A 1921 post card from Frank Worsley to Miss Marion Scott

The misery of Worsley's time aboard Annie, between Endurance & Quest

Don Nelson volunteered his way from Dearing High School to the shores of D-Day's bloodiest beach.

At the tender age of 17 Nelson enlisted in the Kansas National Guard in 1937. Seven years later, he would see combat for the first time as a member of the Army's most elite combat force – the Rangers.

"I lied about my age," said Nelson of his enlistment. "But I could ride a horse, and that was all that was necessary .... It's kind of funny, but when I got out, on the bottom of my discharge it said, 'This soldier … enlisted when he was 17.'

"I didn't get by with too much."

Nelson put in three years with the local guard unit, which was called up to active service and stationed in Little Rock, Ark., in 1940. He became a military policeman, in part because he could ride a motorcycle, having done so to reach Dearing High School every school morning from his parents' home in West Coffeyville.

When war broke out with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, Nelson's 35th Division from Kansas would remain active for the duration. It was shipped to Fort Ord, near Salinas, Calif.

Nelson and 29 other men were enrolled in the Los Angeles Police Academy to strengthen their training to be military policemen. He ended up a driver for Maj. Gen. Paul Baade, who Nelson said treated him like a son. But the Kansan was itching for action.

He first tried to volunteer for the airborne forces, but was rejected because he had two false teeth that could be jarred loose on landing and perhaps swallowed.

Then, he saw a sign seeking recruits for a newly formed unit of commandos, to be known as the Rangers.

"Don, that's a pretty rough outfit," Baade told his driver, just as he had when Nelson tried to join the airborne.

"Sounds good," Nelson responded. "I'll go."

Nelson was sent to Tennessee, where he joined Company E of the 5th Ranger Battalion. The men were drilled incessantly in all things military.

"We went through 3,000 men to gel our original battalion of 556," said Nelson. "... They ran your legs off; made you do pushups until you couldn't get your stomach off the ground an inch.

"On the rifle range, if you couldn't get at least 'sharpshooter' you weren't kept in the outfit overnight. We trained with every weapon the American Army had. You had your light and heavy machine guns, the 'Tommy' gun (.45-caliber Thompson submachine gun), the M-1 (Garand) and the carbine."

A group of Rangers already had fought under Lt. Col. William Darby. Better known as "Darby's Rangers," the unit helped storm the coast of French North Africa in Operation Torch during 1942.  They fought bloody nighttime patrols in the desert during 1942 and ’43, then landed with the invasion forces in Sicily in July of ’43.

From such combat experience, American commanders knew Nelson and other Rangers-in-training would have to be more than tough.

The 5th Battalion shipped out for England in '43 and stayed in private homes as they trained. Nelson and even other men had the run of the upper story of a home in Scotland. Later, they shared a large room in an English home. He said his host families were more than hospitable.

“They took care of us," he said. "They knew what we were in for."

The new Americans trained with British Commandos in Wales. The 12-week program -described in detail in the Time-Life book "The Commandos" -was designed by English Lt. Col. Charles Vaughan.

lt required men be able to fire accurately on the run, kill silently with a knife or garrote, climb mountains and cross rivers with only a few lengths of rope, and be able to march 15 miles in two hours and 15 minutes. Much of the training was with live ammunition. Anyone whose nerves or body failed was quickly sent back to their original unit.

“They gave us a pretty rough time,” said Nelson. “You see, most of those (instructors) were in on Dieppe.”

The Dieppe raid cost the lives of more than 1,000 British and Canadian troops who stormed ashore at the German-held French coastal town on Aug. 19, 1942. Another 2,000 or more of the 6,000 who attacked, were captured.

But the raid taught the allies valuable lessons, all of which were added to the training.

While in Scotland, Nelson acquired a new buddy. As a group of replacements stepped off the ship to take the places of men culled out during training, Nelson, then a squad sergeant, called out to them.

“Any of you guys there from Kansas?” he shouted.

A man raised his hand.

“Where are you from?” Nelson asked.

“Well, I’m not exactly from Kansas,” the man, Ray Brakhage, admitted. “I’m from South Coffeyville, Okla.” Nelson wrote the letter “E” by Brakhage’s name on the replacement sheet, to make sure the Oklahoman was assigned to his company.

