D-Day Hero Frank DeVita Recalls Lowering the Ramp in 'First Wave' at Omaha Beach (Full Interview)

and i said to myself what the hell just happened and how come i'm still alive how come i'm still alive i was born in brooklyn new york and raised in brooklyn new york is there a history of military service in your family all the family my father was in the first world war my brother was in the army and my young brother was in the marine corps what'd your brother do on the first or your father did in the first world war he never got overseas four decks for the whole year was he drafted or did he do uh at that time he was volunteer yeah volunteer so why did you join the service when did i go into service what was your reason for going to the service the japanese bomb pearl harbor at that time everybody wanted to do their part you know so i was in my senior year in high school and 17 of us left the school year and we also volunteered who win the army who win the navy who win the coast guard yeah okay so why'd you join the coast guard [Music] i first volunteered for the air force as a belly gunner you know the gundam and i took all the tests and i failed because of peripheral vision so then i joined the navy i passed all the tests they wanted and he says fine come back in six weeks i want to go immediately so next door was the coast guard that's how i became a coast guard awesome where did you go for the training for the coast guard where was it the train manhattan beach in new york oh man so it was just basically stayed home yeah awesome manhattan beach new york how was that six weeks of hell you know you were in your juice lodge you remember you know what they do they knock you down so they could build you up that's there so what ship were you assigned to once training finished which ship did you go to us and samuel chase can you tell me about how how it was on the ship and what your job was my job originally i was a gunners mate i was in charge of four 20 millimeter anti-aircraft guns on the stern of the ship but during invasions i was on the higgins boat going into the beach so the coast guard now in the coast guard back then what was the coast guard's mission it was all amphibious at the time yeah so it wasn't like guarding new york you were actually you're actually over in europe oh yeah yeah yeah after six weeks they sent me over to europe and when i joined the coast guard my mother was very happy she thought i'd be patrolling the beaches i'm calling it six weeks later i went on my way to europe did you tell her where you are did you tell her you tell your mother where you were yeah i told her you know when i originally signed up at 17 my mom out of sign release she once sign she said when you fill this high school i'll sign but i left high school i i wanted to get into it so when did you head over to england when did i go to england six weeks after boot camp you remember what year do you remember what year that was uh it was 1943. i didn't remember the date though okay what were so what do you remember d-day i was in doing date day d-day what were the preparations like for d-day in england well we did maneuvers day in and day out day and there in virginia beach down like norfolk and then uh you know we had 1200 troops aboard my ship from the big red one the first division and the day of the invasion we made a big mistake we fed the troops bacon and eggs and everything you could think of that was a big mistake if you if you know anything about going in battle the russians used to go and battle with a heart attack and a glass of water or something like that we overfed the troops it was the worst thing they could ever do because they all got seasick every one of them do you remember what you were thinking when you discovered that d-day was about to happen i was scared i was scared because i knew there was going to be a lot of casualties on the beach and we ended up with 2 000 casualties on my beach omaha beach we were the worst of the five the five stars we were the worst omar bishop of the worst do you remember what you've seen as you were approaching omaha beach what it looked like do you remember what it looked like and what you seen when you were approaching omaha beach yeah of course i know what it looked like at four o'clock in the morning we started dropping our boats in the water we got 26 tanking boats you know what higgins boat is right yeah we got 26 more we circled the ship one time it's supposed to be good luck and we headed towards the uh the beaches we were 11 miles out because the germans had a gun called the 88 which is the best gun in the war and that range of 10 miles so all the transports were 11 miles out which is very good for them not for us because it took us two hours to get to the beach and in the water going to the beach my minds made out of glass or plastic and you can't see them in the water you know a couple of boats not for my ship but a couple of boats hit their mines and they got killed yeah do you remember what the soldiers were saying as they got closer to the german gunfire you got to say that again remember what some of the soldiers were saying as they they came here and got closer to the soldiers yeah what they were saying when they got you know they didn't realize they were going to their death they were singing and talking and laughing telling jokes until they got fired didn't the mood like suddenly change once they started we couldn't get on the you know higgins boat was on the beach we couldn't get on the beach because there was obstacles in the water you know these cross beams were metal and it was mine and along the beach the germans had 33 machine guns and m42s as far as 160 rounds per minute so my job originally i'm a gunners mate so i was supposed to be posting a machine gun on the boat you in the service you know how they act you know what they did about three or four weeks before the invasion they took my gun away if you ask me why i don't know so consequently instead of the machine guns they give me the job of dropping the ramp you know in the front of the boat the boat is made out of wood but in the front of the boat they have this ramp like a garage door ramp and it's made of two or three inch metal so it could be stand with stand probably either a rifle or a machine gun so when we got close enough to the beach we only go about 200 yards on the beach that's that's the closest we could