WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Bob Gibson vividly remembers the carnage he witnessed when he landed on Utah Beach in the second wave on D-Day. After surviving the fierce battles on the beaches of Normandy in World War II, he made it home.
The D-Day veteran is now 100 years old, and he recounts the insurmountable odds that he and his fellow soldiers faced on that fateful day in June 1944. The memories are vivid.
“I hate to even say it, all of these dead, young soldiers. It was covered in the blood of these soldiers. They never even hit the beach. They were all 18- and 19-year-olds, my age. You knew what was coming, you know,” he recalled. “They told us we were going to have trouble. Our training was kept quiet, nobody knew where the hell we were going.”
Gibson recalls the route he took to get there. “We went over from England, Northampton to Normandy on an LFT, that’s a flat-bottom boat.” He was sent off to war with a number of other 18-year-olds from New Jersey. He still remembers their names to this day.
Gibson and his fellow soldiers were all assigned to different units. He was assigned to the 116th Battalion attached to the First Army.
“Our job was to follow the infantry and be support for them,” said Gibson. “You were told, ‘We gotta go, don’t stop for anything.'”
Gibson described the first night after landing. “I wound up… I would say three-quarters of mile on the beach,” said Gibson. “And wouldn’t you know, the first night, they bombed the ammunition dump. And every time you took a step there was a shell bar going off.”
Gibson also spoke of faith. “It was scary because you didn’t know what the hell to do… we had a lot of faith; the Boy upstairs took care of us. Don’t you think we didn’t pray, we certainly did, and we know darn well that carried us through,” he said.
Gibson spent five days on the beach and says the experience changed him forever.
“First time I went back, nothing was the same because it was 70 years almost,” he said. “You would not believe the ‘thank you’ we got. Schools came out with flags.”
After landing in Normandy, Gibson continued the fight against the Nazis in the ‘Battle of the Bulge.’ His unit traveled across the Rhine River into Germany, and he was there when the Nazis surrendered in 1945.
The trip home took 18 days, traveling across rough waters, but he remembers seeing the Statue of Liberty, just like it was yesterday.
“Let me tell you, when you are seeing that Statue of Liberty, believe me boy, you knew you were home.”
Gibson will be 101 years old in September. He says, ”I am very fortunate, I’ve had a good life. If I go tomorrow, I can say, ‘Well done, old boy.’”