The training continued as the battalion moved into accommodations at a hotel overlooking the cliffs of Dover. The men rappelled down the cliffs by rope, without safety lines, then scaled the cliffs on narrow ladders.

"Those cliffs were 90, 100 feet, straight up," said Nelson, still a bit incredulous. "You had a little old ladder about ... wide enough for a No. 12 shoe. And it had standoffs on it so it wouldn't hit the cliff.

"You'd go down the cliff on the rope, and swing yourself out to slow down. You'd swing out two or three times. We had two or three guys who could get almost all the way to the bottom and then only swing out once, but I always swung out twice.

" ... And comin' back up that little old ladder was like climbing a string. You didn't have a safety net or nothing. You'd get on top, and they'd grab you by the shirt and pull you on up."

Two ladder trucks from the London Fire Department were sent out for training purposes. Their 100-foot ladders were extended, then tied together at the top. The Rangers had to climb up one side - with their 72-pound field pack attached - then head right on down the other.

"We had one guy who backed out, and they shipped him out," said Nelson. "Actually, they kept him through the invasion and then they turned him loose."

The men were taught useful phrases in French and German.

"We didn't have any dummies in there, and we didn't have any 8-balls, either," said Nelson.

The men spent an hour a day in the map tent, studying sand tables of the Cotentin Peninsula of France.

"Every house, every tree, every cow path, every fence was on that," Nelson said of the models. "And they had guards inside the tent. There was no B.S. going on in the map tent. …

"They'd take a picture at 9 or 10 in the morning to show us, and then they'd take another at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and you could tell the difference. The foliage or the light would turn just a little bit.

" ... When we got to Vierville (Vierville-Sur-Mer just inland from the Normandy coast), we knew where the church was. We knew which way lsigny was, which way Caen was. We knew the paratroopers landed around a sluice gate back in (behind Utah beach). We knew that.

" ... And we knew where Omaha Beach was."

2

As weather delayed the Normandy invasion, Don Nelson struggled with his stomach.

U.S. Army Rangers embarked aboard a pair of British ships, the H.M.S. Prince Leopold and Prince Boudoin, on June 1, 1944. The Operation Overlord landings were set for June 5, but delayed until June 6 by the strongest summer storm in western Europe in almost 50 years.

Then - just as German meteorologists were informing Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the Atlantic Wall defenses, that the weather was too bad for an invasion - the storm front broke.

Royal Air Force Group-Capt. J.M. Stagg, a Scot, informed American Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied supreme commander, that he foresaw a break in the weather. It would not last long, he warned, no more than 24 hours. And it would still not be "good" weather, merely acceptable conditions for the operations as planned.

After much consultation with his command staff, Eisenhower uttered the historic words, "Okay ... we'll go."

With that, "Ike" set into operation the biggest air- and seaborne invasion in history - more than 150,000 men - and Don Nelson of West Coffeyville was among the soldiers at the point of the amphibious spearhead.

And Nelson, although not oblivious of the magnitude of the moment, felt like throwing up.

''I was out in the (English) Channel five days," said Nelson. "I'll tell ya, I was seasick when I hit the beach, and I wasn't the only one."

Nelson and the other 63 members of E Company, 5th Ranger Battalion, were shoe-horned into two narrow boats, known as LCAs (Landing Craft, Attack). The special landing craft, of British design, were ordered up by Lt. Col. Max Schneider, the battalion commander who Nelson said had become acquainted with Eisenhower.

The little V-12-powered boats were much faster than traditional LCIs (Landing Craft, Infantry), and the Rangers would need that speed to throw off the aim of German gunners as they raced toward Omaha Beach.

"There was armor plate on each side, and just a little walkway down the middle," said Nelson, describing the craft. "There were 16 men on this side, and 16 men on the other.

"Up at the right front corner, there was a little turret. ... The operator laid on his hands and knees in back."

The landing craft had been loaded at 5:30 a.m., about 10 miles offshore.

"We didn't expect to live. None of us did," said Nelson. "I know I didn't.

