Demolition Unit on D-Day: ENS Nathan Irwin

Ken Harbaugh:

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I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from ENS Nathan Irwin. Irwin served in the Navy in a Naval Combat Demolition Unit during World War II, and was among the first to invade Normandy on D-Day.

ENS Nathan Irwin:

NCDU is Naval Combat Demolition Unit. I volunteered for the NCDU, I was training at Camp Perry, which is a training camp for the Seabees as I was a civil engineer officer with the rank of Ensign. I was going through bootcamp with the rest of the people, training for the Seabees and Commander Draper Kaufman, who was the originator of the unit, came to interview us and looked for volunteers. So he talked to a group of us and I was one of those that volunteered for the unit along with others of course.

It’s just I thought it was something interesting. It was at the time, a person's very young. You're looking for something a little different and you could say, that type of work just attracted me.

Our unit was formed to blow up the obstacles that would impede any type of amphibious operation. In other words, we'd blow up obstacles that were placed on the beach to stop the small boats from coming as shore. That was a function in our training.

We were well-trained and we were well-trained in all forms of explosives and obstacles. But we devised our explosive to meet the conditions on the beach that we were going to land. And that information, we had maps, reconnaissance the scouts and Raiders actually did actual reconnaissance on the beach. And of course there were aerial photos and things like that.

We had all kinds of men. Most of my men were CBs, so they were men more practical. The CB was a construction battalion. My chief petty officer was a fellow that was about 10 years older, ran a welding company, had good hands, he could do things. My other men seemed to be Seabees and they volunteered, they wanted the Seabees, because they wanted that type of work. A little more rugged work, a little more construction work. And they were attracted to underwater demolition, all kinds. I mean, it was hard to say. None of them were really gung-ho, what you call gung-ho brave guys. They were all average people.

We did a lot of underwater work. At Camp Perry we trained in shallow diving and deep sea diving. And deep sea diving, we had to put on the entire rig, which really is scary with the belt and the shoes, masks, the clamp on you. And we had to work with tools underwater just to get the feel of it. At Fort Pierce, we trained with shallow water equipment and we were designed to go into set charges underwater. The idea is we'd place charges underwater, but we'd use a different type of charge. We might, you have a charge in a nap sack and lash that nap sack to the bottom of the obstacle and then set the charge there. You design your charge and your technique according to what you're going to do.

Well actually we didn't have much time. When we hit the beach, we were told to do about 50 feet of a row and they figured that's all we'd have time for. Remember the tide was coming in as we were working. The whole invasion was planned to take cognizant of when these tide conditions were. The tide conditions were just right for the invasion around the fifth and sixth of June. As you know, the invasion was postponed today because June 5th was awfully, the weather was terrible. It wasn't that much better on the sixth, but at least clear it up enough for us to land. If the invasion would've been postponed. They couldn't have gone into Normandy until about the 19th of June. And there was no way you're going to keep that force of men in LS- in ships and not have this thing some way that information be disseminated to the enemy.

We went across the channel in an LST, our crew, there were two demolition crews on our LST. Around 4:00 in the morning the ship anchored about, as I say, eight, 10 miles out. It was pitch black, it was dark. About 4:00 in the morning, we went over the side of the LST, down what they call these cargo nets, these landing nets, into this little VRP, this little boat to take us in. There was bobbing around. We had to load all our explosives, all our equipment over the side of LST, into this little landing boat. We had my crew, I had a crew of navy men. I had five army men with me that was added to our crew and three seamen. So actually our crew was built up from six to another eight or so.

Every man was designated a job. We had certain men placing the charges. We had certain men who were in charge of stringing this detonating cord down the row of charges. And we had a couple men in charge of electrically setting off the, you've seen these boxes of magneto. That's what we used. And every man had a certain job and of course the extra men carried extra explosives. We had men just carrying a certain amount of explosives so that we could work and they came along with us.

We disembarked about four o'clock into these small boats. We went into the milled around an assembly area and then around 4:35 we headed down toward the beach. And of course we had a follower lead craft. Wherever he took us, we went. And the sun came up. Sunset was about 6:00, and we were approaching the beach overhead. You could see thousands of airplanes, all kinds transports, fighters, bombers. And as far as you could see on the horizon were all types of naval vessels.

Prior to the invasion, for about an hour, hour and a half prior to the invasion, there was a tremendous bombardment from the naval vessels, battleships, cruises and so forth. The paratroopers landed earlier. They landed about 12:30, o'clock and they were already fighting on the Utah sector while we were making the invasion. The fourth army was the one that came in on our beach, and we were right there among, you could say who was first, probably a lot of us were there. Army, navy, beach battalion, we were all on the beach. But our job was the obstacles. We didn't go even onto the beach until it was later. They were out of water and we had to blow up that string of obstacles.