get and the machine guns opened fire on us and the bullets were bouncing off the ramp because it was metal it was up but i knew eventually i had to drop the ramp and then they both of hitting the ramp they would come into the boat so the coxswain says to me drop the ramp i never because the roar of the cannons two big diesel engines in the back of the boat never heard him then the second time he says to me drop the red and i froze for a few seconds because i didn't want to die and i knew once i dropped that rant i bust and then he said to me says god damn david dropped the effort ramp so i had no choice i dropped the ramp the machine guns opened that fire killed about 14 15 troops that were in the front of the boat now where i was there was a crack lowering and raised and ran i was about three quarters of the way back you know i think about basketball yeah you know pickers yes well i had soldiers in front of me they were my pick they were absorbing the bullets they would come to me you know but i had two stragglers they didn't want to die so they didn't want to get the other troops are going forward they stay with me they thought by staying with me they'd be safe unfortunately by staying with me they would draw on fire from their health and help me there was two guys one guy was about four feet away from me the other guy was about two feet away from me the first guy got hit he ripped his stomach open his stomach's outside his belly fortunately you live this guy lived and the other guy that was two feet away from me he was a redheaded kid the machine gun took his helmet off and part of his his brain a part of it and he was crying help me help me help me i had no morphine i couldn't help him so he fell at my feet excuse me if i get an emotional he fell at my feet and he was crying help me help me out but i had nothing in my kit to help so the only thing i had was the lord's prayer and i started praying how father warren heaven i never finished it and he slumped down and yeah i knew he was gonna die and i reached down and i squeezed his hand i want him to know that he wasn't alone then he died he died he was just a little boy just a little boy so the coxswain says pick up the ramp because we're getting a lot of flak from the hills before the machine gun on the beach somebody says to me raise the ramp so i pulled the handle the ramp would not go up pulled it a second time the ramp would not go up so i put on auto wouldn't go up so my job there was probably maybe 15 guys still alive on that boat my job was to protect these guys with with the ramp so i i couldn't see the ramp from where i was because of all the dead bodies in front of me so i had to do something i didn't want to do i was crawling over the dead bodies and asking for my for them forgiveness they were dead and i'm saying i'm sorry i'm sorry so i climbed over the dead bodies and i started going through ramp and all of a sudden one guy came out i don't know if it was a crew member or army i didn't care so i had some help so when we got to the close enough to the beach i wanted to know why the ramp wouldn't go up there was two dead soldiers they never got out of the boat and they were on the ramp it plus the weight of the soldiers and he sold 90 pounds on his backpack so the ramp would not go up so this other guy in my saw i pointed to his belt and we grabbed his boat and by step by step by step we pulled him into the the two boys that were dead into the boat then he says to me raise the ramp so without the two guys when i had an autopilot it came up by itself he anyhow so you know the germans are very diabolical they know how to kill people besides the mines and the machine guns that telephone poles the top of the telephone pole was a mine it wasn't screwed in or nailed in it was just sitting there so if you happen to tap the telephone pole that mine would come in your boat we were scared of the telephone poles so anyhow the [ __ ] the coxswain was with me he was a little kid from uh brooklyn new york thurman and uh he got out because don't forget yeah he had to go backwards through these mines through these telephone phones he turned the boat around and we started heading towards my boat my captain was very smart which he each wave he came a little closer to shore a little closer this year so we headed for my boat my ship brother and then we saw this white ship with a big red course on a hospital ship so instead of going to our ship we went to the hospital ship because we had a lot of wounded aboard badly wounded and when we got to the hospital ship there was a ramp on the back and two guys from the hospital ship god blessed them they jumped into my boat and they did something we couldn't do they were peeling the dead off to get to the wounded i don't remember except i was like in a little shock at that time i don't remember if they got five six i don't know how many but they got these guys and they put them in the hospital [ __ ] at least they were going to live that you know they they had wheelchairs and they had morphine that everything on the hospital and i i was happy that these guys are gonna get all the care they needed so then these two guys jumped out of the boat we pulled it away from the hospital ship and we headed towards my ship on the back of my ship dad dropped a sled a sled is like a garage door a big garage door and we would put the dead and wounded on there and then the crank would take him and [ __ ] so somebody yelled through a klaxon home i want one man from each boat to come up to be interviewed or not interviewed because he figured maybe we could help the next wave so i got aboard the sled and i went up and and i was interviewed by a navy lady guy and a big army guy that guy had hands as big as a baseball man and he did something like i said i was just shocked he did something he tapped me on the shoulder he said it's all right it's all right son it was like a hug just like so i was interviewed with then this army guy said to me says son let me teach you something he said those machine guns can only fire for so long then they burn they get hot and they gotta change change their barrels when they change the barrels that's when you drop the ramp so i said how much time do i have two to three seconds to change the barrel so that's what i did so then after i was interviewed see my boat already i pulled away the 28 so i'm waiting for another boat and i'm