"The CO told us on the boat on the fourth (June 4) that we were outnumbered 10-to- 1. ... He said, 'You guys know what that means, don't you ... that means you don't stop counting until you've killed 10.' "

Later, Schneider upped the odds to a German advantage of 15-to- 1.

Company F lost a landing craft about 5 miles out, when it had to tum back because it was taking on too much water. As the Rangers neared the beach, German fire intensified.

"We were running parallel with the beach," said Nelson. "The destroyers were running in back of us, shooting over our heads .... It was so damn noisy, you couldn't hear a thing. You couldn't even talk."

The battleship Texas lumbered nearby, lobbing fire toward the beach defenses. When Nelson's landing craft neared the beach, its hull was raked by machine gun fire, convincing the Rangers to find a friendlier section of Omaha.

"Col. Schneider was ahead of us, in his boat," said Nelson. "There was a little opening in the beach, where there weren't too many rounds dropping in."

The landing craft turned for that section of the beach - Omaha Dog White Beach, several hundred yards from Dog Green, where Rangers were supposed to land - but the craft carrying Schneider became high-centered on a landing· craft obstacle.

"And then ours did, too," said Nelson, "right next to his."

"Our motorman waited for the next ground swell, and when the back end of that boat raised up, he gunned that thing, and it shot back (off the obstacle).

"There was a big anti-tank mine hanging on that water obstacle. Boy, if that ... had gone off, that would have been it."

The Rangers were momentarily free of their entanglements, but still were not on shore. The LCA pilots rode the next wave in. "We backed off, and when the next ground swell came in, he gunned that thing and we went up ... to where we could step off in water that wasn't that deep," said Nelson, holding his fingers just four or five inches apart.

We finally got off that doggone boat and ... three guys were laying up against a seawall about 75 yards from the water's edge. But I couldn't have told you how far it was, because damn, I was sick."

Nelson and South Coffeyville native Ray Brakhage stepped over the lifeless body of the third man out of the boat, then charged toward the cover of the seawall. But Brakhage, said Nelson, went back.

"That third man had got it, right there in front of me," said Nelson. "But he had the radio on his back, and that Ray Brakhage went back and took that radio off his back and then crawled back to the seawall.

" ... That Ray was a hell of a soldier."

Rangers were pinned behind the four-foot seawall as the landing craft of the I 16th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, plowed through the surf. Company A of the 116th was slaughtered.

"I just glanced back and saw those LCs coming in, dropping those doors, and letting those guys out by the hundreds," said Nelson. "Man, they were hitting the beach, and ... they were getting it. … The 116th lost a bunch of men. You could see guys just floating out there."

Company A, 197-men strong, hit the beach· minutes after the Rangers set foot on the French coast. Within 10 minutes, 96 percent of those men were dead or wounded.

"You wouldn't believe it, even if you've seen the pictures," said Nelson, shaking his head. "Man, they were laying out there by the hundreds.

"I got to look back twice, at the sea. And then I didn't care to look back at it after the second time. They were blowing those boats up and shooting those guys just as fast as they possibly could, until we got up there and got those big guns knocked out.

"Then, it was a little different story."

As Nelson and other Rangers lay behind the seawall, Gen. Norman Cota rushed by, looking for someone in charge. Cota's words, "Lead the way, Rangers," were to become the unit's motto.

As the 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the 100-foot cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc further down the beach, to destroy a battery of six 155-millimeter cannon reportedly stationed there, Nelson and Rangers from the 5th Battalion "led the way" on Dog White.

"We went over the seawall, my buddy and I," said Nelson, who moved into range of German fire along with fellow Ranger Gail Beccue of Minnesota.

Nelson and Beccue assembled a "bangalore torpedo," a bundle of powerful explosives attached to the end of long poles. They stuffed the explosive tip of the device under the tangled mass of barbed wire impeding further progress inland, and set off the charge.

Debris flew back from the blast, ripping through the sleeve of Nelson's uniform and gouging his arm. The wound bled continuously until a medic patched it up later in the day.

''We blew the wire while the rest of the gang was behind the seawall, huddled up there," said Nelson. "As soon as we blew the hole in the concertina wire, I think three companies flooded through there.

