Frank DeVita, USCG, WWII, Omaha Beach, Okinawa

Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Frank Davida, a Coast Guard veteran of World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters. Mister Davida crewed one of the boats bringing ground forces ashore at Omaha Beach in the early morning hours of June sixth, nineteen forty four, better known, of course, as

I first volunteered for the Air Force as a bully, go you know together, and I took all that says and I filled because of peripheral vision. So then I joined the Navy. I passed all the tests they wanted and it says fine, come back in six weeks. I wanted to go immediately, So next door was the Coast Guard. That's how I became a coast Guard.

When Davita's mother found out that he had joined the Coast Guard, she was overjoyed.

And when I joined the Coast Guard, my mother was very happy. She thought I'd be patrolling the beaches and Conia.

Six weeks later, I was the wrong way to Europe.

Instead of being assigned to guard the US coast, he was assigned to the crew of a troop transport ship, the USS Samuel Chase.

My job originally I was a gunners mate. I was in charge of four twenty millimeter anti aircraft guns on the stern of the ship, but during invasions, I was on the Higgins boat going into the beach.

Due to the high demand for sailors, the Navy had given the Coast Guard the responsibility of manning the thousands of landing craft that would bring the troops ashore during invasions. Frank Davida and thousands of other men who had joined the Coast Guard expecting an easier assignment, were in for a rude awakening. Davida deployed with his ship to England in nineteen forty three in preparation for the impending invasion

You know, we had twelve hundred troops aboard my ship from the big Red one, the first Division, and the day of the invasion, we made a big mistake. We fed the troops bacon and eggs and everything you could think of.

That was a big mistake.

If you know anything about going in battle, the Russians used to go in battle with a heart attack and a glass of water or something like that. We overfed the troops. It was the worst thing they could ever do because they all got seasick, every one of them.

After feeding the troops breakfast, it was time to head to shore. DaVita remembers how he felt when the time for the landing had come.

I was scared because I knew there was going to be a lot of casualties on the beach, and we ended up with two thousand casualties on my beach.

Omaha Beach, we.

Were the worst of the the five stars.

We were the worst. Omaha Beach were the worst.

There were five landing beaches selected by the Allied generals for the invasion. Gold, Juno and Sword beaches in the east were selected as the British and Canadian landing areas, with Utah and Omaha beaches in the west selected for the Americans. Omaha was the key to the success of the invasion, as it connected the Americans at Utah with the British and Canadians at Gold, Juno and Sword. If Omaha could not be taken, the other beaches would be cut off and the Germans would be able to crush

At four o'clock in the morning, we started dropping our boats in the water.

We had twenty six takings boats.

We circled the ship one time, supposed to be good luck, and we headed towards the beaches. We were eleven miles out because the Germans had a gun called the eighty eight, which is the best gun in the war, and had ranged at ten miles. So all the transports were eleven miles out, which was very good for them, not for us, because it took us two hours to get to the beach.

And in the water going to the beach were mines.

Made out of glass of plastic, and you call to see them in the water, you know a couple of boats, not from my ship. Well, a couple of boats hit the mines and they got killed.

DaVita still remembers how the soldiers on his boat felt as they approached the enemy coast.

They didn't realize they were going to their death.

They were singing and talking and laughing, telling jokes until they get fired.

As the landing craft approached the beach, more and more obstacles came into view. The Germans, under the command of Field Marshal Irwin Rammel, had littered the beaches with obstacles designed to sink landing craft hamper the movement of tanks and funnel troops into prepared killing zones. DaVita vividly remembers the moments before he dropped the ramp on his Higgins boat and the many horrors he witnessed once he did.

We couldn't get on the beach because there was obstacles in the water, coursed beams with metal and it was mine and along the beach the Germans had thirty three machine guns and forty two's as far as one hundred sixty rounds per minute. So my job, originally, I'm a gunner's mate, so I was supposed to be posting a machine gun on the boat about three or four weeks before the invasion, they took my gun away.

If you ask me why, I don't know.

So consequently, instead of the machine guns, they give me the job of dropping the ramp.

You know, in the front of the boat.

