recently, I recommended Etched in Purple to my publisher, and it is currently being considered for re-issue. If this book is re-issued, it will be the proudest moment of my literary life. For I believe Etched in Purple is destined to become a classic.

Unfortunately, the book is out of print, and finding one is near-impossible. Let's hope for the best!