Our D-Day Fallen: Charles Albert Rippon

Hello Friends!

I am excited to feature a blog written by our Director of Education, John Long. On top of all of his other job responsibilities, he’s been working tirelessly on reorganizing our collection while accessioning new artifacts at the same time. One of both of our favorite aspects to artifacts is how they tell a story. Today, John is going to tell you about some artifacts we have received and how they tell a story of one of our D-Day fallen, Charles Albert Rippon.

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We’re all born…we all die. It’s an inevitable sequence of events.

Between those two happenings (which as a rule we like to be as far apart as possible) we live our life. We work and play, have happy and sad moments, impact other people, make a difference in some degree. Along the way, we leave behind a legacy; that legacy is often revealed in the “paper trail” that inevitably survives us in the modern world.

One of the more fulfilling aspects of working with the National D-Day Memorial Foundation is being able to take the documentary ephemera of a single life and use it to recreate a person’s story. In the archive of the Memorial (now over 10,000 items) you’ll find quite a few stories of the WWII generation preserved, just waiting for the right researcher to come along and do the detective work and reveal the hidden history.

Not long ago we took time to explore and catalog a collection of letters, documents, and photos associated with Charles Albert Rippon, one of 2,499 American fatalities on D-Day. Some would look at the box of yellowed documents and faded photos and see only a hodgepodge of old paper. But we saw a legacy, a way to tell the story of an American hero, to pay tribute to a man who gave his life for his adopted nation.

Photograph of Charles Rippon with his
signature at the top

No one’s ever heard of Charles Rippon, so we’d like to tell you his story. It’s a story emblematic of the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of all of the D-Day participants.

Charles was born August 26, 1908, in the parish of Crowle in Lincolnshire, England, to Edward Graystock and Ann Elizabeth Hinchliffe Rippon.  But he spent only a few months of his infancy there. In July 1909 the family boarded the good ship Haverford at Liverpool and crossed the ocean for a better life in America.

The Rippons settled in Johnsonburg, PA where Charles grew up in an idyllic American childhood, eventually with four brothers and three sisters. Like every boy in the small hometown in Elk County, he played baseball on the local Little League team, learned to fish, went to school. He graduated from Johnsonburg High in 1927; a year later his father died and presumably Charles became one of the family’s breadwinners. He worked for a local paper mill and supported his mother and siblings.

How much he loved his adopted nation might be deduced from the painstaking process he undertook in 1938 to become an American citizen. At that time, Britain was inching closer and closer to war, and perhaps Charles was concerned that unless he became a naturalized American, he could be drawn into British service. If so, it’s ironic that the war would eventually put him in an American uniform and ask him to lay down his life anyway.

Charles Rippon, March 1, 1943

War, of course, came to the small town in 1941. Charles Rippon, like most of the patriotic men of his generation, was quick to enlist. He joined the Naval Reserve and trained as an electrician’s mate, eventually rising to the rank of EM 1/C. In the summer of 1943 he again crossed the Atlantic and returned to his native country, quipping in his first letter home to his mother that “It has taken me a long time to make the round trip.”

Rippon’s frequent letters home to his mother spoke of side trips to see the sites of England and visits with long-lost relatives, but only vaguely hinted at the dangerous business that brought him to the United Kingdom. Like many a serviceman in many a war, he tried to allay mom’s fears with encouraging news and confidence that he would probably never face the enemy in combat. “This winter we will no doubt train and I doubt very seriously if we will ever see an action…they must really be pasting the Axis on the continent,” he wrote in Sept. 1943 (Italy had recently surrendered at the time and Mussolini had been deposed, although Rippon was wrong about the fighting there being conclusive or even quickly concluded).

We know, if he could not directly get such info through the censors to his family at home, that Rippon and his fellow sailors were training to cross the channel as part of Operation Overlord. He was assigned to a Landing Craft Tank, LCT-458, with the assignment of delivering an artillery unit to Utah Beach. It would not be an easy task—slow moving LCT delivering tanks or big guns would be obvious targets for German fire and vulnerable to mines. Nonetheless, he remained positive and confident in his letters. In one of his last letters home, dated May 23, 1944, he referenced a recent letter from a sister about how she had to cut the grass herself. “Picture me coming home with lots of lawn to mow—oh no! After this easy life I will hire someone to cut the grass.”

