Centenarian Remains Among Few to Recall D-Day

(Photo courtesy of Charles Seiter)

The grueling 15-day journey zigzagging across the Atlantic from New York to Britain amidst bombing and bad weather was just the beginning of many “close calls” for Pvt. Charles Seiter, destined to be among 160,000 Allied soldiers and sailors to participate in D-Day at Normandy, France.

“There were countless planes flying overhead in the direction of France, and I could hear the bombing across the water,” recalled Seiter, now age 103, noting the various ships that broke down along the route, which had to be left behind. “I knew then the invasion had begun.”

Although the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t track how many men remain alive from the largest amphibious landing ever attempted, he’s clearly among the relative few left as the 80th anniversary of the perilous assault was to be commemorated Thursday.

The 1923 Scottish cargo ship that Seiter was on, along with some 3,500 troops and his company unit’s military vehicles, was part of a secret convoy. The men sat in and slept under jeeps and trucks for days to keep dry.

Seiter, 22 when he joined the Army Air Corps, initially worked at Bentley Priory outside of London for several months before boarding the ship to Utah Beach, code name for one of two U.S. landing areas and one of five by American, British, and Canadian forces.

Known as Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), it was the messaging center where Seiter assisted in the planning of D-Day attacks. It now serves as a museum centered around the Battle of Britain.

When Seiter and his fellow soldiers sailed across the English Channel from Southampton to land on a stormy Utah on June 7, 1944, known as “D-Day, the day after,” they drove military vehicles toward the front lines to replace destroyed ones.

It was then he and his comrades realized the road they were driving up didn’t seem right and turned around just before a hill where Germans were waiting to attack them.

“A tank division would have wiped us out, but we came back in, assembled in a little field, and continued over a broken bridge,” recalled Seiter.

It was a “somewhat empty beach with some boats and people unloading supplies” for the invasion forces ferried across the channel in nearly 1,000 vessels, from battleships to landing craft, as well as three airborne divisions.

“I felt like I was in a world of confusion,” Seiter said about his initial arrival at the infamous Utah Beach, known for its sheer rock bluffs that had to be scaled or circumvented to eradicate entrenched Germans.

About all that occurred during his time on the battlefield and in France, he simply said: “War is complex. You don’t have to be in front to be killed.”

Seiter was not part of an infantry unit, but what he described as “millions of people that had to supply the advancing front with fuel, gasoline, water, and other items.”

Seiter’s background was a little more specialized.

Raised in Glendale, New York, the young Seiter had been educated in structural engineering at Brooklyn Technical High School, known as an Ivy League-level school specializing in science, technology, engineering, and math.

It’s the reason he and his daughter, Cathy Lamontagne, think he ended up in intelligence and was assigned to bring classified photos taken by allied planes over Germany to the D-Day planning room where Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a known presence.

“I was a private going in and a private going out,” said Seiter, noting his humble rank despite the specialized assignments he received.

It was when his two buddies were killed in the Pacific fighting the Japanese that he decided to go into the Army Air Corps for cadets. Prior to that, he worked for Sperry Gyroscope, a company known for developing artificial horizon and other gyroscope-based aviation instruments.

Seiter went into the conflict to train pilots to land in foggy weather.

Later in the war, he experienced another near miss when he was told late one night he’d be headed to what became the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest — one of Germany’s last major offensives on the western front in December 1944. But one hour before leaving, Seiter’s orders were canceled. The other five soldiers who ended up going were all killed.

Other landmark moments included Seiter finding himself in Reims, France, for the signing of the German surrender.

But most memorable for Seiter was the instant he realized he was back on U.S. soil after the war ended.

“Nothing could compare to the moment our ship was returning home after the war and seeing the Statue of Liberty in the harbor,” Seiter said, also noting he experienced what many veterans do after wartime.

“I felt complete confusion,” he said. “I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do.”

Seiter, who now resides in Surprise, Arizona, and feels he altered his own life for the people of his country, said he wants the United States to get beyond its current problems and divisiveness.

“I was born as a patriotic American,” Seiter said. “I hope we get back on track and to the republic that we should be.

“I went to WWII to fight fascism, and it seems like we’re going backwards now,” he added. “I want Americans to be patriotic again — to love the country that they live in.”