My name is Victoria
Carr. I am a senior at Mary Baldwin College as a history major and I’m spending
my summer as an intern at the National D-Day Memorial. As an intern with the
Education Department, I have worked closely with the school groups, giving
tours, and assisting with educational programs and events.
During World War I,
a group of elite men was added to the U.S Navy to help with destroying enemy
defensive obstacles. In World War II, these men were called frogmen and were a
part of the Naval Combat Demolition Unit. Today, this group is known as the
Navy SEALs.
Once the US entered
WWII, the Navy saw that in order to defeat the Axis powers they would need to
perform a large number of amphibious attacks. They decided that men would have
to go in to reconnoiter the landing beaches then locate and destroy obstacles
and defenses. The Army and Navy established the Amphibious Scout and Raider
School at Fort Pierce, Florida in 1943 to train men in the specialty of amphibious
raids and tactics. Most of these men used their skills though North Africa, the
Pacific, and the Normandy landings.
As time went on,
there was a need for men to destroy obstacles. In 1943, the Navy created a
large dedicated force for this task called the Naval Combat Demolition Unit, or
NCDU, also located at Fort Pierce, Florida. The NCDU force meant recruitment
beyond just the pool of experienced combat swimmers to the Seabees (the Navy’s
construction battalions), the U.S Marines, and U.S Army combat engineers. Most of these men were used to disarm
explosives, but now they were going to learn to use them offensively. One
innovation was to use 2.5 pound packs of tetryl placed in a rubber tube so that
they could twisted around obstacles for demolition.
By June 1944, 34
NCDU teams were deployed in England as a part of Operation Overlord. The Germans
had placed defenses on the French lines to make it hard for the Allied forces
to attack without heavy lost. As the NCDU teams arrived in England, the scouts
and raiders were out getting information on the obstacles placed along the French
coast. For training, they built a replica of the Belgian Gates on the south coast
of England for the teams to practice on. They learned that they could blow the
gate to pieces creating more of an obstacle, but they would need to find the key
corner joints so that it fell down flat. The Allied attack plans had the NCDU
teams landing in the second wave of the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944 and
working at low tide to clear the obstacles so that troops could get though.
 |
| NDCU 140- Hill's Hellions |
My Great
Grandfather, Donald C. Carr, was part of the NCDU team during World War II and
D-Day. His NCDU was called the “Hills
Hellions” or NCDU 140. He wrote a letter to his high school when he returned
from Normandy. He wrote:
“I returned recently from the invasion of Normandy. The demolition crews to which I am attached were the first to land on the shores of France. Our mission was to destroy the beach obstacles so that the incoming troops and supplies could be landed with minimum of loss. Landing slightly before H-hour, we encountered heavy enemy resistance. After completing our mission we remained on the beach for 28 days then returned to the French debarkation point for transportation to England and the United States. I am sorry to say that we only returned with 53% of our men. There are many new cemeteries on the shores of France that are filled with men who gladly gave their lives for the cause. As men have said before, you give us the equipment, we shall do the rest.”
It has been an
honor to spend my summer interning at the National D-Day Memorial and having
the opportunity to honor and preserve the men who stormed the beaches on June
6, 1944, like my grandfather.
-Victoria
