Tag Archives: D-Day

‘He had been hit so many times, it was hopeless’

Posted on June 1, 2025 | 1 comment

In civilian life, Steve Kleman machined parts for Mack trucks in his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Transformed into a soldier for World War II, he helped lead a unit of combat engineers onto Omaha Beach early on D-Day, the epic invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944.

“The landings were made under heavy mortar, artillery, and machine gun fire inasmuch as no infantry had preceded the landing of the engineers on Dog Green and part of Dog White beach.”

That’s from the after action report of the 121^st Engineer Combat Battalion, 29^th Infantry Division.

Staff Sergeant Kleman and the 40 other men of the battalion’s 2nd Platoon, Company B, neared the Normandy beach in an LCM, a landing craft mechanized, about 6 a.m. Each engineer carried satchel charges of TNT, a Bangalore torpedo, a rifle and full field pack. Melvin B. Farrell, who was on the craft, described what happened:

About 200 yards out, our LCM floundered, nosed up on a hidden sandbar and stuck fast. The operator seesawed back and forth, but she wouldn’t give. The machine gun fire rattling off the sides set up such a din of noise you could hardly think. The operator threw the ramp down and yelled, “Hit it!”

I was the third man out. We three wheeled left and jumped off the side of the ramp. Machine gun fire was now raking the inside of the LCM, and a high percentage of our men were killed before they could get out.

When the first three of us jumped, we landed in a shell hole, and what with all the luggage, we had plummeted to the bottom like a rock. We walked along the bottom until we climbed out of the hole. It seemed an eternity before we reached the surface. We were then on the barren sand, but there was another stretch of water between us and the beach. This stretch contained a maze of tank traps, mines and every object the Krauts could plant to thwart a landing attempt.

It all seemed unreal, a sort of dreaming while awake, men were screaming and dying all around me. I’ve often wondered if all the men prayed as fervently as I did.

The engineers’ immediate job was to blow up a masonry wall so tanks could get through.

Farrell made his way around tripwires attached to a Tellermine and blew a 20-foot gap in a tangled mess of barbed wire. He reached the wall, threw his satchel charges onto it and crawled to safety just before the explosion. As he and others huddled behind the wall’s wreckage, he looked toward the water where the first wave of infantry was about to land and saw his sergeant, Steve Kleman.

—

Kleman was the third of four children born to immigrants from Austrian Galicia. His parents, Wasyl Kleman and Anna Bujar, were married in 1915 in Allentown. Steve had a sister, Stella, and brothers Walter and Joseph. The family lived in the 6^th Ward, between the Jordan Creek and Lehigh River. For much of his life in the city, Wasyl was a sweeper in a Mack Trucks machine shop.

Steve Kleman belonged to Boys Haven, which sought to steer kids away from delinquency, “to teach young people properly in their social hours, thereby acquiring the knowledge of what is the right and safe thing for young boys to do.” A 1944 story in The Morning Call says he attended Allentown High School, but I couldn’t find any mention of him in old school yearbooks.

In 1938, when he was 18, Kleman toiled out west for the Civilian Conservation Corps. At 6 feet and 185 pounds, he was suitably built for the work.

The Army called him in March 1942 while he was a turret lathe operator at Mack. Training followed at Camp Blanding, Florida. He left for England via Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, in the fall of 1943 and wrote to his parents that he arrived on October 12. The buildup for the Normandy invasion was underway. Kleman had seven months to get ready.

His brothers were in the war as well. Joseph was an Army private in Europe and Walter a Navy seaman on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga in the Pacific. Both would survive.

A landing craft carries U.S. troops to Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

At 1 a.m. June 6 aboard a ship in the English Channel, according to Farrell’s account, the engineers were rousted and had breakfast of toast and coffee. A half-hour later, they began boarding the landing craft for transport to the beach. The channel was exceedingly rough.

“Waves would throw the LCM up out of the water, and it would slam down with a bone-breaking jar. Every man jack of us were so seasick we had regurgitated on ourselves and everyone around us by 5 a.m.”

Farrell got safely ashore despite a torrent of German machine gun fire. He and other engineers succeeded in blowing up the masonry wall, about four feet high and four feet thick.

“At this time our initial mission was completed, so we huddled behind the ragged remnants of the wall we had just blown. I turned my gaze toward the coming infantry and saw my sergeant, Steve Kleman, not 40 yards from me. He was sitting down, had been hit through both hips. I tried four times to get out to him to drag him in. Each time I left cover, a hail of machine gun fire would drive me back. By this time he had been hit so many times, it was hopeless.”