Sadly, it would never happen. At about 9:00 AM on June 6^th, LCT-458 hit a German mine about a mile off of the French coast, sinking almost immediately in one of the greatest tragedies of the Utah Beach sector. Only three men from the naval crew survived the sinking; Rippon was not one of them. His body was never recovered and his name appears on the Wall of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.

The Landing Craft on which Rippon gave his life for his adopted nation was transporting Battery B of the 29^th Field Artillery, 4^th Infantry Division. Altogether 39 of about 60 soldiers in that battery also died. Only three soldiers on that LCT would ever return to the fight in France. The full story of what happened to LCT-458 has never been told, perhaps because there were so few survivors. We hope to uncover more of that heartrending tale through further research.

Charles Albert Rippon was only one of 4,413 Allied servicemen to pay the ultimate price for the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny. On June 20, his brother-in-law Paul Mellander, not yet aware of what had happened, wrote to Charles “We thought of you and how busy you must be. It was something to think about when D-Day came, and [it] gives one a funny feeling when you think of the size of the undertaking and lives lost.” His sister Mabel added in the margin “I hope you’re safe and sound in Good Old England.”

The letter, of course, was never delivered. It was stamped “return to sender—unclaimed” and sent back to the grieving family, who by then had received the dreaded telegram from the Secretary of War. That poignant letter is now part of our archive, helping to tell only one of the countless stories which form the tapestry of our history.

-John

Native American Heritage Month: Comanche Code Talkers

This month we celebrate Native American Heritage Month by looking at code talkers of World War II, specifically the men of the Comanche Tribe.  In December 1940, seventeen Comanche were recruited by the US Army to become code talkers.  These men were assigned to the 4^th Signal Company of the 4^th Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia.  Here they received phone, radio, Morse code, and semaphore training. 

 

In August 1941 these seventeen men were placed under Lt. Hugh F. Foster to develop an unbreakable Comanche-language code.  Foster provided the men with 250 specialized military terms for which they needed to develop coded equivalents.  Combined with standard Comanche, coded terms were developed.  Here are some examples of those coded terms:

Tutsahkuna’ tawo’i’     meaning “sewing machine gun” for “machine gun,”

Wakaree’e                  meaning “turtle” for “tanks,”

Po’sa taiboo’               meaning “Crazy White Man” for “Hitler.”

Comanche Code Talker completed their training on 30 October 1941, and shortly thereafter went to Louisiana to conduct field exercises.  It took a military machine up to four hours to transmit and decode a message; however, a Comanche Code Talker could decode the same message in under three minutes. 

 

Comanche Code Talkers, Ft. Benning, Georgia

Fourteen of the men who had trained were sent to the European Theater with the 4^th Infantry Division.  On 6 June 1944, thirteen Comanche Code Talkers hit the Utah Beach with Allied Troops.  When they landed, they were five miles off their designated target.  The first message sent from the beach was sent in Comanche from PFC Larry Saupitty and translated to “We made a good landing.  We landed in the wrong place.”

Comanche Code Talkers, Ft. Benning (National Archives)

Maintaining wire telephone lines and sending secure messages via field phone and radio, the Comanche Code Talkers served in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany.  They served in important battles such as at Cherbourg, St. Lo, Paris, the Siegfried Line, the Huertgen Forest, and Bastogne.  Several men were wounded during the course of the war, but all made it home.  Their code, like that of the Navajos in the Pacific, was never broken. 

On November 3, 1989, the French government and the State of Oklahoma bestowed the Chevalier de L’Order National de Merite (Knight of the Order of National Merit), to three then-surviving members of the Comanche Code Talkers (Cpl. Charles Chibitty, Cpl. Forrest Kassanavoid, and Pfc. Roderick Red Elk) at the Oklahoma State Capitol.  To learn more, visit the website for the Comanche National Museum.