"We lay there as they went by, and (the Germans) couldn't hit us , because they couldn't tum the barrels of their machine guns low enough.''

An avenue had been opened off the bloody beaches of Omaha. By 9:30 a.m., the beach American Gen. Omar Bradley had considered abandoning just hours before, was becoming more secure in Allied hands.

"We jumped up and made a run for it, and got to the foot of this big hill,'' said Nelson, of his charge with Beccue toward better cover. They reached the foot of a small hill blazing from foliage set afire by the naval bombardment.

Then they worked their way toward a tiny rock house, one which Nelson caught a glimpse of last week while taping D-Day documentaries aired on cable television.

"That's where I stopped and took a drink from my canteen. and I wasn't sick then," he said. "Not by a damn sight."

Army Rangers captured the village of Vierville-Sur-Mer early D-Day afternoon, but ran into fierce resistance on the town's west edge as they tried to link up with the 2nd at Pointe du Hoc, another 2 or 3 kilometers distant.

Don Nelson captured a German officer spotting for artillery in a Vierville church tower. He was wounded again, when a German artillery round blew out a storefront window and showered him with fragments and broken glass.

Another patch-up job – Nelson likes to say he was "scratched" three times on D-Day - and Nelson was back in the fray. And soon, he was in a real pickle.

The Kansan tried to climb one of the roadside hedgerows, but became wedged as he went over the top.

"I had a 72-pound pack on my back. Had a bunch of bazooka rounds in it," said Nelson. "Just as soon as we got up to the main road which went to Vierville and cleaned Vierville out, we went back into the hedgerows and .. . I got stuck between two trees. ... I couldn't move."

A German spied the easy target, and opened fire with his Mauser rifle. Nelson felt the jolt of the bullet as it ripped into his pack, but it stopped before striking his body.

"Boy, I'll tell you, he put one through my pack, just almost up in my shoulder blades," Nelson recalled. "I knew he hit me, because I felt it."

Nelson writhed like a fish on a hook, trying to escape. A second shot cracked in the distance, and ripped into the pack a little below the first. Then a third shot rang out, and connected with the pack just above Nelson's waist.

Somehow, the bazooka rounds did not explode. But Nelson needed help to extricate himself.

"A guy came behind me and saw I was having trouble," Nelson said. "I don't know who it was, but he grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me over the hedgerow, and that was it.

"I unloaded that pack, because there was nothing left of it anyway. And then I was all right."

At dusk, the 5th Ranger Battalion formed up with about 150 men from the 116th Infantry Regiment to put up a defensive perimeter around Vierville. Tanks from the 743rd Battalion moved within the pocket, adding  some much needed heavy support.

The 5th Ranger Battalion had lost 60 dead and wounded. They had killed roughly 150 Germans, and captured another 100.

Night fell, but there would be little rest. The Germans counterattacked, trying to weaken the American grip on Omaha Beach.

Nelson and Gail Beccue were stationed at the most remote point of the beachhead's right flank. They set up shop for the night at the intersection of two hedgerows.

"We were laying on top of the hedgerow. We took off our helmets, and put our little stocking caps on.

We had our faces camouflaged," said Nelson. " ... We knew the Germans were over there, because you could hear them."

Rangers were stationed along the hedgerow, keeping an eye out for infiltrators. Nelson and Beccue chose to do their work from a position of elevation, rather than from ground level.

"Our guys were strung along the hedgerow to our left," Nelson recalled. "Most of them were sitting in behind the hedgerow, peeking up over. Beccue and I didn't do that. We laid on top, because, hell, they

couldn't see you.

"We were camouflaged . .. and this (hedgerow) was pretty brushy."

Soon, Beccue and Nelson spotted movement in the field. Five Germans followed the hedgerow to its junction, right below the two Rangers. They set up a machine gun positioned to fire down the hedgerow and into the line of Americans stationed behind it.

"Beccue and I had our signals worked out," said Nelson. " ... They were talking real quiet, whisperin' and yakkin’. And just as soon as they got their machine gun set up and put the ammunition belt in it and racked her back, that meant she was loaded.

“Old Gail kicked me once, and I kicked him back. He slipped the safety off on his rifle, I could hear him. I knocked the safety off on my Tommy gun.