The boat is made out of wood, but in the front of the boat they have this ramp like a garage door ramp, and it's made it two or three inch metal, so it could be stand with stand probably either a rifle or a machine gun. So when we got close enough to the beach, we we only go about two hundred yards on the beach.

That's that's the closes we could get.

And the machine guns opened fire on us, and uh, the bullets were bouncing off.

The ramp cause it was metal. It was up.

But I knew eventually I had to drop the ramp and then the bulls instead of hitting the ramp, they would come into the bull So the cocks says to me, dropped the ramp. I never heard him because the roar of the cannons, two big diesel engines in the back.

Of the bar. Never heard him.

Then the second time he says to me, dropped the ramp, and I froze for a few seconds because I didn't want to die. And I knew once I dropped that ramp bus and then he said to me, He says, God damned defeat had dropped the eff and ramp, so I had no choice. I dropped the rent. The machine guns opened. That fire killed about fourteen fifteen troops that were in the front of the boat. Now my where I was, there was a crank lower and and raised the rent.

I was about three quarters the way back.

Uh.

I had soldiers in front of me. They were might pick. They were absorbing the bullets that would come to me, you know. But I had two stragglers. They didn't wanna die, so they didn't wanna get the other troops to go and forward. They stayed with me. They thought by staying with me they'd be safe. Unfortunately, by staying with me, they would drawing fire from the health and helped me. There was two guys. One guy was about four feet away from me. The other guy was about two feet

He died. It was just a little boy, just a little boy.

So the Coxson says, pick up the ramp because we're getting a lot of flock from the hills and from the machine guns on the beach. So he says to me, raised the ramp. So I pulled the handle. The ramp would not go up. Pulled it a second time. The ramp would not go up.

So I put on orto we go up. So my job.

There was probably maybe fifteen guys still alive on that boat. My job was to protect these guys with the ramp. So I I couldn't see the ramp from where I was because all these dead bodies in front of me. So I had to do something I didn't wanna do. I was calling over the dead bodies and asked 'em my f for Mike, for them to forget this. They were dead, and I'm saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So I climbed over the dead bodies and I started going through rent and all of a sudden, one guy came out.

They never got out of the boat and they were on the ramp.

Yeah, plus the weight of the soldiers and he sold that night the pounds on his backpack so the ramp would not go up. So this other guy and myself, I pointed to his belt and we grabbed his bolt, and by step by step by step, we pulled them into the the two boys that were dead into the boat.

Then he says to me, RA raised the ramp.

So without the two guys, when I had to own a pilot, it came up by itself anyhow, So you know the Germans are very diabolical. They know how to kill people. Besides the mines and the machine guns, the telephone poles on top of the telephone pole was at mine. It wasn't screwed in or nailed in. It was just sitting there. So if you happened to tap the telephone pole, that mine would come in your boat. We were scared of the telephone poles. M So anyhow, the cock the

Closer to this shore, a little closer this shore.

So we had it for my boat white ship rather And then we saw this white ship with a big red course center.

It's a hospital ship.

So instead of going through our ship, we went to the hospital ship cause we had a lot of wounded.

Uh my board badly wounded.

And when we got to the hospital ship, there was a ramp on the back and two guys from the hospital ship got busted 'em. They jumped into my boat and they did something we couldn't do. They were peeling the dead off to get to the wounded. I I don't remember, except I was like an old shock at that time. I don't remember if they got five, six, I don't know how many. But they got these guys and they put 'em in the hospital ship. At least

On the back of my ship, Dad dropped a sled.

A sled is like a garage door, a big garage door, and we would put the dead and wounded on there, and then the crank would take him on board. Shit, So somebody yelt through a clax at home. I want one man from each boat to come up to be interviewed or not interviewed, because he figured maybe we could help the next wave. So I got aboard the sled and I went up and and I was interviewed by uh, a navy navy guy and a big army guy like

So that's what I did.

So then after I was interviewed, see my boat already I pulled away to twenty eight. So I'm waiting for another boat and I'm standing on the deck and nobody's around me because I stunk the high heaven. My uniform was covered with blood and puke. So I'm standing by myself. And I said to myself, the way I wanna go back into the belly of the beast. If they said machine, I didn't wanna die. So I thought about it for a while, and I said to myself, if I don't go,

He had no chance. You know.

