Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. All stories on The Moth are personal and they're true, as remembered by the storyteller. And these stories can be big or small, but they have to have happened to you. And sometimes these personal experiences involve really well-known moments in history. We get this treat, this rare look at what a landmark time felt like straight from the mouth of someone who actually lived through the moment.
This week, we're celebrating Veterans Day and the life and legacy of our beloved storyteller and veteran, Rick Carrier. Rick passed away in 2016, but he told a few stories at The Moth about the years he spent in the army.
Rick was drafted for World War II shortly after his 18th birthday. 12 months later, he was storming the beaches of Normandy as part of the first wave of D-Day.
Rick told this story about D-Day at a Mainstage here in New York City, where the theme of the night was Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: Stories of World War II. He was 89 years old the night he took The Moth stage, and he was wearing his army greens. Here's Rick Carrier, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Rick: [00:01:39] This uniform what I'm wearing, I wore when I was 18 years old. [audience cheers and applause]
It didn't have all the schmutz on it. [audience chuckles] It was just plain. And all this stuff came what happened to my life. [audience chuckles] Every one of these things on me, I paid dearly for. I was drafted at 18, and that's when I got this uniform. I grew up in the Depression. My dad was broke and everybody was broke. Everybody was in the army and I was in school and I got drafted, bingo, away I went.
I told them, number one, that I was an expert in dynamite, which I was. I learned how to do that in the mines in Pennsylvania. The other thing I could do quite well would be fix things. The other thing I could do quite well, I could draw. My dad was a draftsman. I learned how to do it. The other good thing I could do would play hooky. [audience laughter] Another good thing I could do as an expert rifle shot and pistol shot. So, all those things came into play.
They looked at me and said, “Dynamite, rifle? What the hell are you?” [audience laughter] I said, “Now, I want to be in the engineers.” And they said, “You're in the engineers.” They sent me into engineers and that was the beginning of my life.
I went out in a rifle range. And the first day, I put five bullets right through the black. They said, “Hey, what? Come back. Here's a clip. Do it again.” So, I put about nine of them in there. The guy said, “Listen, we would like you to be an instructor.” So, I told my dad about that, “I hit all the bullseyes, and they want me to make an instructor.” There was a pause. He said, “You dumb son of a bitch. If I was there, I'd kick your ass from one end of that camp to the other. If you keep that up, you'll wind up a sniper, and snipers are the first ones to get shot. So, just stay in and play with dynamite, kid.” [audience laughter] [audience applause]
So, here I am. The whistle blows now on the B.A. Barnet. This is June 6th, the night of June 6th, 1944. And we're now in our barracks there in bunks with all these troops, our whole regiment. Everybody in it was loaded down with weapons, guns, all our ammunition and everything else. And the whistle blowed, and it's time to get out, and get onto the boats and move in to make the attack onto Normandy.
We've been living in these uniforms for about three days, and carrying all of our guns and all of our equipment and everything you can think of. So, up we get, and we move out on the deck, very silently. We're up on the deck waiting. We hit with a rainstorm. The water came down on us like a fire hose, just pouring it right on us. Every one of us were drenched. We're 50 miles from shore, and the boat was pitching from starboard to port, starboard to port, starboard to port.
And on the side of the boat were these nets, cargo nets with big knots on them, and they were all soaking wet and below them. About 40 feet below from the edge of the ship, these wooden boats called Higgins boats, and they hold up to 70 people. They were the assault craft, and we had to get in them.
And now, what we had to do? Get down one at a time, two guys right behind you. When you got down to the edge of the boat, you'd release. [chuckles] You think you were going to get in the water, but a hand would grab you and put you in. So, they told you never, never, never grasp the notch. So, if you grasp the notch, you were getting into trouble and that we saw somebody that grabbed the notch. When it hit the side of the boat, he screamed and opened his fingers and dropped right down, right to the bottom with all that equipment on, just like that, gone.