There are several kinds of obstacles that will stop a small boat, especially when the obstacles are a little bit underwater and the boat passes over them. You could have stakes, sharpened stakes, either steel or wood pointed towards sea. The boat coming over the stake would rip the hull and render that craft useless. Otherwise, you could have what they call tetrahedron. These are steel triangles welded together. You could have ramps. Ramps are, as the name implies, within ramps facing inland. So when the boat hits at the ramp, it goes up the ramp and will tip. These are the kind of obstacles similar to these that you'll find on the beaches.

The nastiest ones would be the ones with mines on. Fortunately, we didn't seem to have any problem with them. We just went ahead and placed charges on the base of these obstacles. When we landed at Normandy on June 6th, we were working against a tide that averaged around 23, 24, 25 feet. So we planned the invasion so that the obstacles were out of the water and were exposed. So we worked practically on dry land. Now we had, through reconnaissance by the scouts and raiders, we knew what to expect and we knew what kind of charges to prepare. And we prepared charges using men's socks. We used a composition C2 plastic explosive. When it came originally, it looked like laundry bars that you can mold. We push them into men's socks. So you're together about this long and at each end we tie a length of detonating cord, we call prima cord. A length of about 12 inches. So here you had a sock full of charge each end with a detonating cord. Every man carried about 20 or 25 of these. They averaged two pounds a piece in an nap sack, really was what we call the M2 Army ammunition bag around your shoulder. And you use these charges to lay on the base of the obstacle and then lash these ends together. So you're tying it around the base. Now these obstacles are all in a line down the beach. So you have one man with a reel of the detonating court called prima cord, and we started one end and we tie all these loose ends to this detonating cord. It's like Christmas lights on a Christmas tree. And all we had to do was place a fuse at one end and detonate it would carry the charge and detonate every individual charge along the line. And that's what we did.

We carried the bag of about 20 of these charges, each one about two pounds. We also had extra explosives in the vehicle in our boat. So if the boat was hit, goodbye, the boat and all, you see? So our biggest problem was getting into shore with that load of explosives, because if that boat was hit, it would've gone up the whole thing. And every man carried those explosives. Someone has to carry it in and the boat has to transport it in. It is just one of the parts of the job that you have to accept. You are not going to go on the beach and expect them to find your explosives right there. You have to bring in what you're going to use. You see? So I say you don't think of these things, you got a job and you do it.

Well, everybody was. Well first of all, when you're milling about in that heavy sea, I was seasick. I think everybody else. So you don't think about it. And then when you're going in, you're hearing the blasting, you see the smoke. I think everybody is scared. I mean, you're scared. You don't know what to hit. You see shells landing, you see holes where shells have landed and you just hope that, I mean, you don't think of it. You go to work and you just hope you'll be okay. That's all. You can't worry too much about what's going to happen. What's going to happen will happen.

Well, I'd say everybody was frightened to a degree. I mean, that's accurate. I mean, oh sure, some fellows are braver than others. Some are a little more outgoing than others. But I think everyone was silent. Everyone was quiet. No one knew what to expect. You don't really know what's going to hit you when you land there. So it could have been a couple 88s staring at you or something. Or machine gun, real bad machine gun fire.

Well, you got to remember, there's mass confusion on something like this. Whether you're the first, second, third, everybody's going in. We were slated to go in at 6:35 AM in the morning. The first wave, the first people to hit the shore were slated to go at 6:30. Now it all depended on who was leading you in. Now we disembarked about eight miles off the shore. We were on an LST. My experience was that there was a lot of smoke, a lot of confusion, and we were fortunate that it may have been the wrong beach, but as General Roosevelt said, "We'll start the war right from here." And that's where we went in. And it wasn't as heavily defended as the boys at Utah. I however, did lose a man in the invasion. So our crew felt it.

All we know is the firing is coming from inland. So whether they were mortars or whether they were 88s or what it was, I don't know. But there were no huge, you have to remember, Omaha had these, they had the cliffs and the pill boxes and whatnot. We had pill boxes on shore, because we took over one that night. There were pill boxes on shore, the heavy equipment, I don't know what they were firing at us, but I know one crew of army men got killed, about four or five of them. We were just lucky. I think the Utah bunch lost about 10%. That's about it.

Our experience was that we just joined the rest of the people, and we had a job. And by the time we had these wired and fired, we wired up whatever we could in that small space of time, about an hour before that water came in. Once the tide came in, we couldn't do any work. We were designed for a tide out conditions, you see?

After the tide came in, we went up on the beach and got into a pill box, which was the Germans had evacuated. We got into a pill box, we stayed there and I had a meeting with the commander and the boys just were more or less holed up there. And we went out again about four o'clock in the afternoon, because the skipper told me there was another line of defenses down the beach that were not covered. So our crew covered that. We set explosives just the way we did. We had additional explosives, we set explosives and blew them up just the way we planned to do.

Our part went according to plan. I don't know about the rest, the army, the other battalions, the other units, but our units went according to plan and we were able to do our job, because it was laid out and the fellows knew what they had to do. Fortunately we found the obstacles, the way the reconnaissance told us. We had the explosives designed to take care of them. Our hell boxes worked. Just before we set the charge off, we had a flare at each end, a purple flare, and we lit it for two minutes. That was the warning sign that this area was going to be blown up, but we still were able to control it. We fired electrically, so we determined exactly when the firing would be.