It was flat like a pull table, no place to die. You can't think in sand, and they were gonna be killed.

So fist. So, like I said, I was a little bit of a shock.

Thanks to coastguardsmen like Frank Davida, thousands of American troops made it ashore on Omaha Beach. However, those who survived the initial torrent of bullets and advanced across the beach, were still unable to scale the bluffs beyond the beach. Thousands of men from the first and twenty ninth Infantry Divisions were pinned to the ground behind a small sand

There was five destoyers all along, but the lead Desjoyer was the Frankfurt, and then one or two other joys. The Sadly was there in the mcgook. So the three of them came in at the same time. When you attack an enemy, you attacked his nose, because there's the smallest silhouette. He did that, and he came so close to shore. You know, our boats can go on the beach, a Destoyer has a keel.

They can't get too close.

He was insand so then he did something I've never seen done before. This guy was willing to sacrifice his life and his boat and all his men because he wanted to hun help these guys on the beach. So he took his boat that was facing this way and he turned his sideways, exposing his beam to the eighty eights. The reason he did that destroy has four five inch guns.

Out those guys on the on on.

The slope, and right then there the bouts started changing.

One by one. The German guns began to all silent. However, the battle for Omaha Beach was not yet one. Small groups of American troops began scaling the bluffs, all the while dodging a torrent of German machine gun and rifle fire. After hours of brutal combat, the German beach defenses gradually fell to the American forces. As the battle on shore began to move away from the beach, da Vida and the coastguardsmen had even more difficult work to do.

By the fifth wave, we ran out of troops, so we started taking the twenty ninth division, because the twenty ninth division was on Utah, and Utah at that time was clean, so they swung over to help the first division. That's the first five we ran out of troops and we had to do something else. Instead of going into the beach, we started to take the dead and the wounded off the beach. We really get in the water. I weighed one hundred and twenty five pounds. I couldn't

Why do I know that.

Because I had a good friend of mine, John Ohler, who was a quartermaster, and his job was to put the bodies in the body bigs, and he dispensed three hundred eight dead body bigs.

The battle for Omaha Beach ultimately claimed the lives of more than twenty four hundred American servicemen, but by the end of the day, more than thirty four thousand troops had landed on the beach and advanced inland. Securing the Omaha Beach had proved vital to the ultimate success of D Day. And it was like Frank Davida who brought the soldiers ashore. After the landings were complete, DaVita and his boat returned to their ship.

They brought my boat up. I don't remember what boat it was, cause the twenty eight was gone. They brought my boat up and I looked at that boat. It looked like Swiss chefs the machines. I destinated it, and I'm saying to myself, how do anybody live off that boat?

Right? So I got aboard ship.

Aboard the ship, yeah, and I'm waiting.

I'm waiting. I'm waiting.

And the captain was so good for the name was Captain Fish. He understood what we had gone through. So after we took these two hundred date bodies and the wounded, I don't know how many wounded we were. When I'm aboard the ship and we're going towards Southampton, I'm all by myself. They announced it was a loud speaker, the cheese, sandwiches and coffee for the crews that went into the beach. So everybody went down to the medical. I didn't wanna go. First of all, I stunk to having I haven't and

And how come I'm still alive? How come I'm still alife? So he was a web tech. Is probably ten eleven o'clock.

I forget the time, and I all alone, and I looked around to see if any of my mates are with me.

Nobody was there.

But when I turned around, all the dead bodies, the two hundred eight bet dead bodies like a quarter would. I started to cry and I cried myself to sleep. And the next morning, when we pulled into Southampton, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I think it was lit at the groove, I'm not sure. He said, the Vita, get up, we have to unload the dead in the wounded.

Frank DaVita and the USS Samuel Chase never returned to Normandy, but his wartime service had only just begun. Coming up on Veterans Chronicles will detail the rest of Davita's service, much of it half a world away against a different.

