Pathfinder On D-Day: Pfc. Robert Earl Sechrist

Ken Harbaugh:

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 Private First Class Robert Earl Sechrist. Sechrist served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and pathfinder during World War II. As a Pathfinder, Secrist was one of the first men to parachute into France before the invasion of Normandy, tasked with guiding other Paratroopers to their landing zone.

Pfc. Robert Earl Sechrist:

I graduated from high school in June of 1942, and I had planned to go to Bowling Green University in September. But it was quite well known that there was such a thing as a draft, and they were knocking people off very quickly. So I anticipated that there's no way... Physically I was in good shape. I knew that there was no way I was not going to get drafted. So I decided, "Well, we'll just wait and see what happens."

But I had looked around and I graduated from school in Sandusky, Ohio, and that's on Lake Erie, and I was always around water. Most of my friends ended up at Great Lakes in the Navy. I even had a brother that was in Navy also, one in the Navy Air Force, a brother-in-law in the Navy. They all seemed to pick the Navy for whatever reason.

I was in the post office in Toledo, Ohio one day, and in the basement is where they had all the offices for the different services to sign up. And in the hallway, there was a picture of a guy going out of a door of an airplane, and there was a picture of Uncle Sam beside it saying, "I want you." And if you remember, all the other billboards said, "I need you." And it was just something about I said, "Boy, this guy needs me for the Navy, but he really wants me for the paratroopers." And it stuck in my mind. So when I got my draft notice, I went down and enlisted in the Army, and told them I wanted to paratroop. And that's how I got in.

Well, I didn't know what the normal training was in the military, but I'll tell you something. In 90 days, you were a different person than when you went in. They did a wonderful job as far as I was concerned, and the mental attitudes of the individual. And myself, I was kind of a person to go along with the crowd. But in the paratroops, they taught you, you don't go along with the crowd unless you know why. They instilled into you an attitude of, "Hey, we need good people and good people have to do good things. And we think we can turn you into a good person if you're not already one." And that's basically the mental attitude that they give you. They told us we could go into town and whip four Marines anytime we wanted to. Now I'll tell you, I went to Atlanta one time and that wasn't true. So the Airborne just instilled a feeling of camaraderie that was not in any other service that I knew of.

This all started back in December, either late November, early December of '43. And at retreat, or revelry, or whatever the occasion was, they announced that they were looking for a selective few to join. They didn't say Pathfinder. They didn't come out and say, "We want you to join Pathfinders." Everybody knew what a Pathfinder was, but they said that they had a special program and they were looking for some volunteers. Volunteers in the service, that's sort of a bad word. That's how we got into the Paratroopers as volunteers. So not too many people volunteered. And as time went on, a week or two, they kept putting the pressure on.

So a couple of my friends and I were in a beer garden one night having a few beers, and we decided, we were talking about, everybody talked about, what are these volunteers? What do they want? And tremendous amount of rumors. "We're going to send in some paratroopers into Norway." There was always some place picked out, and it was always in the European Theater of Operation. We never figured we were going to go to the Pacific. It got to a point where our curiosity perked and we decided among three or four of us, "Well, let's enlist or let's volunteer. And if we don't like it, we can screw up and get kicked out." And we talked to several officers. I don't remember the routine at this point in time, but I do know we were interviewed at time, and our commanding officer, our sergeant, our first sergeant all had to recommend us.

So what happened was that the latter part of December, they announced the selected few. Roughly they wanted 120 people, and this was to break down into various sticks of 12 men each. And they wanted three sticks. Well, we didn't know about drop zones or anything. This all ultimately came out that we had two flights going into a drop zone and three sticks with each flight.

So the idea is that somewhere along the line, you're going to lose some people. In the training and jumps, people were injured. People decided they didn't want to continue with the program. But ultimately, we did have our 120 people and we all did our training, and were qualified, I'm sure, to do the job.

The Pathfinders and the paratroops go to battle on airplanes. The Marines go to battle in boats, landing craft. But once you're there, it's basically the same, with the exception that there is a distinct difference in paratroops, because they automatically land behind the enemy lines. They are exposed in 360 degrees battle, where the Marines or Army landing on a beach, they have their battle in front of them. We could never turn our back because our back was the front. So that's the unique difference.

