Memorial stirs memories for Coast Guard veteran
by ALLEN BLAIR - Independent, September 2006
WURTLAND — Tommy Harbour couldn’t believe it.
“I was at Utah Beach this June and there sat No. 4 out in front of the museum.”
His boat. The PA33-4.
The landing craft he crewed in 1944, on D-Day, as tens of thousands of Allied Forces landed on the Normandy coast to push the invading Germans back through France.
Soon after, Harbour found out about another landing craft. A sister ship docked now at the Greenup County War Memorial here.
And, again, he couldn’t believe it.
“That’s rare to have a boat like that around,” he said. “It’s the first one I’ve seen in the U.S. since World War II.”
Bill Kelly of Boyd County, a fellow veteran, first told Harbour about it as the two became acquainted at Huntington’s VA Hospital.
He sparked Kelly’s interest in the boats, although the infantryman never set foot in one really.
The Army shipped him from the states directly to Normandy where a rope ladder from an LST put him on Utah Beach, three or four months after Harbour.
They traded stories. Talked of ships, guns, tanks, tools of the war trade. Kelly snapped a few pictures at the Wurtland memorial.
Tuesday, they finally gathered there — beside the grey and battered Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, or LCVP.
And Harbour walked up its steel ramp, to stand where he once manned a station, on a boat just like it, 63 years ago.
“I wanted to tie this boat and him together,” Kelly said. “I thought it would make a good story.”
It does.
“I was at Utah Beach this June and there sat No. 4 out in front of the museum.”
His boat. The PA33-4.
The landing craft he crewed in 1944, on D-Day, as tens of thousands of Allied Forces landed on the Normandy coast to push the invading Germans back through France.
Soon after, Harbour found out about another landing craft. A sister ship docked now at the Greenup County War Memorial here.
And, again, he couldn’t believe it.
“That’s rare to have a boat like that around,” he said. “It’s the first one I’ve seen in the U.S. since World War II.”
Bill Kelly of Boyd County, a fellow veteran, first told Harbour about it as the two became acquainted at Huntington’s VA Hospital.
He sparked Kelly’s interest in the boats, although the infantryman never set foot in one really.
The Army shipped him from the states directly to Normandy where a rope ladder from an LST put him on Utah Beach, three or four months after Harbour.
They traded stories. Talked of ships, guns, tanks, tools of the war trade. Kelly snapped a few pictures at the Wurtland memorial.
Tuesday, they finally gathered there — beside the grey and battered Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, or LCVP.
And Harbour walked up its steel ramp, to stand where he once manned a station, on a boat just like it, 63 years ago.
“I wanted to tie this boat and him together,” Kelly said. “I thought it would make a good story.”
It does.
---
Harbour, of Milton, 81 years young and a Coast Guard veteran, remembers well his first days aboard the USS Bayfield.
“I found out right off my part in being in war was being on one of these small ... boats,” he said.
The Bayfield, like many naval transport vessels, carried a complement of LCVPs or Higgins boats, named after their Louisiana designer.
They were specially made to float in shallow water, to make beach landings.
A crew of three could carry three dozen soldiers into battle aboard the 18,000-pound, 36-foot craft.
“We had a coxswain, a motor mac and a seaman,” he said. “I was the motor mac.”
Harbour stood next to the big six-cylinder engine in the boat’s aft section, directly across from the coxswain, or pilot.
“I raised and lowered the (front) ramp,” he said. He also watched the engine’s “sand trap,” among other duties.
“Mine had a smoke pot on it, as we called it,” he added. “Just before they went over the sides in southern France we’d light ’em.”
The smoke cover helped as the crew piloted the boat onto enemy beachheads defended by German or Japanese soldiers who were usually shooting down from cliffs above, like at Omaha Beach — one of the bloodiest landing sites of D-Day.
“We hit it at 7 o’clock,” Harbour said. “How come me to be on Omaha Beach on the way to Utah?”
Well, as they waited several miles out early that June 6, coordinating officers in a nearby ship pulled them out of line, and sent them onto Omaha first, he said.
His crew would also make landings at Utah, and at Saint-Raphael two months later.
“After that we took a load of casualties, then we headed back to the states,” Harbour said.
The Bayfield added “quad 40s,” or anti-aircraft guns designed to take down Japanese warplanes, took on 1,800 Marines and headed through the Panama Canal toward Hawaii, he said.
Harbour’s boat would eventually make combat landings at Iwo Jima.
“On day two and three, we hauled in flame-thrower fluid, mortar shells and hand grenades.”
And they landed at Okinawa, although it came in a roundabout manner.
“We circled and circled and circled that island,” he said. “Several days later, we landed troops on the other end.”
They found out afterward they had served as decoys, simulating a south coast landing to draw attention away from actual landings at the Hagushi beaches. On April Fool’s Day.
“That shows you our commanders were way ahead of the Japanese in their strategy.”
In between landings, crewmen of the LCVPs sometimes spent day and night aboard their boats, Harbour tells.
“I slept on her many a night,” he said, grinning.
Rather that than slipping to a bunk two decks below where a torpedo could wipe you out, he explained.
On duty, meals and such things came when they could, often impromptu.
“For breakfast sometimes I’d take the engine hatch off and take C rations ... heat the bacon and eggs on the manifold.”
Each landing craft the Bayfield carried had its own berth, moved back and forth from the ocean by boom and pulley, Harbour said.
