The movements were second nature to James Yarbrough by June 6, 1944. The 19-year-old had trained for his job for a year, traversing the northern banks of the English Channel in a Higgins boat. He practiced with English and Scottish military units. He knew the mountainside and his job duty as a scout.
So on June 6, otherwise known as D-Day, the Chickamauga, Georgia, man was not nervous. He did his job standing on the right side of the landing craft’s ramp with more than 30 soldiers behind him.
But no amount of training could have prepared Yarbrough for when the ramp dropped, and German bullets and firepower began to ravage the world around him.
“I had done it a gillion times, until we started getting killed,” the 94-year-old said. “We just got wiped out. In my boat only three of us got out, out of 33.”
Yarbrough’s landing craft dropped the gate too early after hitting a German barrier in the water the boat captain mistook for the beach. The soldiers, including the Tennessee teenager, jumped into the water. Yarbrough, who said his weight at the time was just over 100 pounds, was in over his head. The more than 150 pounds of gear strapped to his body – ammunition bandoliers, sticks of dynamite, a three-day supply of food – began pulling him under.