The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 27

Ahead lay weeks of practice landings, on a
boat designed for tanks, for the invasion to take
place on Utah Beach, the Normandy coast. "With
all the practicing, we didn't know it was D-Day
when it came. All of a sudden it was there."
Sisk was attached to the 4th Division, headed
by Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Jr., who died from a heart
attack a little more than a month after the D-Day
landings, at Méautis, France. Sisk liked working
for President Theodore Roosevelt's oldest son, a
dynamic leader.
On June 6, his outfit hit the beach, missing
their targeted landing spot by about 1,000 feet,
Sisk says. Ahead on Utah Beach was an expanse
of sand dunes, some high enough to protect the
invaders from German guns. Sisk landed in the
afternoon after the beach was primarily secured.
"We saw a lot of German prisoners and American
dead," he says. His radio was secure, his gun
unfired.
D-Day was not as eventful for Sisk as what lay
ahead. On July 19, a 152mm
shell "burst in front of me on
a hill while I was eating" hitHe was originally scheduled to
ting his right thigh and landhave the leg removed, but an
ing him in a hospital at
Oxford, England, for the next
Army physician looked at the
four months.
"amputee" tag on his injured leg
"I got used to fresh sheets
and three hot meals a day,"
and reconsidered.
but five operations on his leg
dulled his enthusiasm for the
comforts. He was originally scheduled to have are the best soldiers in the
the leg removed, but an Army physician looked world."
at the "amputee" tag on his injured leg and
"We had been through the
reconsidered.
worst fighting of the war by
Ahead of Sisk following his wound was a dif- then," Sisk says. Included in the
ficult, intense, bloody trek across Europe, one unit's resume was being the first division in
with a shocking, but brief, stop at Flossenburg Germany, though it was pulled back to wait for
Concentration Camp, where slaves were forced orders. When the division finally got into
to make parts for the German fighter plane, the Germany for real, "we found the Fort Knox of
ME109.
Germany [Merkers Salt Mine], a cave filled with
"The furnace was still running," when his valuable paintings, paper money, gold, silver,
outfit liberated the camp, he remembers. "The billions of dollars' worth." Sisk actually got to see
prisoners were pitiful. Some of the soldiers were (and touch) the cache.
throwing their K-rations over the fence to them,
His unit wound up being one of the war's
but the medics told them to stop because their most decorated (and his personal collection of
systems couldn't take that rich food."
medals is impressive), liberating several million
Later in Czechoslovakia, 14,000 German sol- people and many towns. It was also the busiest,
diers and the elite German 11th Panzer Division engaging the enemy every day from D-Day until
surrendered to the 90th, his division, of which VE-Day. So busy, in fact, that D-Day was easy to
Gen. George Patton, its commander, said, "You overlook for some. ✪

Top: Bill Sisk is at the
piano in the band.
Above: Bill Sisk with
Gen. George Patton's
granddaughter, Helen
Patton.

75TH ANNIVERSARY

The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019

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