“The ships would drop nets into our boats and the troops would come down with a rifle and a pack on their back, no life jacket,” he said.
Harbour laughed, telling how he told friends at the VA, “You guys were just lucky you even made it to the battlefield.”
If you fell off the nets with no life jackets you’d probably drown, or get crushed between ships, he said.
“And you had three teenagers operating the boat — I was 18, the pilot was 18 and the other guy was 17.”
---
After the war, and long past Harbour’s teenage years, the Bayfield continued her military service.
She ferried returning World War II soldiers, carried occupation troops to Korea at that time, and journeyed to Bikini Atoll for atomic bomb tests.
She briefly returned to the Atlantic Fleet before full-fledged hostilities in Korea marked her return to the Pacific in the 1950s.
In the end, the Bayfield and its LCVPs earned four battle stars from World War II, four from the Korean Conflict and two from Vietnam.
She was decommissioned in 1968, then sold in September 1969, and scrapped.
Likely its complement of landing craft landed in the scrap heap, too.
“I’m telling you this is a collector’s item,” Harbour said Tuesday.
“If you don’t think so, look at France, out in front of the museum at Utah Beach,” he said.
The museum where this spring he lifted a hand to touch his old boat, his home away from home in wartime.
The museum he told his buddies about, who brought him here.
To connect the dots between a world-changing day in 1944, an ocean away, and a somber memorial in Greenup County, Kentucky.
Harbour, of Milton, 81 years young and a Coast Guard veteran, remembers well his first days aboard the USS Bayfield.
“I found out right off my part in being in war was being on one of these small ... boats,” he said.
The Bayfield, like many naval transport vessels, carried a complement of LCVPs or Higgins boats, named after their Louisiana designer.
They were specially made to float in shallow water, to make beach landings.
A crew of three could carry three dozen soldiers into battle aboard the 18,000-pound, 36-foot craft.
“We had a coxswain, a motor mac and a seaman,” he said. “I was the motor mac.”
Harbour stood next to the big six-cylinder engine in the boat’s aft section, directly across from the coxswain, or pilot.
“I raised and lowered the (front) ramp,” he said. He also watched the engine’s “sand trap,” among other duties.
“Mine had a smoke pot on it, as we called it,” he added. “Just before they went over the sides in southern France we’d light ’em.”
The smoke cover helped as the crew piloted the boat onto enemy beachheads defended by German or Japanese soldiers who were usually shooting down from cliffs above, like at Omaha Beach — one of the bloodiest landing sites of D-Day.
“We hit it at 7 o’clock,” Harbour said. “How come me to be on Omaha Beach on the way to Utah?”
Well, as they waited several miles out early that June 6, coordinating officers in a nearby ship pulled them out of line, and sent them onto Omaha first, he said.
His crew would also make landings at Utah, and at Saint-Raphael two months later.
“After that we took a load of casualties, then we headed back to the states,” Harbour said.
The Bayfield added “quad 40s,” or anti-aircraft guns designed to take down Japanese warplanes, took on 1,800 Marines and headed through the Panama Canal toward Hawaii, he said.
Harbour’s boat would eventually make combat landings at Iwo Jima.
“On day two and three, we hauled in flame-thrower fluid, mortar shells and hand grenades.”
And they landed at Okinawa, although it came in a roundabout manner.
“We circled and circled and circled that island,” he said. “Several days later, we landed troops on the other end.”
They found out afterward they had served as decoys, simulating a south coast landing to draw attention away from actual landings at the Hagushi beaches. On April Fool’s Day.
“That shows you our commanders were way ahead of the Japanese in their strategy.”
In between landings, crewmen of the LCVPs sometimes spent day and night aboard their boats, Harbour tells.
“I slept on her many a night,” he said, grinning.
Rather that than slipping to a bunk two decks below where a torpedo could wipe you out, he explained.
On duty, meals and such things came when they could, often impromptu.
“For breakfast sometimes I’d take the engine hatch off and take C rations ... heat the bacon and eggs on the manifold.”
Each landing craft the Bayfield carried had its own berth, moved back and forth from the ocean by boom and pulley, Harbour said.
“The ships would drop nets into our boats and the troops would come down with a rifle and a pack on their back, no life jacket,” he said.
Harbour laughed, telling how he told friends at the VA, “You guys were just lucky you even made it to the battlefield.”
If you fell off the nets with no life jackets you’d probably drown, or get crushed between ships, he said.
“And you had three teenagers operating the boat — I was 18, the pilot was 18 and the other guy was 17.”
---
After the war, and long past Harbour’s teenage years, the Bayfield continued her military service.
She ferried returning World War II soldiers, carried occupation troops to Korea at that time, and journeyed to Bikini Atoll for atomic bomb tests.
She briefly returned to the Atlantic Fleet before full-fledged hostilities in Korea marked her return to the Pacific in the 1950s.
In the end, the Bayfield and its LCVPs earned four battle stars from World War II, four from the Korean Conflict and two from Vietnam.
She was decommissioned in 1968, then sold in September 1969, and scrapped.
Likely its complement of landing craft landed in the scrap heap, too.
“I’m telling you this is a collector’s item,” Harbour said Tuesday.
“If you don’t think so, look at France, out in front of the museum at Utah Beach,” he said.
The museum where this spring he lifted a hand to touch his old boat, his home away from home in wartime.
The museum he told his buddies about, who brought him here.
To connect the dots between a world-changing day in 1944, an ocean away, and a somber memorial in Greenup County, Kentucky.
