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thedrifter
06-06-08, 06:38 AM
‘Gentlemen, today’s the day’

June 6, 2008 - 12:13AM
JENNIFER HLAD
DAILY NEWS STAFF

During the months of practice landings in England, John Holden got sick of waterproofing his jeep. So on June 5, 1944, he decided he was not to do it.

That evening, as the ship crossed the English Channel, the men got word from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"It said, ‘Gentlemen, today's the day,'" Holden remembers.

As the choppy waves tossed the ship, Holden got to work waterproofing his vehicle.

On June 6, the young soldier drove the jeep off the ramp and into waist-deep water, joining more than 130,000 other American, British and Canadian troops in the invasion of Normandy. Several other vehicles didn't even make it on to the beach. But his jeep didn't miss a beat, he said.

As he drove, he saw "a lot of dead bodies all over the place. Everywhere I looked, there were dead bodies floating around, plus jeeps and tanks drowned out," Holden said. "I was scared. Everybody was scared. But we were doing our job."

Holden, originally from Greensboro, joined the Army in June 1942. As an intelligence and reconnaissance soldier with Headquarters Company, 12th Infantry, 4th Division, his job was "to go behind enemy lines and discover how many troops they had back there," he said.

After landing on the beach that June day, Holden and the other soldiers waited behind a sand dune for about two hours.

"The Germans were bombing from everywhere. American ships were firing artillery over our heads," he said. "Finally, we broke through."

Holden "fought all the way across France and Germany," helping in the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge.

When the troops liberated Paris, the French were so happy to be free from Nazi rule that they brought wine and champagne to the soldiers and danced in the streets, Holden said.

In Germany, Holden and the other men were being shelled, so he pulled the jeep in front of an old barn and lay down. Next to him was a dog, shaking as much as Holden was.

Holden held onto the dog during the barrage and took it with him when he left. The dog, which he named Minka, went everywhere with him - including on patrol.

"He was the smartest dog you've ever seen," Holden said.

Holden returned to the United States after the war - secretly smuggling Minka in his bag - and got out of the Army in 1945. He went to Guilford College, met his wife and moved to Jacksonville in 1962.

In 1994, Holden returned to France for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. He and a few of his friends from the war retraced the route they took from the beach in France to Germany.

"It was quite an enjoyable trip, as well as emotional," Holden said.

Now, at 86, Holden is the only one left. The last of his war buddies died in May.

He doesn't talk about D-Day very often anymore, he said, because there is no one to talk about it to. But that doesn't mean he doesn't remember.

"It was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be," he said. "It was a very scary day. Quite a day. Quite a day."

Contact interactive content editor Jennifer Hlad at jhlad@freedomenc.com or 910-219-8467. Visit www.jdnews.com to comment on this report.

Ellie