Veteran clips

Jacques Reboul's photos for Livingbattlefield

Who better to tell a story than those who were there? We are proud to introduce some of the heroic veterans from The American Road to Victory series.




 Veteran Earl Norwood, of North Carolina, recalls sobering memories in the film, The Americans on D-Day, airing on PBS stations across America this summer. He was seventeen years old as he piloted a landing craft off Omaha Beach, on D-Day. Earl came in on the second wave of the landings.

“When the transport door dropped I watched two men get cut in half by machine guns firing from the beach. During the invasion I made so many trips in and out. Then once I was done putting them off on the beach I patrolled the waters to pick up dead bodies. As a 17-year-old kid, it’s etched in my memory.”

 South Carolina native, Carl Beck, now lives in Atlanta. No shrinking violet, Carl tells it like it was. Carl annually visits a French family who helped him after he parachuted into an area heavily occupied by the Germans. Following D-Day and the fight in Normandy, Carl went on to battle up Hell's Highway, participating in the largest airborne drop ever attempted in broad daylight. While in Holland, Carl came up against a  Tiger tank, which he describes in this clip from The Americans on Hell's Highway.

More discussion on Sherman tanks can be found in Tank Warfare post.

Hero of the last allied bayonet charge of WWII and survivor of the massacre at Rochelinval (The Bulge), Col Doug Dillard, 551st P.I.B (rtd), appears in The Americans in The Bulge, airing across America this summer.

“When we finally took Rochelinval, we sent a runner down to bring up the guys, who were trapped in the valley.” There is no point, Sir” he said “They are all dead . . . . That earned us the name 'the Lost Battalion'."

Col Dillard went on to fight in Korea and Vietnam and then to work for the CIA. He has written a book about special ops in Korea, and continues to travel frequently around the world.