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‘A power far greater than luck’




Bill Allen describes his escape from death during the 1944 D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach. He was the guest speaker for the Dinner Exchange Club meeting on June 19. JASON M. REYNOLDS

Bill Allen describes his escape from death during the 1944 D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach. He was the guest speaker for the Dinner Exchange Club meeting on June 19. JASON M. REYNOLDS

Was it luck that saved World War II sailor Bill Allen from a gruesome death after his ship hit a mine, or was it a greater power? That was a question he was forced to confront in the aftermath of his rescue from the English Channel.

Allen shared some of his memories with the Dinner Exchange Club on June 19 at Through the Grapevine. Allen, 93, is a charter member of the club founded in 1951.

Allen’s experience was showcased on NOVA’s “D-Day’s Sunken Secrets,” which aired on PBS in 2014, two weeks before the 70th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion. He and his wife and daughters were flown to France to visit Normandy. They took a boat around the areas from the invasion. And Allen rode in a small submersible vessel to tour the wreckage of his LST.

Long voyage

Allen’s first trip to France was much longer than an airline flight.

He graduated from high school in 1943 and joined the United States Navy. The physical nature of boot camp was not too difficult because he had played basketball and other sports in school. Boot camp was helpful in teaching him to be responsible for himself and to keep his area of the barracks clean.

Allen went on to receive training to serve as a corpsman, learning about first aid, anatomy, how to work in a hospital and so forth.

He shipped out with 40 corpsmen on Landing Ship, Tank (LST) 523. The flat-keeled ships were amphibious vessels used for landing vehicles and troops on beaches during combat. His voyage, with about 100 additional ships, took him from New Jersey to New York to Halifax, Nova Scotia to Plymouth, England.

“Every time a swell came up, all you could see was ships,” he recalled.

Simple church service

The LST had “everything you needed but it had nothing extra,” he said, including no chaplain. So, one man created his own church service on the first Sunday by reading aloud from the New Testament. The service continued throughout the voyage.

The trip took four weeks. When they reached Plymouth, the area had been bombed out, Allen said. The English subjects’ spirits were low because Allied forces had just gone through the retreat at Dunkirk.

The corpsmen spent their time before the invasion training and preparing supplies. Allen recounted that it seemed to him the Navy would buy battleships but was very stingy in providing new medical supplies. The corpsmen reused syringes and “everything” else.

Omaha Beach

Once the Allied forces invaded Normandy, Allen’s LST approached Omaha Beach in the late afternoon. Allen shared the gruesome sights he witnessed as soldiers stormed the beach: some lost their footing coming off the LST ramps and drowned; others hit mines or were shot by snipers.

Allen and his fellow corpsmen spent the night loading casualties onto their ship and evacuated them the following day. One man on the ship was a licensed funeral director by trade and was assigned to the “death detail,” caring for the bodies of soldiers who died. Allen said he was “volunteered” to serve on the detail as well. Bodies that were “bloody, muddy” were cleaned up; the dog tags were checked; and they were wrapped in blankets and placed coolers.

“We didn’t do much medical work,” he said. “It was mostly … death work that we done.”

On its fourth trip, while waiting five miles from the beach for the tide to rise, the LST hit a mine. “It pretty much pulverized everything.” He described the grisly scene as men’s arms and legs were blown off.

Just several minutes prior, Allen and some other men who were talking had sat in a truck that was tied down on the ship, which shielded them from debris. Allen had to make a decision: stay on the ship as it went down and drown, or jump and drown.

A buddy came over in a life raft into which Allen jumped off the ship. They rescued four injured men, all that would fit into the raft.

Reflecting on God

Later, a small vessel rescued them and took them to a merchant ship. He and a buddy could not eat or sleep for a time. Allen said that on the first night of his safety he reflected on why he had been spared. He had been raised in the Methodist church and taught that God is good. Reliving the ordeal, he had trouble believing.

“I could have become an atheist very easily that day,” he said.

But he got to thinking. Did he find a life raft by luck? If he had not sat in the truck he would have been crushed. Was that luck?

“Everything that I would think negative I would think of something that had happened. Was that luck that had took care of me?

“Sometime before dawn, 74 years ago at night, I decided that luck hadn’t carried me that far. It had to be a power far greater than luck – it was God.”

Of 145 Navy personnel on LST 523, 117 died and 28 lived, Allen said.

“To me, the amazing thing was out of those 28, every one of us that had attended that little simple church service had gotten off,” he said.

“That’s the truth,” he added in a soft voice.

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