War Stories

JC - When you were approaching the beach, what was going through your mind?

Col. Cross - “I was thinking that I had actually made it across the English Channel without getting sick! I thought ‘My mother didn’t raise me to be here, to be a soldier.’

From Utah beach we had to fight our way up to Cherbourg. The 9th Infantry Regiment was on our left and the 1st Infantry was on our right. We were all going up the Cherbourg Peninsula. We were in the center and had been fighting our way up from Utah Beach. It was sometime in July when we finally got outside of Ft Deroule. I think Ft Deroule fell on the 25th of june.

Shortly after we went in from Utah Beach, a strong channel storm came in a wiped out all of the supply capability The most precious thing I could think of at times was to simply have a clean, dry pair of socks.