Russell LeeRoy Pickett

Russell LeeRoy Pickett
Born	19 April 1919 Soddy-Daisey, Tennessee
Died	2 August 2020 Soddy-Daisey, Tennessee
Cause of death	Complications from Heart Disease

Russell LeeRoy Pickett was a Private First Class

Childhood

19 April 1919 - Birth

On 19 April 1919 in the Daisey half of Soddy-Daisey Tennessee which was on Highway 27. It was around eighteen miles north of Chattanooga. He was born to a dad who worked at a keel-foreman for a brick and tire company in Daisey. He also already had two brothers, each older than him and two and a half years apart.

Sometime after he was born his mother eventually gave birth to three girls.

1929

Moved to Falling Water, which is where he attended grammar school. He stayed there through his school years.

1941

In 1941 his oldest brother was caught in the first draft. He was first put in cavalery personnel. They opened Camp Pickett in Virginia which had been closed for a while. The Picketts got a kick out of the name. They put him under cadre work and not overseas just yet. During this time Russell heard what he had been doing.

1943

Russell was drafted into service at 18 years and two months. Mother wouldn't let him enlist because his oldest brother was in the army who was caught in the first draft. Russell wanted to be drafted, and so put unemployed on his papers so that he could join, however his mother wouldn't sign the papers. At the time he had no girlfriend and no wife.

June - Three weeks of training

He went to Fort McClellan in Alabama near Anniston Alabama. Basic training was ROTC, the camp was an Infantry Replacement center, they were trained as replacements, tough but good training. He had thoughts about whether he liked the training or not sometimes but he enjoyed it. There they qualified with rifles, along with the other weapons that they needed to be qualified with.

To Russell, and probably the others around him, the food was terrible, and took a while to learn, but it was reasonably well for the army. It was also hot there in June.

Seven day leave for home

Once they were finished with training they had seven days to go home and had to report back to Fort Meade Maryland which was for advanced training. When he went home in his uniform he felt proud of himself as everyone was padding him on the back. He felt like a man, especially after basic training.

Fort Meade - Two weeks

Fort Meade was just outside of Washington, which was a preparation center for overseas. They did calisthenics, marches, lectures, and whathave you it. They basically just did routine stuff. Russell had asked how long they would be at the camp and the response was that they'd be there for the duration of the war. By this time Russell hadn't been fiftey miles from home all his life so some of this stuff was new to him. It was somewhat fascinating to him of the experience he was having. One of such things that fascinated him was visiting New York and Washington.

Sometimes they'd pull them out at something like two oclock in the morning to do a six mile hike. Otherwise it was a normal routine.

All troops that were going to go overseas stopped at Fort Meade for around two weeks. Russell was waiting for the time to be sent overseas.

Camp Shanks, New York - preparations for going overseas for one week

From Fort Meade they finally went to the port of embarkation at Camp Shanks New York. It was a full camp all the time. There were barracks there. Mainly what did there for about the week was preparing and getting equiped for going overseas. They would let them go to town at night, the six buses that they had would take them down to NYC. Russell went and saw Times Square, and also went on a side-trip one night to Brooklyn and got lost there. A Yellow cab was able to pick him up and asked Russell if he would ask for a certain place to go, and Russell answered times square would be all as thats where the buses were parked. To Russell it seemed like an hour and a half drive. Apparently he had a friend with him as neither Russell nor him had any money to pay the cab driver, and so devised a plan where when they each got out on each side, when the cab driver would ask them to pay, they could just take off and the cab driver wouldn't be able to catch them. It was the kind of thing that young foolish soldiers did. However when they arrived at times square, they got out and had the courtesy to ask the cab driver if they owed him anything. The cab driver said:

No sir our cab company said that any time we find a service man that was lost, take him to where he knew where he was, without charge.

Russell then thought of what great hospitality of New York that was.

Late December - Shipping off

They were there for about a week. They boarded the Île de France which was sailing under British command. It was just a troop ship. Very close knit quarters, stacks of fold-down beds in each room. When they got them all folded down there was maybe eighteen inches between them from side-to-side, maybe a little less top to bottom. It seemed to Russell as if it was a little cubby-hole. The troops on the ship were just troops that were going overseas, not just replacements in particular. This was the first time that he had been on the sea, it was something he was looking forward to doing. However they didn't know what their destination was.

One night on the trop while they were riding in through a storm Russell was sick throughout the day and night. All of the soldiers were sick.