The key to the whole program as the way I saw was just that each team had to be coordinated, each team had to work in unison. And when one man's job was done, the other man started.

So the training itself, we did a lot of, what it consists of, as everyone knows I'm sure, is that we would parachute into an area. And hopefully, we were dropped in the right area, and we had sufficient ground areas that we could set up drop zones and bring troops in without them being endangered with Rommel's spaghetti and all these anti-personnel mines and such as that, that they put in those fields to combat paratroops. But we had a Eureka/Rebecca system. The Eureka system was on the ground. It was a radar type system that would transmit to the plane, to the lead plane that had the Rebecca system in it. And what it would transmit was the name or number of the drop zone. We had a drop zone D, and it flashed Morse code out in D. We also would put up a holophane light that you could see it from the ground, but not as much as that... It wasn't a great hindrance, but you could well see it from the air. And we would make a T out of those lights. And at the end of the T, at the bottom of the T, the light there would also transmit in Morse code the D for the drop zone D, or A, or C, or whatever. Then as the planes flew down the light, they would hit the crossbar. The green lights would go on in the plane, and the paratroops would come out of the plane and scatter right in front of us.

Well the most dangerous part that I felt being a paratrooper, and particularly a Pathfinder, because we jumped with excessive amount of weight. We had to carry our weapons, we had to carry our food, our ammunition, grenades. But along with that, you had to carry, depending upon what you were doing your job with the stick was concerned. You were carrying lights, you were jumping with the Eureka system. Jumping with panels to bring in gliders.

I weighed 153 pounds I think it was, or 157 pounds. I was carrying another 130 pounds, and it was strapped on you in all different positions. Along with that, you have a chute, and an emergency chute, and a gas mask. It was just ludicrous the amount of weight we had, and it would take two people to push you into the plane.

So weight created a big problem for us and injured a lot of people. A lot of people lost their equipment coming out when they got their opening shot. A lot of people couldn't get out of their chutes or they got hung up in a tree. And the guys got hung up in a tree, they were just target practice for the Germans. There was no question about that. There was a lot of that happened. And we were all alone to a certain point. When we landed, some would group together, some wouldn't. Some landed on roads, some landed in rivers, some landed in marshlands. And it's up to the individual to get himself out of that situation, and get together with the other troops. Usually the first man of the stick and the last man of the stick will walk towards each other. And in doing that, they would run into and gather up the other jumpers. Some of the guys were in trees, some of the guys were injured, broken legs, broken necks, broken backs, broken ankles. So you had that situation where you had to get these people out of danger zones. If they're out in the middle of a field, particularly in France where you had that hedgerow problem, what you had to do was is get these guys to the hedgerows.

Well, from January to the end of May, the Pathfinders moved around a lot in England. We would go from one air base to another, and we're always working different problems. And it come out well. We saw a lot of England. We got opportunities to go into towns where if we'd have been stuck in North Witham Air Base all that time, we would've never had the opportunity.

But we all knew that it was going to come. Hell, when they sent us over, we knew it was going to happen. We didn't know when, where, how, or why. And I think about the middle of May, things all of a sudden started to get very tight. You could feel the tenseness. I don't know whether tight is the word, but you could feel the pressures. The pressure was coming on.

And it was around June 1st when all of a sudden, we were at the air base. We had access to the whole air base in North Witham. But I think around June 1st, all of a sudden, barbed wire went up everywhere and we were in. And that immediately told us, "Hey, the time has come." All through that period of time, those first six months or first five months in England, there was always the rumor mill. Everyone had some story to tell at every meal or whatever we were doing. There was always a rumor come down. We knew we were probably going to go into France, Norway always come up for some reason. I never can understand that. But we knew we were going to go into France. We were concerned that we might get stuck in there. And of course, all this propaganda about Rommel building the wall, the Atlantic wall, there was always concern. Jesus, we jump in there and Rommel beats back the seaborne invasion, we're in deep trouble.

