Tom Tuminello, Headquarters Company, 20th Engineer Battalion
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Tom Tuminello was assigned to Headquarters Company, 20th Engineer Battalion for the assault on Omaha Beach and the continued assault across Europe into Czechoslovakia. Tom recorded his memories of various battles, to include D-Day, the liberation of Paris, the Hurtgen Forest, the Siegfried Line, and Susice in Czechoslovakia. Click the "play" button below to listen to Tom's memoirs.
An article written by Tom Tuminello in the September, 2009 edition of the Wavy Arrow.
In the staging area in southern England, Company A of the 20th Combat Engineer Battalion was called to see a sand model of Omaha Beach for the invasion. I was asked to stay with four other soldiers and we were selected to carry a new mine detector on to the beach. We were supporting the First Infantry Division for the landing with the first wave.
As we were going in on the morning of June 6th, our landing craft hit a mine which killed three and wounded eighteen. We landed in water up to our knees and zig-zagged across the sandy beach up to the cliff as German gunners were firing on us from the pill box at the top of the cliff. We were there a short time when the first sergeant came to me and Joe Piekarski and told us that someone had left the dynamite on board the landing craft and we need it to blow a hole in the cliff for the tanks to get to the top.
We left our guns and the mine detector against the cliff and took off across the beach, into the water, and up the ramp of the landing craft which was still where we left it. Bullets began hitting the wall of the craft and we slid into the hold and grabbed the dynamite. As we slid out of the hole, bullets pinned us down. All of a sudden we heard a voice coming through a vent on the side wall of the landing craft. The voice said, "When he has changed his belt on the machine gun, I will say go and you take off." When he said, "go," we took off into the water and onto the sandy beach zig-zagging again to the cliff. We made it and the hole was blown in the cliff for the tanks. I thank the one person left on the landing craft who was talking to us through the vent.