In this bonus episode of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast, I am presenting the story of my late uncle, Dudley Foster and his experiences as a sailor in the U.S. Navy at the Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944.
Dud and his wife Ang, my dad's older sister, retired to their own North Country retreat on the banks of the AuSable River just outside of Grayling, Michigan in the mid-1970s and lived out the remainder of their lives along the river. Dud kept a diary of sorts of his experiences during the Normandy Invasion, and it has been passed down to my cousin Caroline Foster, Dud's granddaughter, who was kind enough to share it with me.
Although this was the only time that Dud was in combat, his World War II service neither began nor ended with the Invasion of Normandy on the shores of France. Before he could be drafted, Dud enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve and until he was called to active service, he and Ang were employed at Henry Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant, producing the B-24 Heavy Bomber, the first mass produced airplane. When Dud was sent on active duty, Ang and their young son Mike (Micky) returned to their hometown of Chelsea, Michigan (mine as well). I believe this was sometime in 1943 and Dud was assigned to an LST (Landing Ship Tank) and sent to Great Britain to prepare for the opening of a second front in Western Europe to defeat Hitler's Nazi Germany.
After the Invasion, Dud eventually returned to the United States and was transferred to the Pacific Theater where he would begin training for his next assignment, the Invasion of Japan. He was training as a crewman on a Rocket Barge that was a floating artillery battery that was to support the landings on the Japanese home islands. It was while he was in training that the Atomic Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan that ended World War II.
In this episode, I read the passages of his diary about D-Day, which gives all of us the perspective of a young sailor in the fight of his life.
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