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By BILL McKINNEY
Morning News staff reporter (1994)
Normandy's soil shook beneath Dan Iacobucci's feet as
B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators dropped their payloads on top of the heavily defended hill overlooking the French port of Cherbourg. Young Iacobucci of Erie was a machine gunner in Dog Company, 1st
Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, landing at Utah Beach on D-Day plus four.
Even though the invasion was already four days old, incoming troops were still taking heavy artillery fire directed
at the beaches, boats and landing craft."The boats off the coast were so thick that I think a person with real long legs could have walked from one to the other," he said. "The beach
was a mess. They were trying to land as much equipment and men as possible as fast as possible. Any enemy shell coming in had to have taken out someone or some piece of equipment." Military
equipment, a lot of it in pieces, littered the beach. Dead soldiers were scattered here and there, bodies that hadn't yet been picked up by support units assigned the grisly task. "As soon as the ramp
went down on the Higgins boat, we ran forward past everything, just to get off the beach," he said. The fresh units pushed quickly inland, reinforcing elements of the mauled 4th Infantry and relieving
members of the 82nd Airborne Division as they found them, paratroopers who had jumped behind enemy lines the night of the invasion. "We were all told that if we heard the sound of crickets, little clickers
like kids play with, don't shoot. That would be our paratroopers."
As Iacobucci and his unit moved inland they encountered hedgerows, walls of stone and earth with shrubs planted on top of them that
divided each field and had to be taken by force, one at a time. It was the fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy that slowed down the American and British armies, forcing them into a weeks-long fight for what
their original timetable thought would take half as long. Iacobucci agreed with another Erie infantryman who said that whether a soldier lived or died often depended on which side of the hedgerow he was on
when a mortar or artillery shell exploded. Sometimes, he said, squads were lucky and had a tank nearby to plunge through the wall, making it easier to clear away the enemy. More often, because armor had
trouble maneuvering under those conditions, it was up to grenade-tossing riflemen supported by machine gun crews to advance. "We got so close to the Germans at times we could hear them talking to each
other. It was almost all small arms fire and grenades then." The first time he felt even a twinge of relief was when he caught sight of a German prisoner of war. "I was 19, just a kid,
and scared to death. This was my first taste of combat. Most of the other guys in my outfit were seven or eight years older and had been through the Africa and Sicily campaigns. Some looked older than
my dad. "Then I saw my first prisoner and saw that he was much younger than me. I remember thinking, this is something else." But there was something positive that happened to
Iacobucci during the terrifying hedgerow hopping, besides surviving. He met Ernie Pyle, America's best-loved war correspondent who would be killed the next year by Japanese sniper fire while covering the battle
for Okinawa. "The guy came right up to the front line, around one of the hedgerows," Iacobucci said. "He just asked us how things were going and we got to talk to him a little bit. Then
he went back." The unit's next big test was taking Mont du Roc, a hill overlooking Cherbourg where the Nazis were well entrenched, their heavy, stationary guns aimed at the beaches and water.
"Our objective after landing on Normandy had been to cut across the peninsula and then work our way up both sides and the middle to take Cherbourg. First we had to take that hill."
Once infantry units
saw the strong German positions, he said, they called for air support and got bombers. "We pulled back a little but we were still close enough to feel the ground shake under our feet when they bombed the
place. The targets were up on that hill so they were easy to hit." After the bombing, the American army advanced, meeting little resistance. Iacobucci said the big German guns and
fortifications had been destroyed and the German soldiers had fled into the port city. Masses of German defenders surrendered as Americans entered the town and Cherbourg was liberated on June 25. The 9th
Division, in less than a month of fighting immediately after D-Day, had taken 18,000 of the enemy as prisoners.
Included among the prisoners were a German general and a German admiral, senior commanders of the
Cherbourg area. With the port city taken, there was little time to celebrate. The 9th Division wheeled to the south to other divisions approaching St. Lo, France.
Forever known as "The
Breakout at St. Lo," it's where three U.S. infantry divisions, fighting side by side, punched into the German line. They were followed by another infantry and two armored divisions. As Pyle would write,
"Once a hole was broken, the armored divisions would slam through several miles beyond, then turn right toward the sea behind the Germans in that sector in hope of cutting them off and trapping them."
Breaking out of the beachhead established on the Cherbourg peninsula took the cooperation of the Air Force, armored, artillery and infantry units, Pyle noted. Pyle accompanied the infantry "because it is my
love..." Iacobucci said the massive strike worked well, with armored divisions pouring through the hole in the Nazi line. After that, the Erie soldier rose quickly from private to staff sergeant
and section leader responsible for two machine gun squads. His quick promotions came partly because of continued casualties. Somehow, Iacobucci made it through five campaigns, won the Bronze Star, and saw
the war's end without once being wounded, something of a rarity. He fought his way across France and Belgium and across the Siegfried Line into Germany, crossing the famed bridge at Remagen. Asked how he
made it through all that fighting in one piece, Iacobucci shrugged and said simply, "The Lord was with me."
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