We are to land some time this morning. You can see the Navy ships firing toward shore. We heard over the loud speaker that the first wave of troops landed okay and we are waiting to go ashore. Planes came over and bombed the town and we have been bombed and strafed about five times this morning. One ship has been hit and it only took three and a half minutes to go down. We could watch the men dive overboard. It is now 11 am and we are still sweating it out. I’ll be glad to get ashore. Joe and I just came down stairs when the planes came over and dropped four bombs. They fell just short of our ship and it really jarred us. Not long after they were back again and two bombs hit right at the side of the ship and one in back. The sides felt like they were going out. Boy I hope we get off soon. This sweating it out is killing me. Again they were back and just missed us. We were then told that we would go ashore. It’s about 3:30 pm. We had a little trouble in loading off our LST onto an LCT. The pull type trailers were to long to maneuver around. Ross and I was the first truck ashore and we went right to the de-water proofing area. As we started to turn in we got stuck as the ground is very soft and marshy. We hooked two trucks up to pull us out but no success. We decided to stay all night and get pulled out in the morning. About 3:30 am Joe Iaccuzi came by with the bulldozer and he pulled us out. We went to the staging area and stayed there the rest of the night.
Your Son, ‘Chick’
