Friday, June 6, 2014

D-Day | Wisconsin soldiers fought through blood, chaos





Kenneth Schumacher of Madison landed at Normandy 70 years ago.

Pfc. Schumacher, right, with his anti-aircraft gun crew in Europe.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Seventy years ago, 21-year-old Kenneth Schumacher of Madison was floating in a landing ship off Omaha Beach.

As far as he could see to either side, boats were idling or maneuvering as German shells exploded in the water and on the beach, taking a terrible, bloody toll.

Trucks for gun crews like Schumacher’s were being blown up as they drove off the ships, through shallow water toward the beach.

“A direct hit and you’d see the doors fly open and you knew everyone was killed,” Schumacher said Thursday as sunlight bathed his face in a quiet library space in his nursing home on Madison’s East Side.

Read the full story here.