D-Day 80: US World War Two veterans return to Portsmouth to visit the D-Day Story museum

The group of American veterans from different generations visited The D-Day Story museum in Southsea on Friday, May 31. Amongst the group was a number of veterans who took part in D-Day in 1944. The Lord Mayor and Mayoress were present to welcome them to the city.

The trip was arranged by the Greatest Generations Foundation, an American charity that helps veterans reconnect with battlefields. The group was full of veterans from WWII and Vietnam. Amongst them was Donald Cobb, 99, of Indiana. He served on the USS Murphy, a destroyer which was one of the ships that headed to Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Donald said: “I was a little emotional when we got here but it has been a long time. I really wanted to be here because the people are always so nice to us.” The USS Murphy approached Omaha Beach at around 5.30am on that day and it is a period that Donald still remembers well. One incident a few days later always sticks out to him. His ship was bombarded by German fire for 50 minutes. He recalls shrapnel appearing all over the deck but somehow they made it through unhurt. He was 19 at the time.

Steven Melnikoff, 104, from Baltimore, was a member of the 29th Division that stormed the beaches of Normandy. When wandering around the D-Day Story museum, one segment caught his attention, the model of Omaha Beach. He spent five minutes showing his friends and fellow veterans how he remembered the beach and the danger that came from all angles. “There was no hiding place” he said. Steven was 23-years-old at the time.

Harold Radish, 99, from New York, arrived in Europe a month or so after D-Day. He said: “I was in the Third Army under general Patton. We worked our way up to the Siegfried Line which was on the border between Germany and France. I got locked into a concrete establishment and I couldn’t get out. This was myself and about 10 others. We became prisoners and were guests of the Germans for about four months. Luckily I lived through it.”

Harold was liberated by the British army and joined them for a week until he could get back to the Americans. Harold said: “I even had a British uniform, I took it home, that’s my souvenir.”

After the war Harold became a school teacher, which he jokingly describes as a different kind of war. After 80 years he was apprehensive about returning to these shores. The memories are still there. He said: “Things come back to you but they are never as sharp and as harsh as it really was. I never felt that I was going to die and I did a lot of praying. I prayed in Hebrew, I prayed in English, I prayed to Jesus, I prayed to Abraham. Being in that fox-hole and things are going all over you, you do a little bit of praying. Then you hear people yelling ‘medic’ and you hear grown men yelling ‘momma’, and that’s what hits you.”

Ultimately Harold decided to return as he would doing it with friends and fellow veterans. He said: “I had a little bit of anxiety as to what I would see and how I would feel, but being with a group of men and women who have been to Vietnam, which was a hard war to fight, then it made it a little easier. The anxiety passed after a while.”

The group will now move onto France and to Normandy where the will spend the D-Day commemorations next week.