The sea trip was six days. Throughout the trip the ship was weaving around because it was going alone without escort, trying to avoid the U-Boats. They changed course every seven minutes because it took a submarine to line up the target in nine minutes. A lot of the time they were heading back towards the US in order to dodge the U-Boats that had been spotted. The ship was convoyed with when they were taking short routes and let the ship go when it was going faster, as the ship itself could go fast enough to outmaneuver the subs.

They traveled either through Christmas or close to Christmas.

Around the time that Russell was going overseas, he would have found out that his older brother who was in service was riled up that Russell managed to go overseas before he did.

After Christmas, early 1944 - Arrival in Scotland and England

They didn't find out of where they were going until they landed, landing in Glasgow Scotland. The weather wasn't that bad when they got there, but they were surprised when it started raining when the got on troop trains heading south. Russell never really got to go out in Scotland and only briefly saw it as they went south. They were never told anything of their destination here either. They were on the train for around fifteen to sixteen hours. They finally stopped in Plymouth, right down at the land's end. There they got off the train. They got off around darkness, and because of the Blackout policy in Scotland and England, they didn't really see much.

Russell and his unit were immediately sent to an intensive training camp, intensive training to see what they could do to you before you "blow your top". Camp Bodmin. Thats where they separated the men from the boys so they say it. Rough training with bayonettes, the whole gamit. One day of each they went everything through, took them running a couple of miles at the time in full field equipment, and it rained constantly. "We never got out with rain or mushy snow at that time of year".

He didn't know it then, but they were preparing them for their division since they knew that division was going the higher ups did and so they had to have higher class of people.

Russell and others didn't "go as a unit" as they traveled, but instead possibly took them by alphabetical order and sepereted them fifty by fifty going one way and the others going the other. All they had were just code numbers on their luggage and they called out their numbers.

Russell was able to deal with the intensity of the intense training at the camp (of which they were there for around two weeks). Russell finally made a joke out if it and joked a lot that (despite that these were not their names):

Because of the peoples names had, the commanding officer of that small camp, his name was Lieutenant Furher, and the Sergeant was Stiglio.

He thinks that they did it on purpose to agitate the troops.

While at the camp, Russell was finally assigned to his division, the 29th Infantry Division. He would have joined A Company, 116th Infantry Regiment. The Division had been there since 1942, National Guard outfit out of Virginia and Maryland, stayed in England the whole time to train for the invasion. Their men had been there for a while, the men were used to it. When Russell and others went into it the Division was up to almost combat strength. They would get more replacements for D-Day.

The Division had been there for all the other training exercises for the invasion. Russell and his comrades who were joining would be able to participate in the last three "problems", aka exercises. The first two were on Welcombe and the last one was on Slapton sands, before D-Day. At this point they knew what they were training for. They had on the more side, the more side of England, some places set up with mock ships and landing craft, mock landing craft which were used for training purposes.

When Russell and his unit joined, they started training with the division immediately, but for the time being they stayed within their replacement unit. Then they split up them all up and filtrated the men throughout the companies. Within two weeks they was well assigned to what was going to be.

The camp was located around Ivybridge which was around six to seven miles North of Plymouth.

Russell never really had any time to go out in England. They didn't really have more than a six hour pice once a week. They stayed in training day and night, they were on 24/7 call.

Demolitions Squad Incident and becoming a flamethrower operator

They didn't leave Plymouth until they started the invasion. Russell didn't know, rather no one knew that they were going to go on June 6, prior to D-Day they were put onto a staging area. First he started out part of the demolitions squad which had four men in total (including him). One day the lieutenant of the demolitions squad failed to bring the proper tape, it was raining that day, and so the tar tape wasn't sealing between the cap and the load like they wanted it to or the fuse lighter. The lieutenant was trying to show the three others essentially what to do when they didn't have that stuff they needed, especially that in combat you might not have it all. He said that this was the way they used to do it was this way, this was all we had to do, this was the way we done it. They (Russell and the others) crimped the blasting caps with their teeth onto the fuse lighter, then taped it so that the spark would go from the fuse lighter directly to the cap, so that it would have to burn through the fuse first to get there. Russell estimated that the fuses were around six or eight seconds, after you would pull it you would throw it. This particular charge was a satchel charge, 10 lbs of TNT bounded together. Normally they would light the fuse lighter then throw it as far away as they could at whatever the target was, go back a few yards and then drop on the ground. However as the lieutenant pulled the fuse lighter with him standing humped over waist high, as he pulled it it blew him to pieces, blowing into his waist, his one leg going one way and the other going the other and his head completely gone. However the others were enough trained in demolitions that when he pulled it they had begun pulling a few yards away from him. As a result of this incident (Russell thought that it was kind of a sickening thing), him and probably the other two switched out of the demolitions squad to be trained for something else. The three told them (their superiors or some other people in charge) that they couldn't take it anymore being in a demolitions squad, that they were afraid of setting off a charge themselves. They responded that they would rather change them into something else.

The only option that Russell had for something else was becoming a flamethrower operator, and so was assigned as such. The flamethrower that was given had three tanks, one of which was gasoline, and another was some yellow gel of what Russell thought looked something like glue or yellow rat poison. The two substances in each tank would be pushed to be mixed, and the third tank was used to push the mixed substance out. It would fire around what seemed to be a maximum of forty yards To Russell, it was a suicide job.

He wasn't able to carry a rifle, he was going to carry a .45 and a combat knife along with the flamethrower. If he were to discharge the flamethrower however, he would then pick up a rifle.

They were moved from Ivybridge to Dorchester England which was the staging area. Even so they were not told of the exact time of landing. For two weeks they studied sand tables and layouts like G two had founded on Omaha Beach. There was also lectures, all this for the two weeks. The area that A Company was supposed to land on was around 700 to 600 yards long. They would have learned that the Air Force were supposed to drop around 300 tons of bombs on the German beach fortifications, pillboxes, and obstacles. It was also supposed to make holes in the sand for A Company's troops to get in for cover. They were also supposed to land a tank company, each tank being on a floating canvas, to give the Company cover. When they left they knew where they were going as they closed the camp, couldn't talk to anyone outside, not even the guard.

Another friend of his who was actually from Chattanooga just as he was, he got sick there, got pneumonia fever, he was sent to a hospital with a guard. He told Russell later that when he was at the hospital he had to tell the guard to tell the doctor what he wanted to tell them. They guard would relay it to the doctor. It was the same thing the other way, the doctor couldn't talk to Russell's friend, the guard had to be in the middle between the conversation. The reason was because his friend knew too much. After they made the landing however was when they could talk to the doctors without the guards.

Dorchester was just off of Weymouth, right off of port-city there.

While in the staging area, the Captain of A Company in the staging area before D-Day called the members out and lectured to them a little bit and told them:

A lot of you guys's gonna be killed on this operation and a lot of you's gonna be wounded. So I'll give you the opportunity to any man in here that doesn't want to go. Just come forward, there'll be no ramifications at all. Will be nothing said to ya. We'll leave you here.

There wasn't a man in the company that stepped forward.

5 June

They were already loaded up on the ship to cross the channel and was already pulled out from the port by this point. They were stopped out there (due to the weather known on 5 June) and Russell and the others sat out there until the time to go in. They stopped them without fully realizing whether they were going to go in or not.

Russell believed that they were well trained for the operation.

Russell and the others were going to go into the beach on an LCA, Landing Craft Assault, similar to an LCVP. It had around 30 men on board each section. They were transported onto a British ship which landed them on D-Day.

6 June

Around 0230 - Loading into the LCAs

Before getting onto the boats, they were told that they were about twelve miles out from the beach.

At around 2:30 in the morning they began to load into the LCAs. Since Russell was among those who were going in on the first wave, he had the privilege to load into his LCA while it was still on the hooks on the transport ship. It was then lowered into the water. The rest who weren't on the first wave had to climb down the rope ladders to load into their LCAs in the water.

On the way in - Russell's boat is hit

On the way in, A Company passed by the tanks on their floating canvases as well as the engineers who weren't able to get their equipment in because the water was so rough. It was therefore that they would be the first ones in. All of the men in the boat were sick from the rough waters. They began to quiet down and stop talking to one another (they were also sick from the rough water), began anticipating what was going to happen, were they going to make it, and how many. That was what Russell was doing.

There were some LSTs that were loaded with rocket launchers that were supposed to hit the German defenses on the beach. Russell thought that if they were able to hit the Germans they would have been given hell. However due to the rough waters, the LSTs couldn't fire so accurately. It was also due to it being a new thing. All the rockets landed in the water right in front of the Company.

Before the boats were to touch down, Russell's boat, when it was around what seemed to him to be something like a hundred yards away. He had to make an estimate not a better guess because he had to sit down on the right hand side six or eight feet from the front, the rest of the guys standing up backed up toward the back of the boat as much as they could to get the nose up so that when they get in rise they could, because they didn't want him standing up with the bulky flamethrower on his back with bullets popping off the boat already, to which if they hit the air tank the members of the boat of would in trouble.

When it was around Russell's estimated distance, either the boat hit something or something hit it, Russell couldn't tell, but an explosion that wasn't so loud, caved in the side of the boat beside Russell, knocking him out instantly.

Waking up on the beach

When Russell woke up he was on the beach without a flamethrower. Someone had drug him in and tried to get him on his legs, but his legs wouldn't work. When he tried to get up his legs wouldn't work. He didn't know how he got there, and there was water hitting his feet. He had no idea why he couldn't walk, whether it was from the concussion, strain or whatnot he wasn't sure. He saw that there was a dead GI twelve feet in front of him. He thought that he possibly drug him to where he was and was shot thereafter. Unfortunately he wasn't able to recognize who the GI was. Russell tried to pull himself from the water with his arms, but all he was able to do was dig into the sand, and so couldn't move. All he could do therefore was lay there and watch what was going on. He was on the extreme right hand end of the Company, and had to look diagonally back to see the objective, the Vierville draw, which was around the center of the company area. They needed to make it to the draw and secure the beach to get their equipment out.

He always thought this way of the dead GI

His first objective was to knock pillbox right back just off the beach and off to the right hand end out with his flamethrower. He had landed just to the left of it. However because he couldn't walk he wasn't able to achieve the objective.

He watched as some men were trying to run out of the water. There was one, whom they called "Whitey", that Russell could never remember the name of, he got up and started running, and the Germans shot him in the arm, which spun him, what Russell thought was like a top. Even so, Whitey stayed standing up and never fell, and ran again. However after a few yards more this time the Germans managed to knock him down. He got up again but was hopping up holding his leg, and was able to manage to get off the beach.Whitey sometime later came back in the company before Russell left and told him about what had happened.

Around Russell there was nobody to talk to. He hollered to some people every once in a while that passed close by but naturally they were going away from him. He kept watching as he layed there of the things going on around him. He saw one of the lieutenants that he could recognize just by his size and voice who came running down the beach with his whole forehead pulled down in front of his eyes, and so Russell couldn't see his face, it was Lieutenant Ferguson. The was hollering to Fergusson:

Im blind I can't see! Somebody tell me somebody help me

He was laying around twenty-five to thirty yards and his legs were hit as well, and hollered at the lieutenant:

Lieutenant stop!

The lieutenant stopped, and then he said:

Turn square to your left

He turned. He then said:

Now run hard as you can go

He turn and ran, but couldn't get more than around thirty yards before he was cut down with the .50 cal. Russell thought that he was one of the best officers that they had, a West Point man, but had more to do with the enlisted man than any other officer of the company, he would come out to the enlisted men's barracks. He was chewed out a couple of times for fraternization with the enlisted men.

Russell couldn't see any men climbing beyond the shell bank. To Russell, this whole thing felt like hours and hours and hours. Eventually the water came in and Russell couldn't sustain himself with his type one Mae West around his chest. However he did still have his combat knife, and so decided to use it to cut off some nearby floating equipment. We would have one under each arm. However after around a couple to three hours Russell was picked up and sent back to a British ship, by that point he couldn't see anyone having gotten past the shell bank .

The tanks from the tank company that was supposed to come in were loaded onto floating canvases, which worked when they were training, but the roughness of the D-Day invasion waters, all sank but two, one fired no shots when he got in but the other fired two or three before he got knocked out.

The Battleship Texas and Arkansas along with another one were firing really far right over the Company. They only did the damage that they could inflict.

Adulthood

Sometime after D-Day or even after the war he had talked to a guy in the Air force, in total three actually, they couldn't see the ground, they were afraid of dropping them too close because they were supposed to see their target before dropping. Instead of hitting the beach they dropped bombs 1,100 yards inland, missing all the beach defenses and just going inland.

He would also later learn that the senior decision makers found a hole in the weather for 6 June.

6 June 1994 - 50th Anniversary of D-Day

On D-Day's 50th Anniversary he went back to Omaha Beach. There he went back to the pillbox that was his objective with the flamethrower to take out. It was one that had killed a lot of people, as the operator had a .50 cal machine gun, and he knew that if he was able to take out the pillbox those people wouldn't have died.

15 January 2003 - Interview about his WWII experiences

During the interview, Russell didn't want to reveal the name of the man who told Lieutenant Fergusson who had his forehead over his eyes to turn left and run, to which he was shot.

Never in the army did they tell him what they were going to do "tomorrow".

He didn't know a lot of the senior decisions and why at the time because he was a private and privates don't know anything.

Bibliography

• Pickett, Russell LeeRoy (15 January 2003). "Russell Lee Roy Pickett Collection" (Interview). Interviewed by Michel Willy. Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• Boffey, Daniel. "I'd do it again, says D-day Omaha beach 'suicide wave' veteran". Archived from the original on 26 May 2023.