We didn’t get an order on the 5th, we got an order on the 4th. We were told that the invasion is coming off. They had wonderful meals for us on the 4th. Any kind of food, any kind of fruits, vegetables, it was all there. And the night of the 4th, we went on to the hangars, got our equipment, picked up our chutes, and we were sitting there waiting the order to load up. And we waited, and waited, and waited. And then finally, a light aircraft landed at the base. And I think it was the first lieutenant, if I remember right, came over and delivered, he had satchel with a chain on it cuffed to his wrist. And he come over, met with Frank Lillyman. And they went into one of the hangars. And apparently this... We suspected that was the order to go. But Lillyman came out of the hangar and told us to stand down, that we weren't going that night. And that was because that storm blew in and Eisenhower postponed it a day.

We went through the same thing the next day. Church services, food, the whole bit. But it came off about, I guess maybe 7:00 or so, we went down to the hangars, and we picked up our equipment, picked up our weapons. You had your choice of taking anything you wanted. It was all there. You were required to take certain things naturally. If you didn't want to take food, you didn't have to take food.

And one of the fellas was saying, "I'm going to carry more ammunition and no food." And the commander says, "Why?" And he says, "What do you think there isn't going to be food laying around on that ground over there the next morning? If I'm hungry, I assure you I will find food."

And the whole atmosphere was, "Let's get this show on the road." I think the fact that the night before on the 4th that it didn't come off was a great feeling of relief in one sense. Oh, wow. But on that same basis, there was a lot of disappointment in it because the guys were so primed. They were trained to the razor's edge, there's no question about that. And they said, "Look, all these years we've been working for this moment. Now let's get this moment on."

Well, time-wise, I guess it was around 8:30, 9:00. We were putting on our equipment. We had camouflage, grease and all that to get smeared on us. And everybody laid out their own equipment and put it on. And we had a captain, Frank Brown that led our stick. And he came around and checked every one, make sure, well, but before that, really, I forgot that, they had a lot of brass there, and camera people, photographers. And they took pictures of all the sticks in front of their plane or beside their plane. Through that whole period of time, what I was thinking more or less, "I wonder what this is going to be like." I was thinking, "Are they going to be waiting for us, or is it going to be a walk in the park, or what?" I was questioning what the outcome was going to be before we even started.

And I was very concerned about that seaborne invasion making it. That was on my mind. I said, "God, I hope these guys can get on that beach and get in shore," because we needed them to protect us as well, because we knew that supposedly at least, there was a lot of German armor in there. And paratroopers don't have the equipment to fight German armor. The best we have is a bazooka. And they bounce off. I've seen them bounce off of those German Mark VIIIs. And so my concern was, is that seaborne invasion made it.

In Boston Harbor December, whenever it was, middle of December, when we boarded the ship to come over, the colonel of our regiment was standing there passing out return tickets. And I think that did more for the morale of our people. I still remember that. I remember that many times before we went into France. I could remember that, "Hey, colonel gave me a return ticket." I don't know whatever happened to it, but I had a return ticket going back, so I wasn't too concerned.

There wasn't a man there that didn't want to go. I remember right down from where my plane was, and we were getting loaded up. There was a lot of Air Force top brass. And this one Air Force officer, I believe he was a bird colonel, made the comment, he yelled over to us, "I'll trade you places for the night." And we all started taking our shoes off. And I guarantee you, we would've never completely taken our shoes off because we were not going to trade our places under any circumstances. A lot of the Air Force personnel there, they were wonderful, absolutely wonderful people. And those guys had a tough battle too.

But they told us, "I wish we could go with you. I wish we could go with you." And of course, the old proverbial, "Kill one for me," and, "Stick that knife in that," you know what? And all those things was just American and typically American morale boosters for the guys going out. There should be no question in anybody's mind that the Pathfinder unit, it was tops. It was tops.

