It is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Europe, the historic invasion that included soldiers from Iowa.
Iowa Goldstar Museum curator Mike Vogt says Iowans participated in many different phases of what is the largest military amphibious landing in history. Vogt says D-Day was a major event in deciding the fate of the world. “It was certainly the turning point once we had boots on the ground in Europe the invasion forces pushed inward and it was just a matter of time before Germany would be defeated,” he says.
Vogt says the war was the first time many Iowans had traveled out of the state, and they were very young with the average age of a World War Two soldier 21 or 22 years old. The Goldstar Museum at Camp Dodge in Johnston has a special display on the Iowans who participated in D-Day. Vogt says some Iowans were in the very thick of combat. One of the soldiers, John Marshall of Des Moines wasn’t in the fight long after parachuting into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne Division. Vogt says Marshall landed and looked up and there was a German soldier there. Marshall spent the rest of World War Two in a German prison camp.
“Tech 5 Cecil Breeden from Council Bluffs, he served with company A 116th Regimental Combat Team of the 29th Infantry Division. He was wounded on Omaha Beach in the first wave on D-Day, and his unit suffered the highest losses of any U.S. unit that day,” Vogt says. Another soldier from northeast Iowa took care of the wounded. “Captain Lawrence G Shafferly from Gladbrook, Iowa. He earned his medical degree in 1936. When the war started, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, as all doctors were, he became a captain once accepted into the U.S. Army,” he says. “And he went in with the first wave of D-Day at Omaha Beach, and as you can imagine as a surgeon had his hands full that day.”
Other Iowans were in the air or climbing cliffs. “Lieutenant Blaine Swift from West Des Moines was a P-47 pilot, flew P-47 Thunderbolts. We have his log book on exhibit in our D-Day display. He has two entries for D-Day, the first says ‘first day of D-Day.’ The second line says ‘shot up trains in France.’,” Vogt says. “Another Iowan that served, first lieutenant Elmer H. Vermeer from Pella. His nickname was Dutch and he served with the Second Ranger Battalion that was assigned the daunting task of assaulting the 100 foot cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on the western edge of Omaha Beach. And we have on display his combat knife he strapped to his leg that day.”
The Goldstar Museum is free and open to the public.