The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 17

THE PANTAGRAPH, Sunday, June 5, 1994 C3 NAVY From C1 purpose, as part of a line of ships sunk to form a breakwater. The only problem 1 1 small Navy crew had to the June 22 story shows a bright-eyed boy with a flash in his grin. He's wearing the sailor cap everybody's seen on a Cracker Jack box. Before coming to ISNU, he attended Western Illinois University, where he was a member of the dramatic society, president of his fraternity and listed in "Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities." There are no details of his death where it occurred or when on D-Day, if it was quick or slow and painful only that it Scott Lorimor stay aboard the immobile ship, manning the guns, for 13 more days. Fortunately, those days, compared with a 4 s1 A immi days ashore, close to the front lines, were A U.S.

Coast Guard-manned USS LST-21 unloaded tanks and trucks during the D-Day invasion. uneventful Tomorrow After D-Day farm, was a member of the original crew of LST-369, which hauled ammunition for Gen. George S. Patton when the Allies landed on Meanwhile, Huff was experiencing the nightmare. His LST carried an army battalion and a half-ton of TNT across the channel.

Off shore it became the target of a German gun and, as the gates opened and the soldiers began their scramble for land, the enemy scored a direct hit. "They killed all our people right in front of us," Huff said. Other hits damaged the LST's Sicily. He saw Patton aboard one morning when the ship was strafed by enemy aircraft, and he remembers the general, was sure. The obituary said he was survived by his parents; three sisters, one at ISNU; three brothers, two also in the Navy; and his paternal grandmother.

It was at the top of a page of other war news, telling of the Allies' relentless and deadly push inland through the hedgerows of Normandy, of the even deadlier battles on the Russian front and of the island hopping soldiers and sailors and aviators in the Pacific. The war raged on. It was still nearly a week before the port city of Cherbourg would be liberated and Operation Overlord could be supplied through anything other than the makeshift beach harbors of Normandy. And although it was apparent the Germans were losing ground steadily, Hitler wasn't admitting it and a lot more people would die before it was over. Kenneth Mann of Bloomington had been John Goold While LST meant Landing Ship Tank or Long, Slow Target, depending if you were ordered to get in one or if you did the ordering, the in D-Day stands for nothing more than, well, Day.

A dictionary definition of D-Day is "the day on which a military attack or other important event is to take place. There were other D-Days during World War II, but the June 6, 1944, landing on Normandy was so massive and so engine room and took out its anchor wench, "so we were dead in the water." The Navy crew was still aboard with 1,000 pounds of table, complements of Illinois Gov. Dwight Green, who was at a nearby table. Three days later, as he was being sworn in in a Chicago induction center, Woody Herman's orchestra was playing "Anchors Aweigh." A few months later, Mann became part of the original crew of a Landing Ship Tank, LST-226. Its maiden voyage was to Africa in March 1944.

Then it went to England to prepare for D-Day. On June 1, about 500 soldiers loaded into the 226 and spent the next five days aboard. It was Ken Mann's home for 212 years, but none of all those days stands out in his mind like June 6. There is a distant look in his eyes, moist and red, as he recalls: "You could see bodies washing out to sea, you know, their life jackets on. You could see all the junk on shore that had gotten blown up I felt sorry for those guys.

God almighty, I was glad I was in the Navy." All he and his shipmates had to worry about was enemy artillery blowing their ship out from under them. That's why John Goold joined the Navy in the first place. With the world at war and him in his early 20s, Goold knew he was going into the service somehow, so he tried to think of the least dangerous: "I got the idea," he said, "that as long as they didn't shoot your ship out from under you, you had it pretty good." It turns out he did, but this is now. Goold, born at Fairbury and raised on a Hubert Huff famous for his ivory handled pistols and infamous for slapping a GI, trying to dig a foxhole in the steel deck of LST-369. There wasn't much else funny in the war.

Although LST-369 was not scheduled to unload its cargo on Normandy until June 7, it was in the English Channel, under fire, on D-Day and Goold was aboard. Scott Lorimor, an Iowa native now living in Bloomington, and Hubert Huff, who was born and raised in Pike County and now lives in Normal, were officers aboard their respective ships, neither of which remained afloat very long that day. Lorimor's ship was sunk off Utah Beach on nt 'to in the war, it TNT, and the Germans had it in their gun sights, Yet the enemy managed to miss the disabled and immobile ship for three hours. Finally, Huff said, a smaller ship came by and took the sailors off roughly five minutes before the LST and the TNT took another direct hit. "We watched our ship go up in pieces." obviously has become the Day.

working 70-hour weeks at a factory when he said: "To hell with it. Let's join the Navy." It was a lark. That night, Oct. 2, 1942, after he and his friends i i i Some 21 ,000 graves in this Normandy cemetery are filled with the remains of Germans killed in the invasion. Kenneth Mann enlisted, they were celebrating in a Peoria bar when a magnum of champagne arrived at their v' ti 1 summer Team up soccer, a world championship, A J-J JLJ nine exciting cities and 12 fun-filled activities ana you've entire stock of women's permanently reduced summer sandals Go to Goal The Pantograph's summer Newspaper In Education program! espadrilles EXTRA "-an "Go to Goal" focuses on the 1994 World Cup soccer matches, hosted by the United States for the OFF first time.

Scheduled to run from mid-June to mid-July, the program offers 12 activities that get youngsters involved in reading, writing, geography, math, and even art as they relate to coverage of World Cup soccer. You'll save 30-44 off the original prices! Select brand names including: Jasmin Mootsies Tootsies Impo Jacque Cohen What's What Unlisted Buskens Prima Royale Naturalfzer Esprit Chills and more! Orig. sale 15.99-60.99, final cost 11.99-44.99. (D.47) "Go to Goal" is designed to keep kids reading and learning with fun, interesting and timely activities involving different sections of the newspaper --from the sports pages to the comics to the opinion pages! t5 Be a sport encourage your kids to participate in The Paragraph's "Go to Goal" summer NIB program! Look for Activity 1 in your Friday, June 17 Pantagraph! Sizes, styles and selections may vary by store. The Pantagraph In Education.