“He kicked me once more, and baby, we let ‘em have it.”

The machine-gunners were cut to ribbons. Beccue climbed down from the hedgerow to check the bodies for maps or documents, while Nelson kept an eye out for more Germans, and the captain sent his runner down to find out what had happened.

Then, the main German attack struck at the opposite side of the American salient. Rangers dashed to the left side of the line and counter-push was stopped.

Nelson drew guard duty as he and four other Rangers became pinned down on the wrong side of a hedgerow. He kept a close eye on the field before him, which was dotted with wooden poles emplaced as obstacles against glider troop landings.

He had been on guard for some time when he nudged Beccue.

“Bec, those damn poles are moving out there,” Nelson said.

Beccue assured Nelson he was just tired, and fatigue was affecting his vision. He offered to take guard duty let Nelson get some rest, but Nelson couldn’t sleep.

“Come daylight next morning, those poles were moving,” said Nelson. “There was a German behind every one of them. … Every time we’d move along the ditch, they’d shoot at you. You couldn’t turn around, because the minute you showed your back, they’d shoot at you.

“Our guys were trying to get ‘em, but hell, they couldn’t get up on top of the hedgerow, ‘cause then they’d get shot at, too.

“They had us outnumbered, and they had machine guns, which we didn’t have.”

But the Americans did have a trump card to play. After some frantic searching by men on the other side of the hedgerow, an American light tank pulled up to the edge of the field.

“Make a run for it,” Nelson’s captain shouted as the tank began pumping fire toward the glider obstacles.

“I was the last one out, because I had been the first one in,” recalled Nelson. “We got out of that mess, but it was like for three or four days.

“Every time you moved, you got shot at.”

Within days of the Normandy landings, it became apparent the Germans would be unable to throw Allied invaders back into the sea.

Army Rangers spent fire bloody days clearing up German resistance around the Normandy beachheads. The 5th Ranger Battalion, of which West Coffeyville native Don Nelson was a member, was credited with killing 350 Germans and capturing about 850 more.

The work was accomplished at a loss of 114 Rangers killed, wounded or missing, from the original 556 who land on D-Day.

But weeks of intense fighting lay ahead in the hedgerow-laced bocage country of France. Though the invasion force was well established - and Adolph Hitler' s commander of troops in the west, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, already had boldly suggested capitulation – the Germans held fast and used the terrain to their advantage.

Allied troops suffered murderous casualties trying to root the Germans out of their hedgerow enhanced defenses. Rommel’s crack Panzer Lehr armored division used well-placed tanks and anti-tank guns to cover the roadways, to which American and British tanks were confined by hedgerows that at times approached 15 feet in height.

Daily Allied advances were measured in yards as sappers used explosives to blow holes through the hedgerows for advancing infantry.

But finally, on July 18, troops of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division entered Saint Lo. The 12-day battle around the ancient French town had inflicted 10,000 casualties on American troops, but its capture provided the necessary jumping-off point for Operation Cobra, an American breakout from the beachheads.

American tanks took a day or so to pick their way through heavily bombarded German defenses, then raced into the enemy’s rear. A second allied seaborne invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” was launched Aug. 15, when troops stormed ashore in the south of France in Operation Anvil.

Almost an entire German army in Normandy was encircled when American tanks linked up with Brits at Falaise. German garrisons likewise were trapped in most of France’s port cities – Calais, Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, St. Malo, and Brest.

American Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied supreme commander in Europe, never had intended to tie down troops with the capture of French ports. But his generals, especially American George S. Patton in the south and England’s Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery in the north, were intent on capturing prizes.

Into such a fray was tossed the 5th Ranger Battalion, and Nelson. The Rangers, who had seen sporadic action in the months since D-Day, were thrust into the front line in the assault on Brest.

Ranger operations in the area began on Sept. 1, as A, C, and E companies were moved up to fill gaps in the American front. Nelson’s Company E patrolled the area between the 2nd and 8th US Infantry Divisions.

Nelson, whose service record indicated he had ridden a motorcycle in the military police, had been issued a new Harley-Davidson as the unit reorganized after the invasion. He then was employed in various duties that made use of the Harley’s speed and mobility.

