Letters from George

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the 49th Engineer Combat Battalion landed on Utah Beach. As combat engineers they were in the thick of the assault — clearing beach obstacles and mines, taking and holding key points, building bridges, and helping airborne troops who had dropped behind the lines. The assault "arrowhead" on George's campaign ribbon is the Army's mark of having made that kind of landing.

In the weeks that followed the battalion worked the Normandy hedgerow country — demining, repairing roads and bridges, keeping the advance moving — through the drive on Cherbourg and out across Northern France that summer.

George's first letters from France are dated mid-June 1944, a couple of weeks after the landings: "I'm now in France," he tells his sister, in the matter-of- fact way the censor required. Through the summer the letters follow the army's push inland.