The battalion’s after action report notes: “It is estimated that 50% of this initial force were casualties, and 75% of the equipment was lost.”

—

July 26, 1944, story in *The Morning Call* of Allentown
(Newspapers.com)

Within two weeks, Kleman’s parents got a telegram from the War Department saying he had been missing in action since D-Day. A follow-up telegram near the end of July reported he was killed June 6. His parents received their 24-year-old son’s last letter four days after his death.

St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, where his family worshiped and his father helped lead a war bonds drive, held a memorial Mass for Kleman on July 30.

In 1948, his remains were brought home. Military honors greeted him at a service led by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 13 of Greater Allentown, and another Mass was said for him at St. Mary’s. He now lies in the parish cemetery.

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Posted in Veterans' Histories

Tagged combat-engineers, D-Day, history, normandy, Omaha Beach, World War II

Rest in peace: 102-year-old D-Day survivor

Posted on January 26, 2025 | 9 comments

World War II veteran Dick Schermerhorn in 2013
(*The Morning Call*)

Dick Schermerhorn was a 22-year-old Army corporal when he hit Utah Beach on D-Day. Originally from upstate New York, he moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, after the war.

A dozen years ago, I interviewed him for an “in their own words” story about his experience on June 6, 1944, with the 531^st Engineer Shore Regiment. Last Tuesday, Schermerhorn died at age 102. Again, I wrote about him for The Morning Call.

In tribute, here are excerpts from my initial interview with him in May 2013:

—

We had been in Plymouth [England]. We didn’t train there, but that’s where we were billeted. There was a town called Slapton Sands that was evacuated completely. We used to go a few miles out in the Channel and make a practice landing on this town. Somewhere I have a prayer book from the Church of England, and it has “Slapton Sands” on it.

D-Day, as far as you could see, there was all kinds of ships. As we got close to Normandy beach, we went down these rope ladders into the landing craft. It was still dark. We were packed in there like sardines. There must’ve been 35-40 of us. Anybody tells you they’re not scared, there’s something wrong with them. There was a medical officer on the landing craft with me, and I happened to turn around and look at him, and his face was as white as a sheet.

The main object of the 531^st was to establish a beachhead. In other words, our thrust was not to make a landing and push the Germans and keep moving. We were there to make it easier for troops that were coming in. We had heavy equipment, we had ducks [amphibious trucks], we had different kinds of plows. We had Bangalore torpedoes to blow up entanglements.

We had impregnated clothing to prevent poison gas. We had a gas mask. We had to carry these heavy M-1s – I would’ve preferred a carbine, much lighter. I had a mine detector, it was waterproofed. It picked up every bolt, screw, nut.

[When the ramp went down,] some guys were hit. The water was up to our necks. I was in pretty good shape, so I could handle it. We were getting fired on, but not to the extent of our buddies on Omaha [Beach]. You could see bullets hitting the water. It was machine-gun fire. There were some dead in the water.

We were getting artillery fire. Every once in a while a Messerschmitt or some other plane would come in.

I can remember the first dead person I saw as I got to the beach. It shook me up. I looked at his dog tag and he was from New York State. His leg was off and he was still alive. He was in shock. There was no question he didn’t survive, because there were no medics around.

I ran in about 20 yards. We got in there and tried to get assembled, a group of us. The 4^th Division was with us. We worked with them. As they were pushing the [German] troops back, we were trying to establish a landing place. Our job was to work minefields.

We lucked out on Utah. On Omaha, they had that cliff, and we didn’t have that. [But] it was dangerous. The Germans had been there so long, they had such a long time to work at this. They had the shoe mine. If you stepped on it, it would take the top of your foot off. Then they had mines that would explode waist-high and throw off ball bearings.

This fella from Clearfield, out past State College, he was my buddy. He was a mine detector too. We’d take turns. One guy would sweep and the other guy probes. When you get a reading, you’re still holding onto your mine detector, and the other guy has a bayonet, and he’d be digging to find out what it was.

Once in a while, you’d hear a ping as somebody was shooting at you.

You don’t always dig a mine out. If it was a tank mine, they had a handle on them. We would fasten something on the handle and pull the mine out. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, nothing would happen. You got back a ways, because if it was booby-trapped, it would go off.