So, that's the first thing you see when you're 18. Wow. I mean, okay, this is the beginning of the war. And we know we're going into the war. We ended the boat. I was in the first rank, going in. First wave and behind us was second, third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh, all the way back. And another side, bigger boats had a bulldozer and road equipment and stuff like that that's coming in. We finally got out and we move up to a point where we meet our destroyer, Corry. He is going to lead us in to the beach. The Higgins boat just flattened out, and it formed a single line and we're now moving in towards the beach in Normandy.
An airplane flew in, and started laying a smoke screen in front of us. The Corry began to open up and he was firing. He had a target of artillery base, and he fired about 100 rounds into that. Suddenly, the plane gets hit with plaque, and it blows and it drops and it crashes. No more smoke. So, we grab our breath, because we're now moving out into an open sea and no protection at all, and knowing in front of us was a Corry.
And up in the north end, there was a barrier up there called [unintelligible 00:06:30] It had three guns, big rifles, 300-pound shots. So, the first thing they do is shoot one shot, boom, second one, boom, third one, boom. We could hear the shells whistling right overhead. And the first one landed, the second one came in and hit one of the boats behind us and it just blew up on the spot. Just a complete shot, everything completely busted. And the third shot hit the Corry right in the midship, and she split in half and up this went to stern and up went the bow and she flattened out.
We couldn't go in without an escort. Because if we did, everything would be a screw up. So, we started drifting in the current, a whole big line of it down. We got about 1,000 yards and then suddenly a new destroyer came up. So, it took us in and then we went in and hit the beach. There was all kinds of fire coming down, and the place was being smashed with mortars. I went off the side of it and my leg got caught in a wire on the front door, it twisted my leg and I heard poop, pow, pang. That was tendons in my knee. [audience aww]
I went down into the water and I shook my leg out. Remember at 19 or 20, things heal quick. [audience laughter] So, I shook my leg and the pain went away and it got back in. And then, I remember my grandmother said, “Get rid of the eagle and get rid of the ram.” If you want to survive this war, she said, “You got to become the spirit of the snake. The snake can always see what's coming at him and you can always get and grab them before they grab you.”
So, man, I said, “Snake I am.” I went down. [audience chuckles] I got on the sand and I started clawing like this, and I turned around and looked back at where it was and I could see back on the horizon it was now daylight and I could see these ships. There're thousands of ships back there and I'm glorying to sand. And I said, “Holy God, kid. This is a one-way ticket. You ain't going to go to any place. This is where you're going to stay, so get with it.”
And I thought to myself at that moment, man, I wish the hell I was a mole that I could get under the sand and crawl forward. But I had all this stuff on me, and I had to get out because my first rank was-- I had three jobs to do. The first job was mines, booby traps and explosives. The first job we had to do was to blow up all the stakes out there. The whole beach was covered with stakes. We had mines on the top, booby trapped and also they had, what they call, can openers. We would hit the bottom of the boat and tear them up. So, it wouldn't take us long, because we had a whole company of us going up, blowing those up.
And behind them, they had these hedgehogs, there were steel bell. You've probably seen pictures of-- We had to blow those up. When they were all blown up, the bulldozers came and pushed them aside. Each one of us was carrying these 26-pound bags of Tetrytol. I had a big reel, like a cowboy, around my shoulder, which is a primer cord. We went up the seawall, which is big concrete thing, and there were bunkers in all of it.
Fourth Division which had already gotten in there, they were all dug in underneath it to get away from the bombs. General Roosevelt was walking along, hitting them on the helmet, said, “Look, we were supposed to go in 1,000ft up, but we're here. This is where the war starts.” So, these guys were moving out of the ground. He was standing and all that mortar fire coming down. You're glancing at that and you're digging into and getting into holes and everything. And the noise was just absolutely deafening, because I was digging and my face was down in the sand, I was dragging my nose in it and my face was in it, my eyes were in it.