Comanche Code Talkers of World War II

·         Cpl. Charles Chibitty

·         T/4 Haddon Codynah

·         T/5 Robert Holder

·         Cpl. Forrest Kassanavoid

·         T/5 Wellington Mihecoby

·         Pvt. Albert (Edward) Nahquaddy, Jr.

·         Pvt. Perry Noyabad

·         T/5 Clifford Otitivo

·         T/5 Simmons Parker

·         Pvt. Melvin Permansu

·         Pvt. Elgin Red Elk

·         Pfc. Roderick Red Elk

·         Pfc. Larry Saupitty

·         Anthony Tabbytite

·         T/4 Morris Tabbyetchy

·         Pfc. Ralph Wahnee

·         T/5 Willis Yackeschi

Until next time, 

Felicia

Sources: 

Comanche National Museum. http://www.comanchemuseum.com/code_talkers 

Oklahoma's Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/C/CO013.html 

 

Our D-Day Fallen: Sergeant Charlie Wilburn Grayson

Luminaries around the Memorial

As we enter the holiday season, we are reminded everyday of the sacrifices made by our servicemen and women around the world as they work to defend our country.  We are also reminded of the ultimate sacrifice paid by many of those defenders across generations and the loved ones they left behind here on the homefront.

This year from December 13^th to December 15^th at 6pm to 10pm, we will pay tribute to the men killed in action on June 6, 1944 by placing 4,413 luminaries around the site.  That is one light for each soldier, sailor, and airmen; one light for each father, brother, son, uncle, husband, and friend; one light for each life given in service of the Allied nations on June 6, 1944.  Four thousand, four hundred and thirteen lights for four thousand, four hundred and thirteen lives cut short on the field of battle.  

Redstone Arsenal, 1940

Lives like that of Sergeant Charlie Wilburn Grayson.  Born August 31, 1916, Charlie grew up close to Huntsville, Alabama.  During the Great Depression, Madison County led Alabama in cotton production; however all this changed with the outbreak of World War II when this quiet community, with a population of about 13,000, was selected by the U.S. Army to become the new home of the Huntsville Arsenal and the Redstone Arsenal.  Personnel at these two facilities alone approached 20,000.  

Charlie attended school through the seventh grade before leaving to help his family earn money during the Great Depression.  On the 1940s census, Charlie’s occupation was listed as a “real construction worker” in government work.  On June 7, 1940, at 23 years old, Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army.  Like the men from Bedford, Virginia, this was his one year of active service under President Roosevelt’s Selective Service Act.  However, the attack on Pearl Harbor changed all of that.  He was now in the U.S. Army for the duration of the war.  

Charlie was part of the 8^th Infantry Regiment, Antitank Company, 4^th Infantry Division.  Like others preparing for this invasion, he spent months training in England.  The 4^th Infantry Division, or the “Ivy” Division, was created on December 3, 1917 and reactivated on June 1, 1940 at Fort Benning, Georgia.  On January 18, 1944, the Ivy Division embarked from New York to a final training phase in England.  The Ivy Division had been added to the original invasion plans because of an enlargement of the landing area.  

8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division moving over the seawall on Utah Beach

Charlie's headstone in Hayden Cemtery

Charlie and his fellow soldiers intensified their training, including practicing amphibious landings.  The 4^th Division, led by the 8^th Infantry Regiment, was selected to spearhead the landings on Utah Beach.  The soldiers of the 8^th Infantry Regiment landed around 0630.  Charlie was part of the first wave during the invasion.  This is the end of Charlie’s story.  He was killed in action on June 6, 1944.  He left behind his wife, Garner B. Clark, mother, and six siblings.  In 1949, his family elected to have his body returned to the states.  He was re-interred at Hayden Cemetery in New Hope, Alabama.

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This holiday season help us remember the ultimate sacrifice paid by the 4,413 servicemen on June 6, 1944.  If you would like more information about the luminaries or if you would like to sponsor a luminary for a family member or friend, visit our website at www.dday.org.