BIO
Name: Russell L. PickettAge: 93Branch of military: U.S. ArmyYears of service: 1943-45
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As a 19-year-old Army private on D-Day during World War II, Russell Pickett remembers being huddled in the back of an assault boat waiting to land on the beach at Normandy in northern France.
Pickett, a 93-year-old Soddy-Daisy resident, says he was armed with a flamethrower on June 6, 1944. His job was to cross several hundred yards of beach to take out a German pillbox, a fortified concrete gun-house overlooking the area the allied commanders had dubbed Omaha Beach.
Today, Pickett, who was reared in the Falling Water community and later became a well-known electronics repairman in Soddy-Daisy, still has a remarkable memory of the allied invasion on D-Day.
His weapon and other combat gear weighed about 110 pounds, he says, or more than two-thirds of his body weight. As the approached the beach in a British boat, the soldiers huddled near the back to help lift the nose of the craft in the shallow surf.