Practically in the beginning, we were sweeping this area. My buddy saw this paratrooper laying there dead. He said, “Dick, get that knife for me.” So I’m trying to get this off his belt, and I happened to turn my head, and I saw [Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt Jr.] I could see the one star on his helmet and I got up quick, because he could accuse you of going through a guy’s pocket. He was all alone like he was out for a Sunday walk.

Schermerhorn was an amphibious engineer with the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment and later served with the 279th Combat Engineer Battalion.

Snipers were shooting. There was a wall along there and you could hear the bullets hitting the wall. And Roosevelt come up and he says, “You finding many mines, men?” I said, “No sir, not at this point.” Then he says, “Dammit, I thought there’d be millions of them.” There were, but we weren’t into the thick of them yet.

Last time I saw Roosevelt, frogmen were blowing up obstacles the Germans had in the water to prevent boats from coming in. The frogmen put up a purple flare when they had a charge, and you were supposed to hit the deck. This one time, lying prone, I look up and here’s Roosevelt standing there looking around, and he only wore his helmet liner.

I ended up clearing about a hundred mines on D-Day. When it got dark, we dug foxholes inland a little.

We had other duties, handling supplies. A lot of equipment was coming in. [In early August] when the tanks started coming in, we had pulled 24-hour duty without any rest, and we were sitting, three or four of us, and we were smoking, and [Lieutenant General George S. Patton] said, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” He called us a bunch of old women. He said he was going to report us, but he never did.

We had a lot of trouble after D-Day, Navy guys coming looking for souvenirs, and they picked up stuff, and the Germans had a lot of stuff booby-trapped. Some of the guys got wounded or killed. Sometimes we had to go in a minefield to get them. At that time, there was no real action on the beach because the enemy had been pushed back. Our infantry and tanks had moved inland.

I was [on Utah Beach] about two months. Then I was transferred to the 279^th Combat Engineers. There was three of us, the only veterans in the outfit. We went all the way into France, we went into Aachen – one of the first towns into Germany – Remagen area, Rhineland and all across northern Germany. Our task was to work with different infantry divisions with mines, explosives.

There are a lot of rivers in Germany, and one of our jobs was you had an assault boat and two engineers, one in front and one in the back, maybe 10 or 12 infantrymen in, and you’d go back and forth at night. And you’d let them off, and you’d come back. Of course the Germans were on the other side. We did that all the way across [Germany].

The last river we came to was the Elbe. We were stationed on the west bank and we stayed there until the war ended. Then we had a big problem.

See, the Russians were going to take Berlin, and the Germans knew this, and they were smart enough to know that things were over for them, and we had all these [Nazi] troops coming. They knew the American lines were to the west. We didn’t know what to do with them all. They wanted to give up. In time, it was taken care of, because they were put in prison camps.

Then we met up with the Russians, the wildest bunch of guys you ever saw.

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Posted in Veterans' Histories

Tagged D-Day, France, history, normandy, utah-beach, World War II

Photos a Normandy-bound ex-seaman holds dear

Posted on June 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

Matt Gutman (third from left) and pals from the LST-553 on a Japanese boat on Leyte Island at the end of World War II. They were assigned to disarm enemy troops there and on two other islands. ‘We had the Japanese break up all their rifles and load everything onto their large, wooden boats.’ The stash was taken out to sea and dumped.

A 99-year-old World War II veteran here in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is among vets going to France this week for the 80^th anniversary of D-Day.

Matt Gutman is well-known in the Lehigh Valley veterans community. He rides in parades and speaks in schools and elsewhere about his service in the Navy.

I’ve known him for years. As a volunteer Veterans Affairs driver, I once gave him a ride to the VA hospital sixty miles away in Wilkes-Barre. I’ve taken him to picnics held to honor vets. Two years ago, I interviewed him for an “in their own words” war story in The Morning Call and wrote a blog about the first time he crossed the Equator.

On Friday, the newspaper ran my story about his upcoming journey to the beaches where the Allies landed June 6, 1944, against a hail of German gunfire.

Matt will be one of eight vets the Tennessee nonprofit Forever Young Veterans is taking to Normandy for seven days, all expenses paid. He’s the only one who didn’t fight in Europe, but in the Pacific, where he had a berth on a landing ship, tank, the LST-553. As the coxswain on one of its two Higgins boats – the same type of landing craft used in the Normandy invasion — he ferried troops to Japanese-held islands. Forever Young wanted him along to represent the Pacific Theater. Matt said he’s excited about what he’ll learn. It’s his first trip to France.

