By SCOTT WESTCOTT
Morning News staff reporter
R. Keith
Ostrum was a 19-year-old kid when he stormed ashore on Normandy with thousands of other soldiers on that day that started the European campaign in World War II.
Looking back, he realizes he was too young to feel a
proper degree of fear or to grasp the grave importance of the mission he and thousands began on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
""At that time, we were just a bunch of guys doing what we were told,'' said Ostrum.
""You remember the highlights, a lot of things you never remember and many things are better forgotten.''
Ostrum was part of the second wave of troops to storm Utah Beach at Normandy. He had traveled across
the Atlantic Ocean on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth. He was one of 18,000 men. They slept four to six bunks to a cabin and, as Ostrum remembers it, ate plenty of orange marmalade.
They landed in Scotland and then
went to southern England from where they crossed the English Channel to Normandy, France.
Once off the coast of France, Ostrum left the transport ship, climbing down rope nets to a smaller craft which would get them
close to the shore. The smaller landing craft Ostrum was on circled in the choppy water waiting for the others to load. It proved to be strong motivation for the soldiers to get into action.
""Talk about
seasick,'' said Ostrum. ""We all got so darn seasick you just wanted to get on the beach.''
Once there, they found less resistance than expected.
""I went up to my platoon leader and he looked
scared to death,'' said Ostrum. ""That's when I realized I should be scared, too.
""We had some guys killed, some I knew and some I didn't,'' said Ostrum. ""I guess I don't remember
thinking ""I hope I'm not the next one to go.'' If you got to thinking that, you are no good to anybody. In hindsight there's things I wish I should have done, but I'm glad now I didn't do them.''
On the
second day in France, ""friendly fire'' from a U.S. fighter plane rained down on the men in the foxholes. The soldier sharing a foxhole with Ostrum pulled a 50 caliber slug out of the sand about one foot away
from Ostrum's head. It would be his closest call of the war. He kept that slug, carefully wrapped in a handkerchief, for the next few years.
A native of Emporium, Pa., Ostrum was drafted into the army in 1943. He
would be one of three Ostrum brothers who fought for their country during war time. All three made it out alive and are still living today.
Ostrum was in a mortar battalion, assigned to communications between the
front lines and the weapons that were about 2,000 yards back from the front. His specific duties were to string telephone lines or to operate the radios.
During his 16 months overseas, Ostrum was involved in D-Day and
the Battle of the Bulge, but some of the fiercest fighting he recalls was in the Huertgen Forest. There, U.S. troops and the Germans were deadlocked, neither able to overpower the other, despite heavy shelling.
""There was in a story in the Stars and Stripes newspaper that a lieutenant put out a five dollar reward for anyone who could find a tree that was not scarred by bullet or shrapnel,'' said Ostrum.
""There's a pretty slim chance that he ever had to pay out that five dollars.''
Today, with the perspective of a man who has lived a full life, Ostrum is proud of what he did for his country.
""I've often said you would want to go for a million bucks but I wouldn't sell my experiences for two million.''
