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Author: "I understand. If you would rather, we can speak
about what happened after this particular period in time?"
Harv: "Well, before the invasion of Sicily, I remember making
several trips along the coast of North Africa, taking troops and
supplies to different ports...Oran and Bizerta...are two I remember....
"From this point on I
have no recall what really happened, because on one of these trips, the
333 was torpedoed sunk and lost, yet I cannot even remember what
happened. I thought I was still on the 333 when the invasion of Sicily
and Italy took place, but I don`t remember what ship I was on, or when,
or what really happened after the sinking of 333. I didn`t find out that
the 333 was actually the first LST to be lost in World War Two until
years later."
Author: "You never found out to this day?"
Harv: "I finally gave up trying to find out what ship or ships I
was on during this time. It was all a blur then and even harder to
remember now."
Author: "Ok....then tell us about what you did right after
to the best of your ability."
Harv: "Well, the big day came and we finally headed for Sicily.
Our flotilla went towards Palermo, and we met less resistance than
expected; but for everyone’s first real taste of combat, it was enough
to make some of the crew feel like they needed to change their
skivvies!"
Author: "The German's must have been looking to get some
revenge for this one?"
Harv: "Actually, after we hit Sicily, the Krauts made a few
serious efforts to bomb our base (Arzew) out of existence, but we
survived it all. Our Navy Commander's sent a lot of ships in the
vicinity to raise holy hell with the German Air force....our group hit
our share of them. One the bomber's actually crashed right into our area
of the harbor, just a few feet from the shoreline."
Author: "That must have been some sight. Tell me...what
was the reaction of the men to such a close call?"
Harv: (Chuckling) "Believe it or not, after such a sight, we all
decided to go out and rummage for souvenirs of the wreckage..."
"The rest of our time
at Arzew was in preparation for Italy, so there isn’t any need to write
much more about that. I could tell a lot of very amusing stories though.
The day finally came to head for the coast of Italy, and none of us knew
just where we were really going to, except someplace on the Italian
shoreline."
Author: "It must have been hard to wait there as the boys
on the shore were knee deep in it."
Harv: (sighing) "Yeah, but eventually we found out that our group
was heading for Anzio, the beach that the "smart ones" said would be the
worst! As we approached the beach, our skipper noticed that some of the
anphibs’ were coming up short of dry landing, and those troops that were
heading ashore had to swim for it, causing many casualties. He simply
figured that there had to be a sand bar that this group ran aground
upon, and the motorized vehicles couldn't leave the tank deck because it
was too deep."He ordered us to head in with "flank" speed in order
to skip over that sand bar."
Author:
"And you did?"
(Cont...)
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