Narrative for the Council Business Meeting Minutes
Operation Overlord, the Allied planned invasion of Europe began precisely 15 minutes past midnight on 6 June 1944 with the arrival of the British and American pathfinders, followed shortly by the airborne troops. In the predawn hours, Allied airborne armies marked the flanks, the extreme limits of the Normandy battlefield. Between them there were five invasion beaches – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. As the airborne troops fought in the hedgerows to secure objectives, the greatest sea armada the world has ever known began to assemble off the coast, over 5,000 ships carrying more than 250,000 soldiers, sailors, and coastguardsmen. At 5:50 A.M, a massive naval bombardment of German coastal positions began. Beginning at 6:30 A.M. at Omaha Beach, a few thousand men waded ashore in the first wave of the invasion. By the evening of 6 June, even at Omaha, Hitler’s Atlantic Wall had been irrevocably breached. Since much has been written about the combat operations, in celebration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day, it was decided to focus the discussion on other aspects of the operation, namely the Chaplain Corps, and four men in particular.
One is Reverend Charles Lusher, a Baptist Minister, who joined the Army in 1943. He was chaplain of the 438th Troop Carrier Group/53rd Wing/9th Air Force. And his unit’s C-47 troop transport planes carried some of the first men to parachute into Normandy on June 6. Rev Lusher went from plane to plane until the final one had taken off, where upon he knelt down on the runway to pray. He died on July 4, 1999.
A second is Father Francis L Sampson, who entered the Army as a chaplain in 1942, and after Chaplain school, he joined the 501st Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division as its regimental chaplain, and would remain its chaplain for the rest of the war. Known as the “Paratrooper Padre,” he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, landing behind enemy lines in a river. He lost his communion set in the river, yet after diving to the bottom he was able to retrieve it. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Father Sampson would remain a POW until April 28, 1945 when he was freed by the Russian Army. Father Sampson would eventually become Chief of Chaplains, retiring in 1971 with the rank of Brigadier General. Father Sampson. He died in 1996 at the age of 83.
The two remaining chaplains, Reverend John G. Burkhalter and Pastor George Russell Barber, were at Omaha Beach on June 6. During the course of the first day, both men tended to the spiritual needs of the dying and wounded on Omaha. From June 7 on, both chaplains assisted in preparing the dead for burial, with Chaplain Barber helping in the establishment of a national cemetery that now sits behind Omaha Beach. Each man ended up making being a chaplain a career. Reverend Burkhalter died in 1992 and was buried at Arlington. Pastor Barber, one of the last surviving chaplains from the US landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day, died Dec 17, 2004 at the age of 90.
While each person’s story was incredibly interesting, all attempts to find a fitting ending to this saga were feeble at best, and thus fell short. Nevertheless, each chaplain saw themselves as a man of God, whose job centered on leading the men in their charge closer to God. Therefore, they would probably agree that asking all to pray that we will never see the likes of D-Day again would be a fair tribute to those that have passed, those still living, and those yet to be born.