Each of the vets is going with a companion. Matt’s will be his eldest son, Mike, who lives in Florida and was the Air Force crew chief of an F-4E Phantom jet in the Vietnam War.

Before my story about the trip ran last week, my wife and I visited Matt. We chatted in his apartment, where I was struck by two photos on the wall – images I must have overlooked in previous visits. Matt told us about them and gave me the OK to use both in this blog.

A Gutman family portrait that Matt thinks was taken in 1936 shows (back row, from left) Louis, who was in the Army; Christina; Edmund; Veronica; Joseph, in the Navy; and (front, from left) their father, Mathias, a blacksmith employed at the Allentown Iron Works; Matt; Francis; and their mother, the former Veronica Gomboz.

One is a family portrait Matt believes was taken in 1936, when he was 11. The other is a candid shot showing him and six other LST-553 crew members standing on a Japanese boat on Leyte Island in the Philippines. It was 1945, the war was over, and they were assigned to disarm Japanese troops – a job that brought Matt a prized possession, an officer’s sword.

The photos reflect the American story. Matt’s parents were immigrants from Yugoslavia, the part that is now Slovenia. His father was a blacksmith. Matt and his pals on the LST were young men who, like millions of others, took up the fight when their country called.

When I asked about his siblings in the family portrait, Matt shook his head. Everyone but him is gone. Among the sailors, it’s likely he is the only one still living. He keeps these two pictures on the wall among others he values. For an old salt, they’re a reminder of home and far away, of peacetime and war, of family and friends he had long ago.

A D-Day Veteran Remembered

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

The anniversary of D-Day is always the occasion for an interview in my series War Stories: In Their Own Words for Allentown’s The Morning Call. This year, I’ve been interviewing an 89-year-old World War II veteran. His story will run in the newspaper on the D-Day anniversary, June 6, 2010.

Approaching Omaha Beach, June 1944

When I interview a vet, I find it helpful to take along maps and photos to jog the memory. Over the years I’ve amassed a good-sized library* of material on the Normandy invasion. This year,my interview is with a man who had been with the 1st Infantry Division, called the “Big Red One.” He was in the 26th Infantry Regiment, which was held in reserve and didn’t hit Omaha Beach until late afternoon; the two other regiments of the “Big Red One” hit the beach earlier in the day. While leafing through my copy of Stephen E. Ambrose’s D-Day, June 6, 1944 I found a map of the position of my vet’s battalion on Omaha Beach on the evening of June 6th. I showed him that page. Sure enough, it jogged his memory.

It wasn’t until I had Ambrose’s book back home that I remembered where I had gotten it. For my D-Day anniversary story five years ago in The Morning Call, I interviewed 1st Infantry Division vet Harold Saylor of North Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, who hit Omaha Beach in a hail of German gunfire at 7:30 a.m. carrying a pair of Bangalore torpedoes, long metal pipes packed with high explosive and used for blowing up barbed-wire entanglements.

Always eager to see me, Harold would have scraps of paper for me with notes of some detail he wanted to make sure I knew. One, giving an idea of how much he was weighed down when he went ashore, was typed out: “170 pounds of equipment, including the clothing.” Another typed-out note to me read: “I could not swim either, and to this day I still cannot swim.” One day when I arrived, he handed me seven pages that he’d scrawled brief notes on. “I talked to Ernie Pyle,” he’d written on the first page, referring to the famous war correspondent.

In his small home office crowded with books, files and photo albums, Harold knew where everything was. Sometimes he would shake his head and say that he didn’t know what would become of this stuff when he was gone.

His story ran on June 6, 2005, under a headline that was a quote from him: “On the beach, there was no place to hide.” An e-mail I got from a reader said: “I’m at my desk at work and crying my eyes out.”

American Casualty, Omaha Beach, June 1944

In the months after Harold’s story ran, his health declined. The last time I saw him, he was in a hospital bed in his living room and didn’t seem to know who I was. I rested my hand on his and our eyes met. He died a few weeks later, at age 81, before another D-Day anniversary came.

One day his widow, Anna, called and asked me to come over. Harold had left something for me, she said. It was Ambrose’s account of D-Day. She said Harold wanted me to have it, as well as any other of his books I’d like to have.

Perhaps he hadn’t recognized me in the end, but he did remember me.

On Sunday, June 6, my newest D-Day interview will be in the newspaper and I’ll be going to the annual picnic held in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, by the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge to honor D-Day veterans. I’ll be bringing 90-year-old Dan Curatola, one of Harold’s fellow infantrymen in the 1st Infantry Division’s 16th Infantry Regiment who also hit Omaha Beach that day 66 years ago. And I will think of Harold again.

*Venditta’s Pick of D-Day Photograph Albums

Time-Life editors. THE SECOND FRONT, Time-Life Books World War II 39-book series

Life commemorative edition by Richard Holmes. D-DAY EXPERIENCE, a photo-filled magazine to mark D-Day’s 60th anniversary, 2006

Time special issue, D-DAY: WHY IT MATTERS 60 YEARS LATER, 2006

National Geographic’s issue, “Untold Stories of D-Day,” 2002 which has the most detailed map of the invasion beaches I’ve ever seen

American Heritage‘s issue “D-Day: What It Took, What It Meant, What it Cost.”1994

Normandy Invasion, June 1944

Veterans Live On In Their War Stories

Posted on May 25, 2010 | 1 comment

They buried Ernie Leh with his 1st Infantry Division pin.

At the service last week in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, the Rev. Robert D. Machamer Jr. read aloud from the story I wrote about Ernie six years ago as part of my series in The Morning Call newspaper, War Stories: In Their Own Words. He read not just a few lines, but the top third of the article. It was about Ernie’s landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The minister, a friend of Ernie’s, was taken by an occurrence on the beach that would have been humorous if the situation hadn’t been so grave:

“On my way up the slope, I had to relieve myself. I stopped and went behind a rock about 5 or 6 feet high. Others passed me and went on ahead. I remember seeing a major and some enlisted men pass by. Just as they got over the next rise, a shell exploded right in their midst, getting all of them. That, I thought, might have been me if I had not stopped to urinate. The brief delay had saved my life.”

Soldiers on their way to France, June 6, 1944

Machamer paused and said with a smile that you had to figure Ernie was meant to survive.

As he went on with the story, which I’d put together from Ernie’s own writings and my interviews with him, I thought about the enduring value of recording veterans’ stories, how important they are to family and friends and not least of all, posterity.

By special arrangement, my stories in The Morning Call have permanent homes in the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project.

Some of my subjects were recommended to me by sons and daughters of World War II veterans whose dads were in poor health. Their children felt they had limited time left and asked me to get their stories down. It’s an appeal I find hard to resist.

Two such interviewees were Earl Metz and Earl Schantzenbach. I worked on them without delay. Their stories ran in March 2003 in the days after the Iraq war began. Metz, who had been a combat engineer in Europe, lived for two more years. Schantzenbach, an infantryman who was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry, died just five weeks after his story appeared. But their stories will live on.

USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

A Pearl Harbor survivor who agreed to talk with me did not live to see his tale in print. John Minnich’s heart gave out several days after my second interview with him. His family gave me permission to run the story as a tribute to him, and it appeared on the Pearl Harbor anniversary on Dec. 7, 2001. I sometimes wonder if he didn’t sense the end was near.

Veterans themselves embrace the idea that their stories will live after them. Most memorable to me was Joe Poster, who endured the Bataan Death March and more than three years as a prisoner of the Japanese. As his health failed in the months after his story appeared, I heard him tell people on more than one occasion, “That story is in the Library of Congress.” His two-part account is at http://www.mcall.com/news/warstories/all-josephposter1,0,2658608.story and http://www.mcall.com/news/warstories/all-josephposter2,0,2724145.story.

State Representative Jennifer Mann of Allentown contributes to the perception of permanence. When my war story subjects are constituents of hers, Rep. Mann sends them laminated copies of the articles with a note thanking them for their service to the country. This helps veterans see that people beyond family and friends are grateful for what they’ve done.

Korean War Fallen Soldier, August 28, 1950

Even in obituaries, families have noted their loved ones were featured in the series. When nurse Cecilia Sulkowski died in 2008, the reference to my work read in part: “On July 5, 2002, Cecilia was featured in a lengthy article with photos in The Morning Call titled ‘Mending broken spirits, shattered bodies in Korea.’ In the article, she describes her Army experience which included setting up the first-ever Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the first six months of the Korean War… Her vivid descriptions and sharp memory made this story mesmerizing.”

At veterans’ funerals, my stories have appeared among photos and other memorabilia for mourners to see. This is more than gratifying. That’s because beyond the thanks of veterans themselves and their families and friends, writing veterans’ stories is meaningful and lasting. It not only preserves legacies for generations to come, it contributes to our understanding of history.

That’s partly what I aim for in my book about my cousin Nicky Venditti, an Army helicopter pilot who answered his country’s call. In QUIET MAN RISING: A Soldier’s Life and Death in Vietnam. In this book which took me many years to write, I also give voice to a young man whose story – like the stories of countless other veterans – would otherwise lie with him in the grave, untold and unappreciated.

I can’t let that happen.

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Posted in Veterans' Histories, World War II veterans

Tagged Bataan Death March, D-Day, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, Omaha Beach, Pearl Harbor survivors

Tracking Down the Truth: How to Check the Facts in a War Story

Posted on May 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

The newspaper I work for has fact checkers on staff. The fact-checking for stories about veterans provides special challenges because their material is from so long ago and far away. Of the more than 80 military veterans I’ve interviewed over the last decade, a few have told me stories about major brushes with famous people, and in one case with a particularly notorious bomb.

I had to be careful for my series in The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., “War Stories: In Their Own Words.” Memories of long-ago events can be hazy, and age can play tricks on a person. When a veteran tells me stories that feature high-profile people, I find it isn’t enough to run to the library or search the Internet for checking information. When I can’t find the answers in the library or online, I have to come up with other ways of verifying the stories. Accuracy, after all, is everything, and I didn’t want someone knowledgeable telling me after publication: That has never happened with my stories.

One of my interviewees, Andrew Cisar, was a cryptographic technician with Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army headquarters in England in 1944. His story was that he deciphered a top-secret message from the supreme Allied commander, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, informing Patton of the final date for the invasion of Normandy, D-Day. Cisar remembered the hour and day he got the message for deciphering, and how it was so critical, he had to deliver it to Patton personally.

How could I confirm this?

It’s is easy to contact a professor, a government historian or an independent scholar who has published to good reviews. All of these types are used to phone calls and will advise you.

I went right to the top – Martin Blumenson, a military historian who served as a historical officer with the U.S. Third and Seventh Armies in World War II. Blumenson has been described by The Washington Post as “a leading historian of World War II who wrote the Army’s official account of the D-Day invasion and was perhaps the foremost authority on the life of Gen. George S. Patton Jr.” It wasn’t hard to get Blumenson on the phone. After I told him Cisar’s account, and answered questions he had about Cisar’s service, he said Cisar’s story was plausible. The story ran on June 6, 2004.

LC-USZ62-25600 Library of Congress image

Eisenhower addressing paratroopers (LC-USZ62-25600)

Jerry Webre was a Navy lieutenant who co-piloted cargo planes across the South Pacific. On a summer day, he saw unusual freight loaded onto his plane at a base along the San Francisco Bay. He said it was the tail assembly for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima. His C-54 carried the part to Honolulu, he said, and another crew took the plane from there.

How to check?

An online search turned up Alan Carr, historian at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where work was done on the atomic bomb. I e-mailed him the details of Webre’s account.

“No red flag here,” he e-mailed back. “Though I can’t confirm Mr. Webre’s involvement, his story certainly seems plausible.”

H.M. King George VI

Another Navy vet, Dr. John Hoch, recalled that he had been on a landing craft moored in southern England in the days before the D-Day invasion, waiting to take troops across the English Channel on June 6, 1944. He said General Eisenhower and King George VI appeared on the dock about 30 feet away from him.

I couldn’t find anything that put Ike and the king together at that time. A newsroom librarian couldn’t either.

But a historian at The National World War II Museum (formerly the National D-Day Museum) in New Orleans suggested I contact an expert on George VI. So I looked up British historians and, through a publicist, reached Antony Beevor, author of D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.

In an e-mail, Beevor wrote of Hoch’s seeing Eisenhower and the king together: “It is plausible on 4th or 5th of June, but not on June 6th, as ships had left and the King was broadcasting live to the nation that morning.”

With that, Hoch’s story got the green light.

For my book QUIET MAN RISING: A Soldier’s Life and Death in Vietnam, about my cousin Nicky, I interviewed many veterans who had known Nicky. Before I wrote up my interviews with them, I asked the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis for their personnel records. A veteran’s service is public record, though some information, such as birth dates and current addresses, are withheld by law as a matter of privacy. This way, I could make sure the vet was who he said he was.

No matter how daunting the task, there’s always some way to go about verifying a veteran’s account. You might not be able to nail it down completely, but at least you can approach the truth. It’s a matter of taking the time to ask around, then following through. Professors, independent scholars and government historians can advise you on checking out the information you have about a veteran. If you go to the Resources page on my website, you will find a list of places that can help you get started in verifying veterans’ stories.