A D-Day Invader tells some of it
There was a magazine article I read 11 years ago. The author’s father was a veteran who had tightly withheld his World War II stories from his family. Several decades after his military service, he and his family came across a B-17 on display. It was then that the veteran revealed that he crash landed in one and was saved from drowning by the pilot. The author explained that his father needed a stimulus to explain that part of his life.
Such was the same with my uncle, Lloyd Talmadge Jones. A few years before the 50th anniversary of D-Day, I started calling him in thanks for his service in North Africa and Europe. His sister, Ruth, was a lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps and served mostly in California. Aunt Ruth, who was never in any combat areas, still tells us several stories of her time in the Army.
Uncle Talmadge would accept my thanks, give no details, and we would move on to other subjects. But when the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day was in the news and when veterans were traveling to Normandy to commemorate their role in the invasion, Talmadge’s memories suddenly flowed endlessly. He was unusually excited and his state worried his sisters and his elder daughter. My sister, Laverne, told me about their concerns and I decided to call Talmadge a little earlier this time
He was the youngest son of my grandparents, John Pat and Daisy Jones of Cofield. He was a bit contrary and rarely talked about what he was doing. Talmadge could hunt rabbits and squirrels without weapons. When he did get to use the shotgun, he ambushed a dog that had routinely menaced everyone in the neighborhood. The neighbors showed their appreciation by never reporting him to the dog’s owner.
The poverty of the thirties restricted doctor’s visits to illnesses bordering on appendicitis and the like. There was some persistent ailment with Uncle Tal, but no treatment seemed to help him. The train station was a few hundred yards from the house so he, in his silent way, ran away to New York City where he had heard there was better medical care. He was only 14 years old. When Daisy, his mother, heard that Talmadge had taken off, she rushed to the can where the dollars were kept. She found that he had taken most of the stash. She cried out her relief, “Thank God, he’s got some money!” Through contacts in New York, he found free medical care and he turned out well. He eventually made his way back to Cofield.
When I called Talmadge that last week in May of 1994, I begun my conversation as usual, “Uncle T, I called to thank you for your service on D-Day…” and so on. He began a long soliloquy, with me making occasional uh-huh’s and asking a few questions.
Talmadge recalled that in 1942 or 1943 he was in North Africa and had seen combat as an engineer. In early 1944, Talmadge was in London. One night, an air-raid siren sounded. While escorting a woman to a bomb shelter, he reached around her with his hand to discover she had no arm. She may have been a casualty of a previous raid.
One night in April, a little over a month before D-Day, his group was called to stand guard over a field. The light in the area was poor, but he could see from far away that many men were digging holes in the ground. No one was told what they were guarding or why they were there. Talmadge wondered about that night for years.
American landing boats were practicing for beach invasions at Slapton Sands in England around midnight when German torpedo boats surprised them in Lyme Bay. Over 600 would-be D-Day invaders were killed in less than an hour, and the attack was hushed up. Relatives of the dead were told that their kin had died in Normandy instead of England. One of the television news stories during the 50th anniversary week revealed the story of the slaughter just off Slapton Sands. Upon seeing the news story, Talmadge realized he had witnessed the secret burying of the bodies.
Now, I have to say that Uncle Tal was a not always a coherent storyteller. Americans, Canadians, British, French and Germans were all rolled up into “they,” and many times I didn’t know whom “they” was. I did make out that he arrived on a Normandy beach in the afternoon, presumably to unload vehicles, artillery and supplies. Uncle Talmadge talked of no shooting or close calls. Several times he’d approach a climax in a telling and say “Now here comes a SHOCKER!” It was too bad the shocker was not revealed or understood in his following sentences.
I asked him if he had to walk a lot while traveling from France to Germany. His only answer was alliterative: “The troops traveled in trucks.” The Battle of the Bulge wasn’t mentioned and I forgot to ask about it. I heard less than cousin Rose, or Talmadge’s sisters, Ruth and Madeline. He was approaching the end of his expressive state.
In the summer or fall of 1945, Lloyd Talmadge Jones disembarked in Norfolk and was honorably discharged. He took a bus to Winton and caught a lift to Cofield. He noted that the new grandchild that his mother frequently wrote about was walking. That grandchild, Talmadge’s nephew, Paul Mountain, would be the first speaker at his funeral in 1999.
Lloyd Talmadge Jones (right, front row) with his
parents, John Pat and Daisy Jones (sitting in second row).
His sister, Ruth is standing on the left and his baby sister, Madeline,
is sitting, front left. The other
two young ladies are the Daniels cousins.
Paul Mountain and his uncle Talmadge
at the annual family Easter fishfry in 1997.