Well, we left, and it was around 9:30, quarter to 10:00. I had received a bull of a wrist from my mother on when I graduated from high school. That was one of her gifts to me. And you couldn't read, it was not a luminous dial or anything of this nature. And I remember it was dusk and starting to get dark pretty quick when we were all in the plane. And they started pulling out into the runway and taking off. And of course, we circled around until they built the formations together. And then we started down over England. And it seems to me, actually, I think our plane was one of them that kind of dipped and buzzed the field a little bit, and wagged the wings over the little towns as we were going to hamlets, villages.

When we were in a plane and we were crossing the channel, we were over water at the time, and we were very low, probably 300 feet or in that area. One of the guys said, "They told us we were going to jump at 400 feet." And he's saying, "We're jumping at 400 feet. Why do we have emergency chutes on?" If that chute doesn't open and you come out of 400 feet, the first 78 feet of any jump, it's taken up in the static line and the risers opening the chute. You've used up 78 feet right there, and you're falling like a rock. So the idea of being able to open up an emergency chute was a little ludicrous. And so the word came around, "Hey, if you don't want to take your emergency chute, jump with it, take it off." Well, then the question come around, "What the hell we carrying gas masks for? Nobody's used gas in this war." Maybe the Japanese on an island or two somewhere, but certainly the Germans were not going to use gas on us because they knew the repercussions would be horrendous. So if you don't want to take your gas mask with you, take it off.

So the next thing, we're flying over all these ships in the channel. And here at the door of our plane, everybody's throwing their chute, and their emergency chute, and their gas mask. And I've often thought, what did those people think on those ships when they saw all this stuff come out of the plane?

But then, I guess we were in the air about two hours. The feelings in the plane were all over the wall, so to speak. Some of the guys were sleeping, some of the guys were talking about their girlfriends, or their mother, their family or whatever. And some of the guys were just in general conversations.

One of the things I think that created a problem for a lot of us was when we were at the airbase ready to board the planes, they had motion sickness pills. And they told everybody, "Take a motion sickness pill on," and it'll kind of relax you supposedly. And everybody took it, but a lot of guys went to sleep. And I had heard many times afterwards about guys that when they landed, they just crawled into a hedgerow and went to sleep. So that was a negative on that flight.

And once we looped around the Brittany Peninsula or Normandy Peninsula, and we come over the island of Jersey and Guernsey, and that was our checkpoint. It was a ship out there, and that was the checkpoint. We approached from the west side. And as we crossed over those islands, they opened up on us with flak. That was our first time with flak. And right after we passed their island, then we're onto to the French Coast.

You actually hear the explosions. And the pilots did a pretty good job of maneuvering around the flaks burst. But that wasn't a bad situation. We were aware of the fact that they were throwing up flak at us. But it was when we got over the coast that not only did the flak come up, but you could see the tracer bullets coming up. And all they were using on us, anti-aircraft weapons. And we would get through one area, and then it would be quiet. Next thing you know, we're into another area. And I'm sure everybody that made that jump that night felt that every gun in France with a German behind it was shooting at those planes, and every bullet was coming straight towards him. I know the fellows that I've talked to about it, they thought that no one was shooting at anybody else but themselves.

Interviewer:

How did you feel about it?

Robert Earl Sechrist:

I felt the same way. I thought, "I've never seen a 4th of July like this." You could hear the bullets hitting the plane. You could hear them going through your chute, and just through the grace of God that some of us weren't hit and seriously injured. A lot of the guys took some flak that hit them, but didn't do great damage to them. One of our planes was hit and they were carrying under the plane in the luggage racks, explosives. And something hit that explosive, blew the whole plane apart. Every one on board was killed.

Believe me, that doesn't make any points for a paratrooper to fly over people with guns that can shoot from the ground, believe me, because those planes are only running 160, 180 mile an hour. And they have to slow down. They should slow down 110, 120 for the drop. And some of those pilots were wonderful, and they put the people right on the drop zones. Others were forced because of the tremendous amount of flak, they were forced to deviate from their flight paths. And that's where a lot of the paratroopers were misdropped and one of the planes went into the channel.

