A serviceman's remembrance of D-Day on LI Sound

As the ship shuddered through a foggy rain, the old sailor spoke of D-Day — a day he would just as soon forget.

With a clutch of soldiers huddled around him, Jimmy Lijoi recalled how he watched a seaworthy tank packed with soldiers leave the ship and churn toward Normandy’s Omaha Beach.

All of those men drowned in the choppy surf. 

At that instant, Lijoi realized June 6, 1944, would go down as one of the most significant dates of the 20th century. 

“I knew after seeing all those dead GIs,” he somberly told the soldiers. “It was the most horrible thing.”

Today, the ship USS Buncombe County is a car transport renamed the MV Cape Henlopen, part of the fleet of the Cross Island Ferry Co. that runs between Orient Point and New London, Connecticut.

And on this wet morning, in a cabin of the white-hulled Henlopen, Lijoi and fellow veteran Arthur Hubbard, both in their 90s, shared stories of their service with two dozen members of the Massachusetts National Guard’s 211th Military Police Battalion as part of Army leadership training. 

From the Buncombe County, Lijoi watched Hubbard and scores of other troops go ashore on that misty, cool day 75 years ago.

Lijoi was a machine-gunner for the Navy; Hubbard belonged to an Army anti-aircraft unit. Each in his own way, the sailor and the soldier were overwhelmed by all that was going on — the water-clogged landing craft, the skies thick with aircraft.

“It was a terrible day,” said Lijoi, of Valley Stream. “There is so little that goes through the mind because there was so much going on. As far as the eye could see were planes.”

Hubbard was so consumed with getting himself to dry land that he didn't fully appreciate how much danger he was in. The pontoon barge he was on lost power and began to drift, opening a position that another barge filled. The other barge struck a mine; no one survived.

“That could have been us,” said Hubbard, who lives in Redding, Massachusetts. 

For every second of their 30-minute talk, the veterans had the undivided attention of the battalion members.

“We can learn about World War II through books written about it, but these were men who served and lived through what actually went down,” Lt. Col. Bryan Pillai, the battalion commander, said of the face-to-face conversation. “Hearing about it firsthand from them, you can’t put a price tag on that.”

The battalion members tried to find out all they could from Lijoi and Hubbard: What training helped them the most? What they admired about the military leaders who they served under? What advice would they give today if they could speak to their 18-year-old selves?

“My eyes and my ears saved my life,” said Lijoi, who now has difficulty hearing. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here.”

Lijoi described how the tacticians had to think on their feet when things didn't go as planned.

On the first day of the invasion, for example, obstructions placed in the surf by German soldiers kept the Buncombe County from reaching the beach. 

As a workaround, they decided to send troops toward the shore in smaller boats.

And when even the smaller boats couldn’t reach the coast, the tacticians ordered troops to wade ashore through chest-deep water — with the equipment. Many drowned, or were cut down by gunfire.

The story, along with the other insights from Lijoi and Hubbard, helped Capt. Angela Cincis understand the importance of flexible thinking in combat situations.

“I think of it in terms of what can I do to prepare my unit for what they will have to do,” said Cincis, 33, an East Hampton native who commands some 170 soldiers in the battalion. “Preparing them for a fight they can’t anticipate is what this makes me think about.”

There was one question that caught Lijoi off guard: Was there anything that he wished would have happened differently on D-Day?

He paused for a moment.

“I wish that 17-year-old kid who was next to me was still alive,” he replied. “Sometimes that still brings a tear to my eyes.”