LI veteran remembers his behind-the-scenes role amid sacrifice at D-Day 

That morning began like most at Thorpe Abbotts Airfield in Norfolk, England. A wake-up call at 4 a.m., breakfast, briefing, and on duty in the base control tower by 8 o'clock.

But U.S. Army Air Forces Cpl. David L. Wolman, 22, would soon come to realize June 6, 1944, was a day like no other he had experienced before — or since.

It was D-Day. And the biggest military operation in the history of the world was unfolding a few hundred miles away, with more than 150,000 Allied troops headed across the English Channel for the beaches of Normandy, to fight an invasion battle that within a year would lead the United States and its Allies to victory over Germany in World War II.

Though Wolman never set foot in France, he played a vital behind-the-scenes role as a control tower operator, helping guide flight after flight of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from England on missions against German troops there in support of the Allied D-Day offensive known as Operation Overlord.

For three days, Wolman, now 99 and a resident of the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, never left that tower — eating there, sleeping there, hoping beyond hope every bomber and every crew member he and his fellow servicemen sent off would make it back safe.

"We had information of what was coming," Wolman said, adding that he later found out "we lost, on the beach, 2,400 [men] right away."

But, he said, he and his fellow tower operators had no sense of what was going on in the Higgins boats — the troop landing craft — that headed to the beaches, had no idea what was going on once those troops hit the beaches, had no idea what was going on in the bombers and Allied fighter planes over Normandy, until later.

"Because radio silence was very important," Wolman said, "because the Germans could pick up the signals of where our men were … there was no talking on the radio. … All I was hoping was everybody was coming home. Thank God, whatever we sent out … that our planes came home."

Amid heroism, essential support

When many of us think of D-Day, we think of the bloody battle scenes from "Saving Private Ryan" or the 1962 epic "The Longest Day." Soldiers, laden with gear, stepping off landing craft into chest-deep water and struggling to reach Omaha Beach or Juno Beach or any of the other beaches at Normandy — many being mowed down by a relentless hail of machine gun and artillery fire. John D. Long, director of education at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, said that as best records suggest, 4,414 Allied troops were killed on the beaches on June 6, 1944, 2,501 of them Americans — 310 of them New Yorkers, the highest loss of any state.

Estimates are another 10,000 Allied troops were wounded.

And that's on the first day of the invasion alone.

But, Long said this week, the logistical roles played by all the Army, Army Air Forces, Navy and U.S. Coast Guardsmen involved in D-Day were crucial, too.

"It was absolutely essential," Long said of the role played by Wolman. "We think of D-Day, we think of guys on the beach. But I always try to remind people we're not getting anywhere near the beach if not for the Navy and Coast Guard getting them there and if not for the air cover that allowed them to remain there.

"If the German Luftwaffe had not been pretty thoroughly shredded by 1944, we might've gotten to the beach — but our men weren't getting off it. … For every man landing in the invasion there were three more in the support staff, loading [landing craft] in England, gathering supplies, arming weapons, arranging and providing air cover, that we never see."

Long said best estimates are that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were fewer than 2,650 D-Day vets still alive. That number is far fewer today, he said.

For his part, Wolman said, it is a role of which he remains most proud.

From NY to Thorpe Abbotts

Born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Nov. 5, 1921, Wolman grew up in East New York and attended Thomas Jefferson High School. He was drafted in July 1942 and went through basic training at Camp Upton in Yaphank before being sent to Champaign, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin, to learn the basics of air traffic control and radio operations.

He ended up on the RMS Aquitania, the Cunard Line sister ship to the RMS Lusitania — whose 1915 sinking by a German U-boat sparked outrage during World War I — and in August 1943 found himself stationed at Thorpe Abbotts.

The airfield, located northeast of London, was headquarters of the 100th Bomb Group. The group became infamous as "The Bloody Hundredth," due to the heartbreaking losses of aircraft and men on missions to places like Regensburg, Bremen, Munster, Berlin, Merseburg, Ruhland and Hamburg. Some of its B-17s, like Hang the Expense II, and Rosie's Riveters, the latter piloted by Brooklyn native Lt. Col. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, became famous for the missions they weathered.

Rosenthal's son, Dan Rosenthal, now president of the 100th Bomb Group Foundation, noted the group, a major participant in the pre-invasion February 1944 assault on the German war machine known as "Big Week," is the subject of a coming Steven Spielberg miniseries called "Masters of the Air."

For Wolman, those missions leading up to D-Day were gut-wrenching and something he seldom talked about with his wife, Gladys, or daughter Nancy, even after he had gone to work as a flight service specialist at Idlewild [now Kennedy] Airport, and later, MacArthur Airport, the family moving to Centereach.

"He said it was terrible," Nancy Wolman said Friday. "Terrible because the planes would come back from missions and it was up to him to tell the commanding officers what planes had been lost or who was injured when he had to call for ambulances. He said he couldn't go over and see the fellas in the hospitals, because he'd seen what'd happened to their planes — and so he knew just how bad it all was."

If Wolman didn't fully understand the magnitude of what was unfolding when he went to the control tower on the morning of June 6, 1944, sending that first flight of bombers off for France, he and his fellow airmen soon realized the importance of D-Day.

"For three days — from Tuesday morning until Thursday evening, 5 o'clock — for three days I was up in there," Wolman said. "But I was glad that I was."

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”