We were under 400 feet I know, at least I'm sure we were. We were under 400 feet when I went out of the plane. When my chute opened, things happened to it, and I didn't realize. But I think the fact, my weapon was in a canvas bag broken down. That was next to my body, and then an emergency parachute was there, and under my side was a canvas bag with a gas mask in it. And all that kept that bag, my weapons bag close to my body. And those chutes, they're really tight on you. But when I didn't have that emergency chute, I didn't have that gas mask. And when my chute opened, I believe this is what happened, is that the gun came up and hit me in the chin. It drove my lips up, and my lips come down over my teeth and penetrated my teeth. And all the time, I was on the ground probably an hour before I knew what happened, that my lips were hanging on my teeth. I bit through my lips all the way down, and my lips were hanging on my teeth. Well, I didn't sever it. It was just hanging. It was stuck in there. I must have jammed down with my upper teeth and my lips were, I just forced it through.

And I bled all down the front of myself of course. You don't see it anyways, and it's pitch black. But I was on the ground some time and trying to talk, when I realized that I had to reach up and pull my lips off of my teeth.

I'm sure there was a lot of people weren't under immediate fire. But where I landed, I landed between the highway that ran from Sainte-Mere-Eglise, down through Saint-Come-du-Mont, down to Carentan, France. That was a highway that ran down to there. And I landed on the east side of that highway. There was the highway, and then there was kind of a ditch there. And then the embankment came up. And on top of that embankment, it was probably 20 feet. And then there's a hedgerow there. And I landed up on that embankment.

On the other side of the highway, which was a little bit depressed, it was lower. And about 40, I guess they were 40 or 50 yards up the road. There was a machine gun firing at us. Well, there was three or four chutes very close to me. Three chutes went over the hedgerow and landed in the field. And it looked like one of the guys landed in the hedgerow just up from me, maybe 25 or 30 yards. When I landed, my chute collapsed just on the side of the hedgerow.

Now, a hedgerow is just a mound of earth with a lot of shrubbery, trees even in them, they grow in them. And the French for hundreds of years have used hedgerows as fences for their cattle, their farming, and things of that nature. And they were so thick that you couldn't penetrate them. In most cases, they were very, very thick. I had seen hedgerows where the Germans had cut holes through them and could fire through the hedgerows.

But when I landed, my chute caught on the hedgerow. And I kept thinking to myself, "I'm going to get that chute down first, because anybody will see it." And so I was trying to pull it down, but I was too close to the hedgerow, and it was hanging, sticking on it. And I had to get back towards the road to pull it down. And I was on my knees back towards the road trying to pull it down when this machine gun started traversing down the hedgerow. And my position on that ground was I rolled down closer to the hedgerow as I could get, and he couldn't elevate his gun down low enough to hit me. He would've been firing into the embankment. So I got out of my chute. I had my two lights, but I had to get on the other side of the hedgerow, because I'm on the wrong side for the drop zone. And so I didn't want to go back towards Saint-Come-du-Mont. I could see the little village was there, the towns, the houses. And I didn't want to go back that way because this guy's shooting at me. And he would fire off four or five rounds and then come down and fire four or five more. He's going to hit me.

So I started crawling down the side of the hedgerow, and all of them have openings so that the farmers can get their cattle on that end. Well, when I got probably 100 feet, I started getting from the other end, and I was very close to an opening.

At that time, they were shooting off flares. The Germans were shooting off all flares, and it was like daylight in some cases. And the only thing you did then was just hug the ground and pray, because there was nothing else you could do. I was out there alone.

So carrying those lights with me, and I had assembled my M1. I was trying to crawl, dragging my lights, holding my gun. And so I thought, I was in one of the parts of the hedgerow where it wasn't that high. And I thought, "Well, I have to get over there anyways. I'll throw the lights over the hedgerow." And they're about like that in a canvas bag, about 12 inches square box in canvas. And so I got up on my knees and I had my back of the hedgerow, and I just flipped it up over the hedgerow.

Well, the first one went over, because I heard it land on the other side. As soon as that light landed, I hear a click from the cricket. It's a click-clack, and a cricket. They gave us these crickets to identify one another. You hear some movement, you click it once. And if it's an American, he's got a cricket, he's going to click it twice. And then you find someone.

