Johnson part of first wave to hit beach
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That is perhaps the best way to describe meeting John Johnson, 78, of Morrison, who was part of the first wave of ships to invade the beaches of Normandy June 6, 1944.
The Navy took from him – and took they did, after the ship he was on hit a mine off that beach and was later torpedoed off the coast of Spain – but as a veteran of the Great Depression, the Navy also gave back, eventually giving him a career that lasted 30 years.
Drafted in 1943 “like everybody else,” Johnson went through training and soon found himself on a ship headed overseas along with hundreds of other young men who were about to become a part of history.
“That was when the Allies were starting to win,” Johnson said of the beginning of his combat service in 1944, “and that was the reason they were pushing everybody so fast.”
Johnson’s job was as a rigger on an amphibious landing ship tank that would transport troops and equipment to the front lines as part of a beach battalion. It scurried along the European coastline and England throughout the war, with Johnson’s first combat experiences occurring at Anzio, Italy in early 1944. It eventually landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
“We didn’t know what we were doing there,” Johnson said of the days leading up to the invasion while sitting on a quiet park bench in Viola with his granddaughter, Warren County native Angie (Johnson) Burris.
“Of course, they wouldn’t tell us. We stayed there three or four days. And come to find out, we were supposed to have the invasion a couple of days before we did. The water was so rough over there where we were supposed to invade, I forget how high those waves were where the ships couldn’t even get in there.”
When the water calmed down, the ship landed on Normandy beach “within earshot” of the American beach head, Johnson said, which was most likely near Omaha Beach or Utah Beach where multiple American soldiers died when they came under attack from Germans stationed at the top of a well-defended bluff.
At 18, he admits he did not pay particular attention to the exact locations of the beach heads or his ship, which was called the LST 359. He does recall his ship carried British troops to Normandy beach on D-Day and the history books confirm ships carried British troops just east of Omaha and Utah beaches.
Although not targeted that day, in part, he said he believes, because their landing area was flat with no bluffs, it was not long after D-Day the ship’s fate was sealed.
“We finally went in there and hit the beach. We were right up there on the beach – we had to in order to unload the tanks and things like that,” he said of the D-Day landing.
“Of course we weren’t the only ones to hit the beach and unload the troops, but we did that for eight trips. On the eighth trip we started out from there to get to England to get another load and that’s where we hit a mine.”
Johnson said more than 30 people working below decks were killed on that eighth trip. By some miracle, he was working “topside” that day.
Crew members didn’t have time to think during combat operations, but when they would land on a beach and have to wait “high and dry” for the tide to take them back out to sea, that’s when the thoughts set in. And when the combat action calmed down, recollections of the harrowing experiences would surface.
“Anybody would be a fool to say they weren’t scared,” he said. “I was scared to a certain extent. I was scared worse after it was over with each time. You have time to think about what was really going on. You didn’t have time to think. You had a job to do and that was it. You knew what you had to do and you weren’t being no hero or nothing like that.”
After it hit the mine, the ship was taken to England, then Scotland for repairs, but the engines needed more repairs. Although it was repaired and floating after it hit the mine off Normandy beach, the ship was torpedoed even as it was in tow and headed from Europe to the United States.
“It went through the whole European Theater,” Johnson said of the LST 359, noting he believes the Germans had its number. “I wasn’t on it that whole time, but they would get the numbers and I think they would pick on them then. You could see the number plainly on the side of the ship,” he added.
Operating with a skeleton crew of about 32 people when it was torpedoed, one person was killed when the ship was hit about 100 miles off the coast of Spain. That account is confirmed by the Department of Navy’s Naval Historical Center, which noted the LST 359 was sunk by the German submarine U-870 northeast of the Azores on Dec. 20, 1944.
Johnson remembers the time – 10 a.m. That day, he said there was a man working beneath deck who couldn’t escape after the ship was hit, so the remaining men pulled him to safety, putting their own safety in jeopardy.
A photographer from another ship, which was part of a convoy of so-called “dead ships” headed back to the United States, took a photograph of the LST 359 minutes after it was torpedoed and sold prints for about $35 a piece, he added, which is why he has a record of what happened almost 60 years later, Johnson said.
In any case, the torpedoed ship was cut loose from the cable that attached it to the tugboat and the men literally jumped ship to a tugboat. Not long after, the ship “broke in two,” he added.
The men were loaded onto a tanker and spent 20 days crossing the ocean to come home, “coming under attack nearly every other day.” Two days from New York, planes were sent out and all on board made it to safety, even the man they rescued.
Johnson said he feels lucky to be alive but doesn’t feel like a hero. And he puts his experiences – being part of a significant slice of world history – in the simplest of terms.
“I feel pretty honored by it. It was just one of those things everybody had to do,” he said of being called into service.
Fighting for freedom was worth all the men who died and the effort involved, he added, noting he believes the world today would be run by dictators had not World War II occurred and the Allies won the war.