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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. This week we're sharing the story of Frank Davida, a Coast Guard veteran of World War Two who served in both the European and Pacific theaters and crewed a Higgins boat at Omaha Beach in the early hours of June sixth, nineteen forty four. After taking Allied troops ashore on D Day, Frank Davida and the crew of the US S. Samuel Chase shipped

After all the horror of the two invasions in France, we thought we were going home. Then the announs of the wild speakers, get your gear in order. We're going to the Pacific. And I didn't make the actual invasion of the Philippine Islands, but we did bring replacement schiops into the Philippine, so we got credit for an invasion.

In October of nineteen forty four, General Douglas MacArthur and the American sixth Army landed on Lette and the Philippines as part of the Pacific island hopping campaign. As American forces inched closer and closer to Japan, the fighting grew in brutality, both on land and at sea, where the Japanese deployed a new weapon, the Kamakazi.

And then from there we went up to Okinaw and I was in Okanaho when the Kama came over and the Kama Kazis would sink a boat after the boat. David won my boat. My boat was only a transport. They wanted destroys and the aircraft carries.

While the brutal fighting on Okinawa itself raged for nearly three months from April until June nineteen forty five, Kamakazi's inflicted huge casualties on the supporting fleet. Four nine hundred and seven American sailors were killed during the Okinawa campaign, almost all of them as a direct result of Kamakazi attacks, making the Battle for Okinawa the deadliest battle in US Navy history. Fortunately, Frank Davida made it out unscathed.

So after the Kamakazis left, I had did twice when the kami Kaze twice, I was there then moving back to Pearl Harbor. And on the way to Pearl Harbor, we had a coral reef and we put a seventeen foot dish in the hull of the ship. You know the Titanic. The reason they sank they didn't close the hatches. So our guys especially trained for that. They closed the hatches on this one place where the water was coming

I run to.

My house was about a mile and a half from the subway where I got off. I ran all the way home. I wanted to see my mother. My father was at work, my brother was away, my kid brother was in school.

I didn't know what to do. I said, went next door.

A woman's name was Missus Bocher, and I said, Missus Boscher, where's my mother?

Have something?

You know, I'll tell youse I have something. The I said, no, I can't e where's my mother. She's at the church rolling bandages. So I ran to the church. It was about a mile a mile and a half away and they opened the door was like a big gymnasium, and I'm facing these women. They were in a big circle. M My mother had her back to me, but the people who were looking at me, they were like that. You know, my mother didn't know what's going on. She turned around and she saw me fainted it away, Oh

After going a wall, Frank Davida and the USS Samuel Chase sailed back into the Pacific, this time to Japan itself as part of the occupation forces. It was in that assignment that he found something in common with the Japanese people.

I was in the occupation of Japan for about eight months. When I was in Japan, a little Japanese woman by five feet talk. She walked up to me first day bowt like this, and then she says, I wanna thank you. I said, why are you thanking me? She's the war's over. You know, it's the big people who make wars, not the common people. They're the ones who get hurt.

Even now, seventy seven years later, the memories of Davita's time in combat still haunt him.

And let me tell you something. If somebody in battle says they weren't scared, they were scared, they're lying. You gotta you gotta be scared, you know. I I I was on the on the boat when the machine cause I had the machine guns. Looks like a swarm of egg hungry beets. One guy went down, Yep, the guy went down, is the next one mine?

You're scared?

I relive it every day in my life. Not the other battles. But the day was the worst.

I mean when I left after the fifteen trip and there was.

Two thousand dead bodies on the beach, two thousand.

You got to be scared. Anybody tells you they're not scared, they're lying.

And Frank Devita still remembers the men he saw on Omaha Beach all those years ago, and he says, those who paid the ultimate price there deserved the greatest honor.

I'm not a hero. A lot of people call me a hero. I'm not a hero.

I'm a survivor. There's a cemetery up in France in normany Omaha which overlooks the cemetery. In that cemetery is nine four hundred kiss in the ground. Those are my heroes. They their life of the country. They were my hero.

Frank Davida is a veteran of the US Coast Guard and a veteran of World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters. He crewed one of the landing crafts in the early horrific moments of D Day off Omaha Beach. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow