Russell LeeRoy Pickett

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 had three sisters and two brothers

two brothers older, two and a half years apart

three sisters were younger than him.

His dad was a keel-foreman for a brick and tire company in Daisey.

1929

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

1941

Brother drafted. When they first put him in they put him in cavalery personnel. They opened camp Pickett Virginia which had been closed for a while, they got a kick out of the name. They put him under cadre work and not overseas just yet.

Russell heard what he had been doing

1943

Drafted into service into 18 years and two months. Mother wouldn't enlist because oldest brother was in the army who was caught in the first draft. Russell wanted to be drafted, put unemployed so that he could join, mother wouldn't sign papers.

Rus had no girlfriend, no wife.

Russell went overseas before he did, kind of riled his brother up a little bit because Russell went first.

He went to Fort McClellan Alabama near Anaston Alabama. Basic training was ROTC, Camp was Infantry Replacement center, they were trained as a replacement, 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.

The food, terrible, it took him a while to learn, it was reasonably well for the army.

Went to the camp in June, it was hot, for thirteen weeks.

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 was just outside of Washignton, 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.

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.

They were there for about a week. They boarded the Ile 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.

They didn't find out of where they were going until they landed, landing in Glascoast 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 black out 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 Bodman. Thats where they seperated 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 Leiutenant 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. 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 there 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 Welacombie 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 Ivey Bridge 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.

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. Russell was a flame-thrower carrier during the training. First he started out part of the demolitions squad, one man got killed and so he got out of demolitions and switched over to flamethrower. To Russell, it was a suicide job.

They were moved from Ivy Bridge 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. 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.

5 June

They were already loaded up on the ship to cross the channel and was already pulled out from the port. 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.

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