Railroaders' Nostalgia > Did Any of You Guys Work Ever With a D-Day Vet?

To my knowledge, I never did.

We did have an engineer whose father landed on Utah Beach on D-Day. Another guy's great uncle was in a Navy ship close off shore.

When I was a young fireman, I worked with a lot of WW2 vets.  At some point, us young guys realized it was best not to ask about their service - unless they brought the subject up.  Some never brought it up or wanted to talk about.  I understood that.  Sometimes the railroad can be a place you can go to  forget about other things.  Sometimes we did know about their service, medals, and heroism until they died.  We applied the same to the vets returning from Vietnam at the time.

I did work with one WW1 vet.  He was the best passenger engineer I ever fired for and a hero to me.

I worked with a Normandy vet. A van driver who was a Ranger. He never really brought it up or talked about it, or anything of WWII.

My school superintendent growing up was a 101ist who jumped on 5 June into a soup sammich. He never said much about it either.

That was one hell of a generation that is almost gone, I really do miss them.

Tempus Fugit.

Regards

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I worked with several. One was a trainmaster at a local paper mill. He went over Omaha on 6 June. A diesel shop foreman had been in the 1'st ID through North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and was in reserve off the coast on 6 June. He went ashore on 7 June, was captured and escaed twice before the end of the war. A distant cousin jumped with the 82nd at Sicily, France and Holland. Another trainman jumped Sicily and France. And finally an engineer,  who was working for the SAL prior to being drafted, was told we can put you in a rr unit and you will be a fireman. His reply was I'll jump out of an airplane before I fire for anybody. He was in the hospital in England D-Day with poison ivy aquired on a practice jump, otherwise he would have been there.
There could not have been a better trainmaster anywhere than that one at Union Camp paper mill. I heard him say he planned on playing golf every day. If any foreman complained about not getting a switch, he would be told. That would interfere with his golf game, and you would have saddle sores from him riding you.

They were all good men and a pleasure to work with. 

A magnificent generation.

Sam
 

I worked with two engineers who were at Pearl Harbor on December 7Th 1941.

My dad was with the Army Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific and my uncle was in Patton's Third Army in North Africa, Sicily and Europe.
Neither one talked about the war much, especially to us kids. About the only place they talked about it was to their buddies down at the American Legion and VFW bar.

   We had a clerk in Yuma who went by the nickname "Coyote."  I did find out that he was a paratrooper who landed behind enemy lines a day before the D-Day landings.  He won several medals for that event, but he never wanted to talk about it.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO.

Worked with several vets of Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, DDay, Sicily, South Pacific etc. A train master on the SP that survived the Port Chicago explosion. As I recall not one was very talkative about the horrors that they experienced.

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When I was growing up in Webster Groves, Mo., I was a hockey player and the man who ran the local municipal rink was also the town fire chief, Fred Entrikin. Later in life, he allowed me, during college to ride as a volunteer with the city's paid department. We never knew anything about him other than he had been the town fire chief forever. He administered first aid to me on several occasions when errant hockey pucks found places on my head not protected by helmets. We never knew about his service in WWII until his death in 2004. And he never mentioned any of it around the rink.

Fred was a veteran of WWII having served in the U.S. Army Fifth Ranger Battalion. He was honored for bravery in combat which began on D-Day at Normandy Beach...one of the 90 Rangers who survived the taking of Pointe du Hoc...included the Battle of the Bulge, and ended in Eastern Europe. Fred received a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. 

We never knew we had a genuine hero driving the Zamboni or directing emergency scenes as fire chief. And I think he wanted it that way.
 

A lot of Vietnam Vets too.  But that is another story.  Young people today have no idea what that meant.  Having skin in the game with a military Draft in place.  I knew some railroaders were exempt from the Draft during WW2   Quite a few railroad careers interrupted on behalf of Uncle Sam during the Vietnam era.  Sphogger.  

To my knowledge I don't believe I ever worked with a WW2 veteran on the railroad? I however worked for a WW2 veteran every day when he told me to clean my room or mow the lawn. My father landed D Day plus one in France, I wish I could remember the Infantry Division he was in which went To VE day across a number of countries.