USA/FILE: American World War II veteran John "Harry" Kellers receives the Legion of Honor on 65th anniversary of the D-Day Landings

Record ID: 531203

  • Title: USA/FILE: American World War II veteran John "Harry" Kellers receives the Legion of Honor on 65th anniversary of the D-Day Landings
  • Date: 2nd June 2009
  • Summary: ENGLISH CHANNEL (FILE-JUNE 1944) (REUTERS) VARIOUS AERIAL AND AT SEA FOOTAGE OF INVASION ARMADA (SOUNDBITE) (English) NEWSREEL VOICE-OVER "Over the channel there was heavy cloud. Already poor flying weather had postponed the invasion 24 hours, but now the great triphibious operation was underway. Through the cloud gaps the airborne spearhead saw something of the invasi
  • Embargoed: 17th June 2009 13:00
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  • Topics: War / Fighting,History
  • Reuters ID: LVAEF1Z74MN8EG7D6FE5OJ20VXHU
  • Story Text: Sixty-five years after he first saw the beaches of Normandy from behind a gun on the deck of a U.S. Navy landing craft on D-Day, John "Harry" Kellers will return to receive one of France's highest honors.
    French President Nicolas Sarkozy will present Kellers with a medal making him a "Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honor" at a ceremony on June 6 marking the 65th anniversary of the 1944 Allied invasion that liberated France from Nazi Germany in World War Two.
    Kellers is one of around 20 U.S. veterans who will fly to France this week for the ceremony to be attended by U.S. President Barack Obama.
    "I'll have been to France twice -- one paid for by the U.S. government, United States Navy, and the other by the French government," Kellers jokes.
    He was an 18-year-old from rural Long Island, New York, when he saw combat for the first and only time as a gunners-mate aboard landing craft LCT- 539, which carried infantry and combat engineering equipment onto Omaha Beach in Normandy.
    "I was so naive I had no idea what the big event was going to be," Kellers said in a an interview at this home in Patchogue, Long Island.
    Kellers enlisted in the Navy in June 1943 at the age of 17, a decision he said was driven less by patriotism than because all his friends had enlisted and it was the thing to do at the time. The worst possible thing, according to Harry, would have been to be left behind.
    Kellers trained as a gunners-mate in a twelve-man crew on the newly developed amphibious assault craft for a year prior to the invasion. None of the crew nor most of the troops they carried had any combat experience and had no conception of what they were about to be involved in when the 'day of days' arrived. LCT-539 went in on the eighth wave of the assault on Omaha Beach just before 0800 on June 6th.
    "It came time for our run, we went in. And like I said, at that moment, I really didn't know what was going on, I just was there," explained Kellers.
    "The most terrifying to me was when a fellow got hit in the head and his head exploded. There was nothing but this pink, reddish pink, and we had it all over our uniforms and what we were wearing, and at that time you really knew it was a serious business," Kellers remembered.
    With two men killed and two others injured aboard LCT-539, Kellers recalled how the heavy barrage from beach prevented almost all of the ships in his wave from landing, and LCT-539 cruised back out of the range of the German guns.
    Around 1100, they returned to Omaha Beach for another attempt and found their landing zone eerily quiet as the Germans had been forced backed. The crew landed the troops and vehicles under their charge, but not before the tide had turned grounding LCT-539 in the sand. After the tide changed, LCT-539 returned to the armada with wounded and made preparations to return to the beach with supplies, which meant cleaning the bloody deck of the ship.
    "It was very, like almost a heart-rendering situation to see this. And at 18, you don't know what the world is yet, you know," Kellers said, recalling having to hose down the deck to wash away the blood.
    Kellers and the crew of LCT-539 remained in the English Channel for six months after the invasion that enabled the liberation of France, shuttling troops, vehicles and supplies between liberty ships in the Channel and the Normandy beaches and supporting the massive logistical supply line that maintained the newly opened Western Front. LCT-539 was then transferred to the Pacific theater arriving in December of 1944 where the crew island-hopped behind the front lines, ferrying troops and supplies, never again seeing combat.
    "That is something that I have never not thought about. I can't say -- I won't say -- that a day doesn't go by, but certainly within a week I think of it a couple times. There's just no way of not," Kellers said of his experience in the Normandy Campaign.
    For the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004, France changed the terms of the country's highest honor, opening the Legion of Honor to foreign World World Two veterans who served on French soil, opening the way for U.S. veterans like Kellers to be honored. The son of a fellow veteran of LCT-539 told Kellers about the change and suggested he submit his service record.
    He did so in November of 2008 not expecting anything to come from it, but to his surprise last month he received a call from a French official informing him of the honor.
    Kellers said his reaction was to think "Why me?" He had performed no heroics and was even under orders to not fire his weapon during the landings. His achievement had been to survive his one and only combat action -- one of the most significant of the War.
    "I'm so proud, and grateful that I survived, obviously, and grateful that I had that experience, because you know, to have the experience and survive is just tremendous," said Kellers. "I have to accept it as representing all of the other guys that were there in getting this award, because 'why me'?"
    Kellers, who was discharged from the Navy in 1946, returned to live and work on Long Island afterwards.
    And when the time comes later this week to head to France for the second time?
    "I think it's wonderful. If I'm supposed to respond, I assume I'm supposed to say 'thank you, Mr President,' cause I'm not going to try to pronounce his last name: Sarkozy, or something," joked the light-hearted Harry who, despite saying the name properly, worried about his linguistic skills.
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