James W. Love

Jim Love was commissioned from ROTC in 1939 and entered active duty with the Army in 1940 as a second lieutenant and during the war served in the 38^th Infantry Regiment of the 2^nd Infantry Division, training in Texas, Louisiana, Wisconsin and, for several months before the invasion of Europe, in Northern Ireland and Wales. He landed on Omaha Beach on June 8 (D plus 2) and fought in Normandy, the Battle of Brest, the Battle of the Bulge and on the Rhine plain, crossed at Remagen and participated in the exploitation to Leipzig and the final assault into Czechoslovakia to Pilsen. He was awarded the Silver Star. After the war he remained in the Army, was posted in Japan, at Fort Monroe and as an instructor in the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, as an assistant to the assistant secretary of the Army, and as chief of staff at Fort Dix, N.J. He retired in 1972 as a colonel.

I was commander of the antitank company, 38^th Infantry Regiment in the 2^nd Infantry Division. I was fortunate compared to folks nowadays. I was a member of that regiment for over five years. Nowadays, you are lucky if you are a member of a division for one year.

At the time we are talking about, I had been in command of that company for better than two and a half years. We had shipped in 1943 from Staten Island to Northern Ireland where we spent seven months in miserable weather -- potato bread and lots of Brussels sprouts. In March of ‘44 we sailed down to Wales where we were for about seven weeks before we embarked from the port of Barry, which is near Swansea. We embarked on a Liberty ship about the third of June 1944. After three days, we heard over the radio that the Allies had landed on the 6^th of June, D-Day. We continued to sail until the night of six June. We were about opposite Omaha Beach.

On the morning of D Plus 1, the seventh of June, we were headed south across the English Channel. We were about one mile offshore headed for Omaha Beach. A beautiful clear day. We were on double British summer time. It didn’t get dark until about 11 p.m. Then it got light again about 2 or 3 in the morning. It is that far north.

We were not combat loaded. In other words, we were not on an LST – landing ship tank – or landing ship infantry. We were on a Liberty ship with all of our anti-tank equipment – nine 57-millimeter guns. We had the cannon company, which had six 105 short barreled howitzers and the regimental ammunition train -- the first day resupply – all below deck, which meant we would have to anchor somewhere off the beach and have a lighter come alongside.

We were about a mile offshore. We were in the right place. We had low-oblique photos where we could pick out our exact landing area. No question about it. We were headed in the right direction. It was either the battleship Arkansas or battleship Texas that was about half a mile off to our right and firing away. We could see there was no fighting on shore. The fighting on Omaha Beach was essentially over by evening of D-Day – that’s another story, of course.

Well, all of a sudden this Liberty ship took a right turn – to starboard – a 90-degree right turn, headed toward Utah Beach, 15 miles away. Well, one angry Captain Love, almost 27 years old, raced up onto the bridge. This was a complete Merchant Marine crew. The only Navy people we had on board was one Navy gun crew – a 3-inch gun mounted on the fantail. But the Navy ensign had nothing to do with the command of the ship.

This Merchant Marine captain was old enough to be my father. I raced up to the bridge and when I was about three feet from him I could smell second-hand bourbon. The guy was drunk. I said, “Captain, you’re going in the wrong direction. You should be back over here,” pointing back toward Omaha Beach. He mumbled something, incomprehensible, incoherent. And I said, “Will you please repeat that?” He said something about the ship ahead of him turned right, and “I’m supposed to be following him.”

About that time the first mate showed up – God bless him. He said, “Captain Love, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of that.” He and another crewman locked the captain in his cabin. I did not see the captain again as long as I was aboard the ship.

This was along toward noon on D Plus 1, the day we were supposed to be landing. All of our regiment was supposed to be ashore by the evening of D Plus 1. It took until early the next morning, steaming around, about the time we got headed back in the direction of Omaha Beach I got a slight idea of how many ships there were. I hadn’t any idea that there were that many ships in the world, but they all were right there. It was difficult to avoid colliding with some of those that were heading toward paydirt.

While all this was going on we were attempting to establish communication with the shore, but the Engineer Beach Brigade, which was the command post that was controlling incoming traffic, had been hit and all of the essential communications between shore and the ship was knocked out. We could not tell anybody about our plight. I think we anchored during the night, but I am not sure. We spent the night of D Plus 1-2 waiting for our chance to come ashore.

Finally, at about 2 p.m. on D Plus 2 -- we were already a day late! – we established contact by signal lamps, blinker lights. About 4:30 in the afternoon we finally got a rhino ferry – that’s a lighter – to come alongside and lashed onto the ship. We said, “OK, lets get unloaded.” That was about 5 o’clock. The Merchant Marine union – the longshoremen, or whatever you want to call ‘em – said, “It’s 5 o’clock!”

You talk about one mad infantry company commander!

They said, “We are east of a certain degree of longitude, that doubles our pay. We are in a combat zone, that triples our pay. And what’s more, it’s after 5 o’clock.” And we still had five hours of daylight in which to unload that ship.

Again the first mate came to my rescue. He said, “Damn it, my officers will unload you.” And the officers pulled up those hatch covers and they winched those vehicles -- guns, trailers, ammunition trucks -- onto the lighter. We finally got the lighter loaded just as it got dark, and away we went. On the blackest midnight I’ll ever remember, we ground ashore at Dog Green Beach, where we should have been 36 hours earlier. I had missed the first battle that my regiment was in when they had seized the town of Trevieres, about five miles inland from the beach late that day.

Later in the session, Colonel Love gave an illustrated talk on the Battle of the Bulge and his experiences in it.