‘The greatest event’

CEDAR RAPIDS - Seventy years ago today Cedar Rapids resident Dean Luther was among the 160,000 Allied troops who turned the tide of World War II with their successful invasion of the German-fortified beaches at Normandy.

'I am very proud of the fact that I had the opportunity to be involved in what I think is probably the greatest event in U.S. history,” Luther, 89, said during a May 23 interview.

Luther said his recollections of the invasion are consistent with the images in the acclaimed 1998 movie 'Saving Private Ryan.”

As with most of the other invaders, Luther crossed the English Channel at night in a flotilla of nearly 7,000 vessels, of which more than 4,000 were landing craft.

'We reached Utah Beach at 6 a.m., anchored off shore, climbed down a net and dropped into a Higgins boat and approached the beach,” Luther said.

The booming of allied naval guns, shelling the German defenses, made the invasion 'the noisiest experience” of Luther's life.

'Uncle Sam still buys my hearing aids,” he said.

Luther said it could have been much worse, considering that about 3,000 Allied troops were killed that day and with an estimated 6,000 wounded or captured.

Luther's unit, the 519th Port Battalion, went ashore at Utah Beach, the westernmost of the invasion's five landing areas and, as it turned out, the least heavily defended.

Luther credits the paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions, who dropped by the thousands behind enemy lines hours before the invasion, with engaging and distracting shore defenses at Utah Beach.

Still, nearly 200 U.S. casualties were recorded there, and Luther said only luck and God's providence prevented his becoming one of them.

Luther's unit, charged with unloading supply ships, divided into two groups, each to work 12 hours on and 12 hours off. By a cut of the cards, Luther's unit drew the first shift.

'We dug our foxholes in an apple orchard, then went to work that first night unloading ships,” Luther said.

During the night, German dive bombers conducted an air raid, and one of their bombs exploded in his foxhole, Luther said.

'That was the closest call I had,” he said.

Luther said his unit stayed 90 days on Utah Beach, unloading supplies for the ongoing invasion that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany more than a year later.

'I never worked so hard in my life,” mostly carrying 50-pound cans of gasoline and water, said Luther, then a 130-pound 19-year-old.

'I didn't need anybody to rock me to sleep” after those 12-hour shifts, he said.

After the Allies captured the port of Antwerp, Belgium, Luther's unit moved there to unload supplies.

After his discharge from the Army, Luther, a native of Overland Park, Kan., moved in 1946 to Cedar Rapids, where he met and married his wife La Vone in 1948.

When the couple toured Normandy 40 years later, Luther said visiting the cemeteries was an emotional experience.

In October 2012, accompanied by their son, Dave, Luther enjoyed an Eastern Iowa Honor Flight to tour the war memorials in Washington, D.C.

He will be a special guest at a noon luncheon today, hosted by the Linn County chapter of the Reserve Officers Association, in the ballroom of the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids.

Looking back on D-Day, Luther said he was not then fully cognizant of the magnitude of the event. While he realized it was important and that it had to be done, Luther said he only later came to understand that 'if it wasn't for D-Day, we might be speaking German today in the United States and all over the world.”