standing on deck and nobody's around me because i stunk the high heaven my uniform was covered with blood and puke so i was standing by myself and i said to myself do i want to go back into the belly of the beast the face of the machine was i didn't want to die so i thought about it for a while and i said to myself if i don't go they're going to send a replacement suppose a replacement gets killed how could i live with myself so i made up my mind i'm going back and i went back 14 more times 14 more times i made 15 trips all together the germans on the beach the germans owned the beach not us and they were slowing the troops left and right from the hills and from the ground from the ground these these poor guys he had no chance you know it was flat like like a pool table no place to hide you can't dig in sand and they were getting killed so fast so i i like i said i was a little bit of a shock so anyhow the coxswain says the video pick up the ramp and we're getting flat coming in on both sides let's get the hell out of here so i tried to pick up the ramp like i told you before the ramp would not go in there i'll go on so we went back to my ship that's when i was all alone right there was five destroyers all along but the the lead destroyer was the frankfurt and then one of the other's joys the satellite was there in the mcguck so the three of them came in at the same time but the frankfurt you know you were a soldier you know what it is when you attack an enemy you attack his nose because as a smaller silhouette he did that and he came so close to shore you know our boats can go on the beach a destroyer has a keel they can't get too close he was in sin so then he did something i've never seen him done before this guy was willing to sacrifice his life and his boat and all his men because he wanted to help these guys on the beach so he took his boat that was facing this way and he turned this sideways exposing his beam to the 88s the reason he did that a destroyer has four five-inch guns he wanted to fire these five-inch guns at one time now the guys up in the hill they were facing us that machine gun 88's up there we couldn't see them they were in the grass foliage and stuff like that so we he put around of his five inch gun four at a time and he took out those guys on the on on the slope and right then there the bow started changing no that's the fifth way don't be we were four transports going in each transport out 1200 men so we had a lot of men going into that beach by the end of it by the end after dallas you took in the beach what were you thinking at the end of the day who scared [ __ ] i didn't want to die right what did you do in the days after the invasion after the invasion it's a good question i got to go back to the fifth wave to bring you up to date on this by the fifth wave we ran out of troops so we started taking the 29th division because the 29th division was on utah and you thought that time was clean so they swung over to help the first division that's the first five we ran out of troops and we got to do something else instead of going into the beach we started to take the dead and the wounded off the beach we had to get in the water i weighed 125 pounds i couldn't lift one of these guys up so two or three of us we got and we put them in the boat we started going back to my ship you know i don't know how many wounded we took to my ship but i do know that we took 308 dead bodies why do i know that because i had a good friend of mine john ola who was a quartermaster and his job was to put the bodies in the body bags and he dispensed 208 dead body bags so now they brought my boat up i don't remember what boat it was because the 28 was gone they brought my boat up and i looked at that boat it looked like swiss cheese the machines had decimated it and i'm saying to myself how do anybody live off that boat right so i i got a board ship i bought the ship yeah and i'm i'm waiting i'm waiting i'm waiting and the captain was so good for the name was captain fresh he understood what we had gone through so after we took these 300-day bodies and the the wound that i don't know how many wounded were we started going back to southampton that was the home base and we went to southampton [Music] i want to backtrack a little bit when i'm aboard the ship and we're going towards southampton i'm all by myself they announced over the loudspeaker there's cheese sandwiches and coffee for the crews that went into the beach so everybody went down to the missile i didn't want to go first of all i stunk the heaven and i didn't want him to see my cry i wanted to see me quiet so i walked back to my 20 millimeter guns and i sat down and i'm reflecting and i said to myself what the hell just happened and how come i'm still alive how come i'm still alive so it was a wet tank it was probably 10 11 o'clock i forget the time and i'm all alone and i looked around to see if any of my mates were with me nobody was there but when i turned around all the dead bodies at 308 bed dead bodies like a quarter wood i started to cry and i cried myself to sleep and the next morning when we pulled into southampton somebody tapped me on the shoulder i think it was lieutenant gruber i'm not sure he says the vita get up we have to unload the dead and then the wounded and really that's the end of my story that's the end of my story so after southampton what else did you do on my home base was glasgow scotland glasgow scotland we went up to glasgow what more did you do until you came home before i came home yeah i made two more invasions two more invasions back in france yeah i mean the invasion of southern france and the philippines so i had three battle stars in the philippines that was your time in the pacific i'm just i figured was it similar to d-day you know no it wasn't as bad but you know after all the horror of the two invasions in france we thought we were going home then the announcer of the loudspeakers get your gear in order by going to the pacific and i didn't make the actual invasion of the philippine islands but we did bring replacement troops into the philippines so we got credit for an invasion and then from there we went up to okinawa and i was in okinawa when the kamikazes came over and the kamikazes were sinking boat after the boat they didn't want my boat my boat was only a transport they want the destroyers and the aircraft carriers that's what they