Intermission Stories (21)

!8 yer old, Walter Gumula

Walter Gumula

D-Day Frogman

Walter Gumula was a state champion swimmer from Hammond, Indiana and became an 18 year old frogman among the first waves to land on Omaha Beach.  He recounted his experience as:

Their mission was a secret, so Walter and his 6-man crew boarded a British freighter, wearing Army green instead of Navy blue.  The idea was to fool the Nazis into thinking they were regular troops instead of frogmen, the highly-trained underwater demolition experts known today as Navy SEALS.  Their orders were to blow up the fearsome German fortifications on Omaha beach.  But as soon as they boarded the landing craft, the plan went horribly wrong.

“When we got close to the beach, a shell hit the front door and went through the boat.  It went right through a bunch of guys in my unit.  One guy lost an arm and another lost his eyes.  They were all wounded including our ensign.  Anyone who stood up in the boat got hit because machine-gun fire was coming through the open door.  Bullets were flying in.  The boat was drifting.  As soon as it turned away from the beach, those who could, went over the side.”

For months they had trained together closely in Fort Pierce, FL, expecting to assault Pacific beaches.  Now, only Gumula was left on a cold and bloody French beach.  “When I got to the beach, I was all alone, ” he said.  With his crew gone, along with his mission, Walter followed 8 Army engineers up a rope ladder to the top of a cliff where they were trying to take out a German position.

Walter Gumula, today

They gave him a Browning automatic rifle and told him to lay down covering fire as they crept toward an underground Nazi observation post with knapsacks of plastic explosives, which they threw into the hole.  The blast severed German communication lines to inland artillery.  Gumula asked to stay with the engineers, but the sergeant sent him back to the beach.  “I was young and dumb and didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.”

Walter began crawling, aiming for a spot where the bluff ended at the beach.  When he dared to raise his head, he was astonished at the scene below.  “I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.  There were literally thousands of boats out there, three lines of ships coming across from England.  One battleship was blasting right over the cliff I was on.  Those shots were coming right over my head.  They sounded like a fast train coming by, making a weird noise.

But the boats were piled up, unable to land.  The troops already on the rocky beach were trapped between withering German fire and a rising tide.  “They were starting to pull back.  I thought they were going to leave us.  The worst barrages were coming from the large gun emplacement pillbox close to the beach.”

equipment for the WWII frogman

Suddenly he watched a destroyer with 5″ guns pull in so perilously close to shore he expected it to run aground.  At point blank range, the ship’s guns blasted apart the German pill box.  Immediately, troops started heading inland across that stretch of beach.  “He saved the whole thing,” Walter remarked.

As the ship turned to head for deeper water, German guns opened up, pounding the Allied armada with massive 14″ and 16″ shells.  Gumula watched the ship get hit 3 times.  “It broke in half and sank immediately.  I actually saw that”

By the time Gumula found the officer in charge of his stretch of beach, shrapnel was raining down like hail on the living and the dead.  “There were literally thousands of bodies,” Walter said as he recalled the events of 70 years ago and related them to reporter, Barbara Marshall, Palm Beach Post.  Mr. Gumula now resides in Port Salerno, FL.

“You never forget it, the look on someone’s face when they die right in front of your eyes.” ______ Walter Gumula, frogman

U.S. Navy SEAL Museum, Fort Pierce, FL

 

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Farewell Salute – 

Eugene Allen – Harlington, TX; USMC, Cpl., Korea

Kenneth Bradley – Bellville, AR; US Air Force

Allan Berry – Birkdale, NZ; RNZVR, SubLt., WWII

Angelo DiMascio Sr. – Cranston, RI; US Army, WWII, 82nd Airborne

Rosemary Gannon – Highland Falls, NY; civilian employee at West Point 1942 thru 1987

Walter “Cap” Haworth Jr. – Pocatello, ID; US Air Force, Captain (Ret. 20 years), 3 tours Vietnam

Gordon Kendall – Toronto, Can; RC Air Force, WWII

Robert Kranich (100) – Winchester, VA; US Army, Colonel (Ret.), WWII

Jesse Schaudies – Raliegh, SC; US Army, Corps of Engineers, WWII, PTO

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