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The
40th - Their Own Story
Pt 2 of 6
Then
came an alert. The real boat ride was due. The trip across was
to be in LST's. On the third of July, the outfit hit the marshalling
area near Dorchester, Dorset, and celebrated Independence Day
fittingly by preparing for another liberation. Three LST's took
them aboard the fifth and on the sixth they were on Omaha Beach.
By the tenth of July, the battalion had started its first job.
They were working for First Army and the job was to connect
First Army, First Army Rear and VIII and VII Corps. Communications
were in but the line was continually being shot out by artillery
fire near Carentan.
This line had to run across swamps flooded by the Germans, the
Carentan Canal and a river. It was only after the job had been
satisfactorily completed that the Engineers pronounced those
swampy fields free of mines.
The open wire across the Carentan Canal was replaced by submarine
cable to allow clearance for water traffic and then the cable
replaced by a high span of open wire. There was work around
St Come-du-Mont and Chef-du-Pont. Some open wire and some spiral
four. And some of the spiral four looped out in the first hasty
days of the invasion had to be recovered. And the enemy was
never far away. In pushing open wire as far as they could go,
five linesman were injured, one seriously.
This happened the 23rd of July, as the open wire was heading
for Marigny. And then also near Marigny, on the 26th, a survey
party captured the battalion's first prisoners.
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