My role was to supervise the gang and I had one of the boxes and the chief was with me, I believe, and we had a couple other men. One man had the reel it out and the rest of the fellas were setting the explosive charges.

They performed very well. In fact, they went according to plan and everything went off. The man I did lose was not lost in the initial invasion. He was lost later on. And we don't exactly know how. It could have been a mine. It could have been... There were two airplanes that came over about 11 o'clock. There was very little German fighter power there as far as airplanes. We had complete control of the beach as far as the Air Corps was concerned, which we were thankful for. But if you read the books, a couple planes came over about 11 o'clock and they did cause some damage, whether they got that one man of mine, I don't know.

I was injured at Southern France. The Utah bunch went to southern France for the invasion of Southern France, which occurred about the 16th, 17th of August. And I was hit the first five minutes, we captured the pill box on the beach and I got the men out and I was lining them up to turn them over to the unit, so we could get to work on the obstacles, which incidentally were underwater. We had to use underwater techniques. Just then the Germans, who were retreating, this is Southern France now, started to shell the beach. And when I saw the shelves fall, I hustled all the men back into the pillbox that we had just gotten. And before I was able to get in, the shell hit me and it just clipped my leg and knocked me out 20 feet. And luckily just a hunk of shell just hit my leg, it broke the ankle. And luckily it didn't hit me anywhere else, which I was just lucky. And I was about the only one hit. I was the last one to go in. I had all these men in the pill box and they got me out to a hospital ship, from the hospital, shipped to a hospital in Naples. And then onto a 10 days later, I went on a hospital ship back to the States. I was at St. Alban's, Long Island for about two months. And then I went back home to, I live in Milwaukee. I went back to Great Lakes, Illinois, which is about 50 miles away. I agitated until they sent me to Great Lakes. So I'd be near home. And it took me until the following... I didn't go back on active duty until the following July or August, something like that. My leg was okay, but the nerves were gone. And rather than operate, they tried all kinds of therapy and as long as they were trying therapy, it didn't bother me. I was practically home. So that's it.

Well, I think the most vivid memory is that when I came back from the officer, I told you, I came back around noon of D-Day. We went into our pillbox by eight, nine o'clock. And I stayed there and then I got word that they were going to have a meeting of the officers. I had a meet. I left the fellas. I came back and I asked him where this one man was and they said he went down the beach, I don't know for what purpose. And I said, well, maybe he knows where we are. I hope he gets back. He never got back. So the next morning, like I told you, that afternoon, we couldn't search for him because we had a mission to do. The next morning, the chief petty officer and myself went behind the lines a couple hundred yards where they had graves registration.

They had bodies, mostly paratroopers, laid out prior to, they register them. And I don't know what they do with them then. So I went to the officer in charge and I told him, "We lost a man. I'm trying to find him." He says, "We have no way of knowing." He says, "Go take a look." So this chief petty officer and myself, we went down row after row, after row and there must be a few 100 people there laying, from the paratroopers from... We found this body. We had no idea what killed him. We had no idea what happened. Could have been a bullet from a plane, could have been... He wasn't blown up. So I don't think it could have been a landmine or anything like that. There were mines there, but I think it could have been a stray bullet, could have been friendly fire, which happens all the time.

A lot of them didn't come back. All you could do is you have a certain amount of sympathy, of course. And the people here are glad that you came back. That's the thing. And they say it's too bad that… you know.

I went back to Normandy on the 50th anniversary and I went to Omaha Beach where I saw all the ceremonies and whatnot. And I was going on a bus from our hotel to Normandy Beach and right behind, not Utah, Omaha, there's an American cemetery with about 900 graves in there. In fact, I was there before. On the 40th anniversary, my wife and I went to Paris. We took a special trip there and we visited the grave of that man I lost. He's buried in that American cemetery. We also visited him on the 50th. But going to the 50th, going to the ceremony, the bus passes through all these little towns back of the battlefield, these little French towns. And if you're going very slow, you could read the inscriptions on the headstones of a lot of the headstones in the cemeteries. So you see, Jack was so-and-so, age six, June 6 '44. So-and-so age 10 June 6 '44, a woman age 29. And you wonder what happened? In the naval bombardment, in the bombardment from the sky, a lot of these bombs fell beyond the coast into these little villages. And those people were killed. And you don't know it unless you see their headstones in the cemetery. And that sort of struck me at the time, coming in and realizing all these civilians, because there was no way to warn them, there's invasions coming. You can't announce it. We're coming, get out of the way. These civilians were killed, because they were maybe five miles back of the coast. And when those naval guns were shooting, these 16 incher guns and when the bombs were coming down and there was a lot of smoke and everything on the shore, they got hit. And you'll see them on the headstones if you... So those were impressions that you get. And of course we had memorial services at the cemetery. So that's about it.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was ENS Nathan Irwin.

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