"We got motorcycles our second break after D-Day, at Aamanville," said Nelson. "They gave each company a motorcycle.

"I rode a motorcycle back-and-forth from Dearing High School, and that was on my record. And then I rode a motorcycle a year-and-a-half in the MPs down at Little Rock."

Shortly after being issued the cycle, Nelson happened across a French photographer outside town. The Frenchman was snapping pictures of Americans in front of a canvas backdrop. Nelson pulled up on the Harley, had his photo snapped with Thompson submachine gun at the ready (a photo published in Friday's Journal), then went on about his way. ·

The photographer had quite a racket going, as it turned out He was making a few bucks taking snapshots of American soldiers, then was turning the photos over to the Germans, presumably so they could identify the Allied units they faced.

The man finally was caught when members of the French Forces of the Interior spotted him mining a road at night. One of the mines killed a French civilian and his horse. Another exploded beneath an American 6-by-6 truck, seriously wounding the driver.

The third day after I got my picture, we were back through Flamanville, and that boy was hung with a rope by the neck." said Nelson. "He was a German sympathizer, a German spy, and ... the last l seen him, he was hanging there deader than a doornail."

Nelson was momentarily attached to an infantry division, using his cycle to run messages. His first trip proved more eventful than it should.

· As an officer briefed him on his route, Nelson looked at the map.

"He said, 'You backtrack just the way we came up,' " Nelson recalled being told.

Nelson was to hang a right at a fork in the road, where a massive anti-tank mine - known as a ''water tank mine" because of its size and shape – had blocked the road.

''But I was looking at the damn map upside down, and I was all excited,'' said Nelson. "I got back there to that anti-tank mine, and you know I made a left-hand tum instead of a right."

Nelson's wrong turn led him right back toward German lines. But he didn't know it, yet.

About a quarter-mile down the road, Nelson happened upon an old stone house. "That's damn funny,'' Nelson thought to himself, as he approached the unfamiliar structure.

Seated on the front porch was a German soldier: casually leaning back with his chair against the wall.

"He kind of straightened up and looked at me, and there I am, chuggin' down the road, too late now," said Nelson. "I looked at him and waved at him as I went by. I wasn't going but about 20 miles an hour, maybe 25.

"I waved at him, and he waved back."

The road curved Nelson away from the house, and out of the German's sight. But Nelson knew his only return route to American lines was back down the road from whence he came.

So he doubled back, thinking, ''Boy, I'll get it this time."

Nelson motored down the road, knowing he was all but defenseless. It would be virtually impossible to fire his hard-kicking .45-caliber Thompson with one hand while steering with the other.

“I came back, and there he sat, in the same damn position,” said Nelson. “He watched me, and here I went.

"I waved at him, and he waved back. And I knew any minute I was gonna get shot in the back. When I got out of his line of sight, man, I opened her up.

"I always wondered what happened to him. He was a good 'Joe.' He didn't shoot me."

American troops closed in on Brest, with the FFl so close behind as to be irritating.

"They followed us all through France," said Nelson. "When we captured a German, they'd run up and take his shoes and socks off. … We pulled two (prisoners) out one night, and the next morning at daylight we went by to see what they looked like, and they were all barefooted. I thought, 'Man, that's funny.'

"The FFl got 'em."

The French had a habit, said Nelson, of being boisterous in combat.

'Those jokers, ... there wasn't a night that they didn't get their damn cognac and start drinkin' and lightin' matches and go to singin'," he said. "And the Germans could see 'em ... they wouldn't be a half-mile or a quarter away.

When the Germans finally surrendered Sept 18, the 5th Ranger Battalion had suffered more than 135 casualties, including 24 dead. Rangers had killed more than 600 Germans, and captured at least 2,100 in 18 days of fighting.

Epilogue: Don Nelson fought his way into Germany, many times taking part in two-man forays behind German lines to "shoot as many of 'em as we could or slit their throats." He was severely injured when a sniper's bullet crashed through the windscreen of his motorcycle, causing him to crash. He spent six months in various military hospitals, recuperating from a broken foot, leg and hand, and "still has a piece of a German tree" behind his left ear. Nelson came home to serve on the Coffeyville Fire Department.