As soon as he clicked that clicker, this guy with a machine gun opens up on it. And fortunately because I was on my knees and I was just getting ready to throw that other light when the firing started. And so I laid still and he threw some penetrating shots at us, and then everything quieted down again. But there was so much firing, so much noise, and so much light. I kept thinking, "Oh boy, it'd be nice if it was dark."

No one ever got the lights set up on any of the... To my knowledge, I know two of the sticks didn't. And I don't think anybody got lights up on that third stick. But what they did though is that all three of those Eureka systems were set up. And the pilots in the plane could know when they were over those systems. So actually, two of the sticks jumped quite a ways off. The Pathfinders, the second stick landed on the edge of the drop zone. I landed on the outside of the drop zone. The guys in front of me landed on the inside. The other two sticks were dropped northwest of Saint-Come-du-Mont. Now, that's not a that a large distance. That's eighth of a mile or whatever. But everybody, they set one of the Eureka systems up in a tree, I know. And another one was set up on the ground northwest.

Now all those fellows had dropped further east of the road. There was more paratroopers landing on drop zone D than on A and C. We didn't have had a drop zone B. That was a planned drop zone that they found out, it was too much. I don't remember whether it was water. It might've been water or swamp land. And they had anticipated being dry.

The casualties that I was aware of at the time was, one of the fellows that jumped in front of me was a fellow named Len Newcomb from Nebraska, and another one was a corporal named Larsen from Montana I think he was from. One of the fellows was from Kentucky.

Larsen got through. He was one of them. These guys all landed where they should have landed. But Newcomb and one of the other fellows, he apparently lost his weapon in the jump. There was three of them captured the next morning when daylight came. We had a lot of Germans around us, and three of those guys were captured and spent the war in a prisoner of war camp. One other fellow was killed in the jump. So I don't know the outcome, because of my own circumstances. I don't know what the total outcome was of that.

Well, I got reunited with the 101st Airborne Division by when all the time that I was trying to get out of the predicament I was in and get to the field where they were supposed to set up the lights, it was so much under fire. And the Germans had set fire to a home, a house and a barn at the other end of the field. And between that, they had saturated with gasoline apparently, because it wound up like a blaze. And between it and the flares going off, they lit up that drop zone, that drop zone D. A lot of the casualties were taken.

I just laid behind that bush. After I threw the second light over, I figured somebody would get them and use the lights. But it didn't happen, because we didn't get lights up. There was too much fire, small arms fire.

But about 40 minutes later, 45 minutes later, here comes the armada of planes coming over. And the 506, there was a battalion of 506 and first or second battalion of the 501 was in that group. And when the... I don't know why, but I ended up with most of the guys in the 506 that landed in close proximity to me. The two of the guys landed on the road, and the Germans killed them right on the spot. I was probably 40, 50 yards from them. And it wasn't a thing I could do, because the whole west side of the highway by that time was German infantry. And they were shelling, they were using mortars on the drop zone. So it was a lot of damage done.

And of course, there was a lot of damage done to the Germans, believe me. I think one of the great things was is that we were so scattered that the Germans felt they were surrounded, just like we felt we were surrounded. We were jumping in the middle of a bunch of Germans. But in that same basis, we completely engulfed the Germans on that basis.

Now they had two very strong defensive positions. One was east of our drop zone, and the other one was along the causeway, the Carentan-France Causeway, which was the main highway that ran from Sainte-Mere-Eglise to Carentan. I was just on the west side of that causeway, and the Germans could sit there. I was within 50 yards of God only knows how many was over there at one time.

That's the thing. We were all in a position where we could lose our life. We were all in a position that we could have been severely damaged or injured in one way or another. I can only speak for the paratroops, but I think the greatest fear that the paratroops had was stepping on a landmine. I knew that was the one thing that I had an utmost fear of, because they were insidious. You were guaranteed to lose one leg and possibly two. And those Screaming Mimis were just bad, bad situations. And a lot of guys did have that problem. Pathfinders was a dangerous job, but not any more so than the regular paratroops coming in.