So. we got in and put more dyno over every sack and then underneath the seawall. The sergeant major said, “Come on, Carrie, you're the one that lights the fuse. Get up here. You're good at that.” Everybody gets out, and I'm down there. I had seven seconds to get out of there. I want to tell you, I made time. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
When I got away from it, suddenly, boom, and the big noise of the war around us just disappeared. Just one sound, and concrete chunks were flying around. My next stage was mines. Roosevelt was leading the Fourth Division. He was in charge of it. I want to tell you, all that stuff, I had to go to the John bad. [audience laughter] Because of the bad food on the Corry. So, I went up and I dropped my pants and-- [sighs] Oh, man. Yeah. And then, I hear this voice, “J.D.” I look up and General Roosevelt's pointing his cane at me and said, “You the one that's going to take us through the minefield?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Well, I want to see what it looks like. Get your ass up here and show it to me.”
So, I pulled my pants on and he said, “Besides, I need a drink of water. Give me your canteen, would you, Corporal?” So, I said, “Yes, sir.” So, I reached back and I had two canteens, one water and another had the special medicine for if we got screwed up, we were to use it. So, I tossed it to him. I didn't know which can it was. He opened it up and took a slug, he went-- One swallow, two swallows, three swallows, four swallows. That bag, and he tossed it to me and he said, “Corporal, you keep carrying a canteen like that, you're going to make a general, and I want you in my command.” [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
That canteen had 100% straight rye whiskey, old overhaul. [audience laughter] [audience cheers]
So, up to the sand dune it was, it was a grand dune, and we crawled up to that. And on top of it, it was this barbed wire, and all the mines were in there. And a sign said, “Achtung Mining.” And in the wire had been a skeleton. Somebody a long time ago crawled in there, and the Germans just left them there, scare anybody. Scared me, I tell you that.
So, anyway, Roosevelt said, “Look down there, in the water was a paratrooper lying there with his parachute out in front of him, dead.” Roosevelt said, “Corporal, do you know why that paratrooper has died?” I said, “Yeah, he came in and he landed and he couldn't get out of the harness.” He said, “Well, that's part of it. But why did he come here? Why are you here? Why am I here? Why are everybody here?” I said, “We're here to kick the ass of the Nazis.” He said, “That's right. But what else? What are you doing when you do that?”
He said, “I'll tell you what you're doing. You're giving the freedom back to the French people, those bastards stole from them. That's what you're doing. That's why you want to stay alive. Do that in this war, and you'll be a hell of a lot better off for it.” So, he said, “Now get back, go down, get your guys and show us through the minefield.” We went through the minefield lined up, fingers to fingers flat. 18 of us went through the minefields and we made paths through it. Three paths through the mines, marking them with the big teller mines with a white flag, a little drag on the top, and the Bouncing Bettys, the ones that would shoot up four ball bearings. There would be a yellow one.
So, we did that in a zigzag, so that the infantry could walk straight through the minefield. All the mines are still alive, but they got a pathway to it, and so the infantry did. I could see them right away forming up when we finished. I turned around and headed down the beach. And before I got halfway down, a [unintelligible 00:13:48] shell landed, tossed me right on my ass and threw me fore. And on the edge of this seawall was an abutment. My helmet came off and went down hitting it. And the helmet rolled up and pushed my front teeth right back against my roof of my mouth.
And also, a small piece of shrapnel had banged off the helmet and tore this hole in my head. So, that was squirting blood. I stood up and I grabbed some [unintelligible 00:14:12] and pulled my teeth back in and I headed back down to the headquarters, which was taken up in the big bunker that was the one defending this beach. And our colonel was in there and he said, “Carrier,” he said, “You did a good job today up there. I see everything's done that you said you'd do.” He said, “But I know you're a draftsman. I got news for you.” He said, “The War Department wants to get drawings of all these bunkers, every one of them. And then, after you get the drawings done, we want you to blow them up and then do other drawings and see how they were made.” I said, “Right up my alley.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:15:09] That was Rick Carrier. Rick went on to fight at the front lines of five major European battles, including the Battle of the Bulge, Remagen Bridge and Central Germany. On his 20th birthday, April 10th, 1945, while scouting for military supplies, he accidentally discovered the Buchenwald concentration camp. The following day Rick was with Patton's Third Army when they liberated the camp and brought freedom to thousands of prisoners, including 750 orphaned boys.
After the show, Rick sat down with his son, Alan, to talk more about his experiences. Rick was a real renaissance man and quite a character, and we just wanted to let our listeners get to know Rick a little better. Here's Rick talking about his battle naps, which was a technique that he used for his entire life.
Alan: [00:16:01] How long did it go before you took your first few minutes of sleep after the invasion?
Rick: [00:16:05] Oh, I didn't at all. No, no. For the first day, what we did was called battle naps. I was doing them yesterday. You'd sit down in a chair and lean back wherever you were, you had to concentrate on it, so that you shut your mind down and then just lean forward and start simple, easy cycle breaths, one, two, three, four. By the time you get to the fifth one, you'll be in those just super. And your body now is relaxing and it's recovering. When you relax, it recovers. If you are tension, it won't. So, just five minutes like that, 15 minutes and then when you wake up and you got a shot back and you're back again.
Dan: [00:16:49] After his deployment ended, Rick stuck around Paris to study art at École des Beaux-Arts.
Alan: [00:16:55] After your experience during the wartime, how did it feel to be able to go to art school in Paris?
Rick: [00:17:00] It was one of the most beautiful things that could have happened to me after the war, because all the big heavy things was over. It was over. I was there, and I had a pocket full of money, and I was going to school and I had freedom of the city. Every place I went in my uniform, it was free. I'd go into this club, I could sit down, the French would not accept a dime from me.
Dan: [00:17:21] For a long time, Rick didn't talk about his experiences during the war, because they were too painful for him to relive and too shocking for those around him.
Rick: [00:17:31] It wasn't till recently that I opened up on him. Where it was? It was the first time I said talked about it. When did I start to open up about this, Alan?
Alan: [00:17:42] Oh, within the last five years or so. I think once you hit like 84, 85, you realize that you don't have that many years left, even if you live to be a 100.
Rick: [00:17:50] Right.
Alan: [00:17:50] You know, that's only like 10 years.
Rick: [00:17:52] Right.
Alan: [00:17:52] So, it's better tell the stories now, otherwise forever hold your peace.
Rick: [00:17:57] Absolutely. That's why I'm doing it. Not for that, only alone, but it's also-- Last night when I was telling that I was living that scene again and I saw every-- See, the way I've learned to do, I've learned how to draw out of my subconscious mind. Subconscious mind has all the visions of what I did, but the conscious mind can't pull them up.
If I tried to remember any of this stuff, it would go away. I couldn't see it. I'd see a little fragment of it. But when my subconscious got it, and I loosen it and it starts feeding me and stuff, it feeds me the whole reel, because once this thing is coming out of me, the whole scenes in it.
Alan: [00:18:35] Well, I thank you so much for coming. I think it was a wonderful event and your participation really made me happy. I was so happy to hear you say these things. And thank you so much.
Rick: [00:18:46] Thank you. Give me your hand, and let's just take three seconds for silent thoughts and prayers. Just three seconds. Just three seconds. Thank you.
Dan: [00:19:03] That was Rick Carrier. After studying in Paris, Rick went on to work as a graphic artist, writer, filmmaker and environmental activist, raising awareness for the then endangered bald eagle. He even convinced President Reagan to declare June 20th Bald Eagle Day, which is still recognized by most states.
Rick also loved to dance with his partner Lynn. He returned to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day. And in 2012, he and Lynn traveled back to Poland to visit Buchenwald and participate in the March of the Living. Rick was a recipient of the prestigious French Legion of Honor award, and he received quite a long standing ovation both times he told stories at The Moth.
Rick passed away in 2016 at the age of 91. To read some of the poems Rick wrote and to see photos of him on The Moth stage in uniform, just go to our website, themoth.org.
And to close this week's episode, all of us here at The Moth want to thank Rick and all of our veterans for their service and their sacrifice. And to everyone listening today, we hope you have a story-worthy week.
Julia: [00:20:16] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth.
Dan: [00:20:24] Podcast, production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.