end up so after the kamikazes left i had there twice on the kamikaze twice i was there then we went back to pearl harbor on the way to pearl harbor we had a coral reef and we put a 17 foot gas in the hull of the ship you know the titanic the reason he sank they didn't close the hatches so all guys especially trained for that they closed the hatches on this one place where the water was coming in and the boat was tilting like this so they gave us two destroyers to get as far as pearl harbor no no not pearl okinawa okinawa yeah excuse me the philippines philippines because the philippines had a dry dock and they took our ship put in the dried we had to wait our turn they put in the dry duck and they put a patch they couldn't put the whole hole up so we left and we started to come to pearl we went to pearl and the destroyers were still waters and after praying we started going home to the united states and we went to san diego can i put a little humor in this absolutely they put our dry ship in dry dock they've got to pull a new hole so i had a friend of mine who lived right near the shipyard and i said to him i'm going to go awol but i want you to call me if they come out of dry docker i'll come back so the train didn't leave from [Music] san diego i left from san francisco so i took a bus to san diego on me to san francisco i got on the troop train that was going to united states called the silver streak all army guys and navy guys a lot of them wounded had no papers but thankfully nobody asked for papers so i get home i i run to my my house was about a mile and a half from the subway where i got off i ran all the way home i went to see my mother my father was at work my brother was away my kid brother was in school i didn't know what to do i said went next door the woman's name was mrs barsher and i said mrs bosha where's my mother i have something you know i'll tell you i have somebody i said no i can't where's my mother she's at the church rolling bandages so i ran to the church was about a mile mile and a half away and i opened the door with like a big gymnasium and i'm facing these women they went a big circle my mother had it back to me but the people who were looking at me they were going like that you know my mother didn't know what's going on she turned around and she saw me fainted that away i thought i killed my mother i thought i killed my mother suddenly out we went home my mother called the whole army frank is going frank is on franco so i'm home for two weeks you know you don't get two weeks leave my father was in the army in the first world war he said to me says you know you're home a long time let me see your papers i said pop i don't have any papers i'm all able get in the car took me to grand central station first train back to had to wait for the fed train so i'm waiting for the train with my father and there was two mps my father walks over to the mps he said you see that kid over there that's my son he's able but he's going back he threw me on the train under the bus my own father so the mps came over and he says this is what we're going to do when the train comes in if you're on the train we won't do anything if you don't get on the train we're going to pull you in i got on the train i went it was still the dry dock i went back to my ship and that's the end of my story well that's an awesome story um that's one of the best ones i've heard since uh interviewing veterans for sure and let me tell you something if somebody in battle says they weren't scared they were scared they were scared they're lying you gotta you gotta be scared you know i i i was on on the boat when the machine got i had a machine gun looked like a swarm of egg angry bees one guy went down the other guy went down is the next one mine you're scared 76 years later um what's who or what do you think about when you think of you know say that again who do you what what is it that you think about um about d-day 76 76 76 years later i relive it every day in my life every day yeah not the other battles the d-day was the worst is it one thing that sticks in your mind the most d-day yeah i mean when i left after the 15th trip and there was 2 000 dead bodies on the beach 2 000. you got to be scared anybody tells you they're not scared they're lying yeah what are you most proud of during your time in the service what are you most proud of during your time that i served and i helped get rid of hitler and he were here because they were so bad they were so bad yeah well mr devito thank you so much for being with us okay before i go i just want to tell you something i'm not a hero a lot of people call me a hero i'm not a hero i'm a survivor there's a cemetery up you ever been to france i haven't been to france i haven't been in france there's a cemetery up in france in normandy omaha beach overlooks the cemetery and that cemetery is 9400 kids in the ground those are my heroes they gave their life for their country they were my hero that's what she wrote and if you think it's over it's never over were you in combat i was i was in iraq i was in iraq and i was with the army sustainment brigade don't you think of that quite often that medic and our m rat blew up very scared i mean in iraq you come along along you don't mind you got no more legs me up every day today still they say they say you leave the war but the war never leaves you yeah but i'm proud of what i did i'm very proud i probably did more in the three years that i was bored with this ship than a lot of people ever did you know two invasions and then the philippines okinawa then i'd end up in japan i was in the occupation of japan for about eight months when i was in japan a little japanese woman about five feet tall she walked up to me first they bow like this and then she says i want to thank you i said why are you thanking me see the war's over you know it's the big people who make wars not the common people they're the ones who get hurt

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 1,192,349

Rating: 4.9537344 out of 5

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal, d-day, dday, omaha beach, world war ii, wwii, hero, heroes

Id: leeB5EoQcIs

Length: 38min 45sec (2325 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ts4EVER]

I made a 1:1 copy of parts of the beach defenses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp875ATM0ZE

​

Would not have liked to be there.