No. I am not minimizing it because I was a Pathfinder. But you have to remember, we had the advantage of surprise to a degree. And the Germans not knowing that we're coming, and what our positioning is going to be, and such, they weren't prepared for it. But they certainly were prepared for that armada coming across the channel. You can't tell me that they didn't have German spies on that channel over there and transmitting that information back to whoever got it in Germany, or France, or whatever the case may be. They knew we were coming. But they really didn't signal an alert I think when the Pathfinder planes went across. The Air Force, for one thing, the American Air Force flew at day, the English Air Force flew at night, and they were always flying and they were always sending probing planes out, just to keep people off balance. And the Germans not knowing, what are these guys doing up there? But they never did anything. They just would go in into France or wherever the case may be, and then they'd turn around and fly back out. And so we wanted to attract their attention and put them to work, so to speak, and bringing out their forces and all that. And the Germans are smart people. And that military, they knew what was coming down. So they didn't get excited. They knew it was going to come, but they didn't know that exact day. And that's why the Pathfinders, when we went in, we had the edge as far as the danger and liability was concerned. When they brought the 15,000 guys over in their planes, they knew we were coming.

I don't think anybody can imagine the sounds, the noise of the tremendous firing of everything from a pistol to a 16 caliber shell coming off of a battleship in the harbor. And you could actually see when they would fire a salvo of three. You could see the shells coming over. You could see them. They looked like Volkswagens going back to Germany.

The sights, the tremendous gore, so to speak. In those hedgerows, those roads between those hedgerows were really country lanes. And you put a Sherman tank or a German tank, which was much larger than our Shermans, on those roads, believe me, they're buttoned up because there's small arms fires, everything being shot at them. And they're going down those roads, and they're wounded on those roads, and they didn't stop to move them.

So the horror of it was just, I don't think people can imagine what you, a person who believes in God, who loves his country, his mother, his family, those type of people, you can't believe the actions that some of them presented. The odor of a battlefield is something that you'll never forget. The cord I smell, the burning. Nobody that has never been there can conceive what it's really like.

I think the Pathfinders gave the opportunity to General Eisenhower and his people to go on and win it, because we opened up that beachhead. There's no question about it. The Germans did not get beachhead from anybody behind us. They did not get through and get to the beach. Nobody did. And that was the key to the Pathfinders. Our job was to bring those troops in, and the paratroops were going to stop anything from getting to the beach. And we did stop everything. Every once in a while, we'd had a German Me 109 or whatever come flying over just at dusk. And everybody called him bed check Charlie. He's coming over to see what we're doing. But that's about the extent of a German aircraft. Didn't see it. But I'll tell you something, nothing was on the road behind us or in front of us that was German in daylight. Nothing. Nothing crossed the roads.

How proud? Well, I can only say that I don't feel I ever have to take a back seat to anyone when it comes to that. As I said earlier, I would never want to do it again. But I would never trade the wonderful, wonderful experience in most cases. And with the people that I was with, they were 100% behind each and every one of us. We backed every one. Every Pathfinder knew that if he needed help, there was another guy, another Pathfinder to come for him. So they were just a great, great, great people. Great, wonderful bunch of people.

After I got back to the states, I was at Nichols General Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. And while they were rebuilding my elbow, there would be times when I'd have a couple, three or four weeks between operations. I made I guess 12, 15 public appearances for the war bond drives, for the blood drives. I received a key to the city of Louisville where Nichols General Hospital was located. And I met a lot of wonderful people.

A lot of those people put me on a pedestal, which I didn't deserve. But those were wonderful, wonderful moments. Don't come back to me often, but under these circumstances, they do. When I stood up in front of those audiences, and I've made speeches in front of 5,000 workers at Reynolds Aluminum in Louisville, all these different plants, and received that recognition. It was very memorable.

And I was just one of many. I tried to do the best of my ability, the job that they presented to me. Everything didn't turn out the way we'd liked it to turn out, but I would never want to go through it again. But I would never trade the experience. That experience was just unbelievable.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Private First Class Robert Earl Sechrist.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.