DALLAS -- Monday is the 67th anniversary of D-Day — the day Allied Forces stormed the beaches at Normandy, France in 1944.
It was a decisive battle as 160,000 American, British, Canadian and free French forces overtook the Nazis on that shoreline.
Carl Larson's unit dodged D-Day, because he and his fellow soldiers were busy fighting on another front, in Italy. Yet, any day of remembrance for World War II has special meaning to him.
Larson volunteered for the Army at the age of 19, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of his older brother who was already fighting in World War II.
Now — nearly seven decades later — Larson recently retraced his steps to Italy where he fought the Axis his way.
"I'd tell 'em, 'I'm not out here to get my guys killed,'" he said.
The feisty sergeant mapped out many of his own routes to the battlefield. Larson was the squadron leader of the 339th Infantry of the 85th Infantry Division.
As a unit of the Custer Division, the 339th saw combat service in Italy from March 1944 until the surrender of German forces in May 1945.
Larson said he is one of a handful of survivors from his unit still living to talk about the horror of war. "It was horrible over there; it practically wiped out the whole unit," he said.
Larson's recent trip to Italy with another WWII veteran who was a pilot in the Army Air Forces triggered flashbacks — especially seeing the Italian Alps.
"I'd be looking at the mountains and I'd go, 'My God... I climbed that!'" he said with a laugh.
But memories of hand-to-hand combat — during which he broke his hands several times — would quickly change that mood to a somber one.
"A bomb came and lifted me up in the air and turned me around and sat me down," Larson recalled. "I didn't know where I was. I remember crawling through a creek bed outside of Naples and climbing over dead bodies until I could get some help."
Larson never sustained any serious injuries, but says the hardest part was losing so many troops.
He suffered nightmares when he returned to the U.S. and said he never felt good about his role in World War II, recounting the Italian and German troops he had to kill.
However, learning there was a memorial erected in Naples near a church honoring his brigade for bravery now lifts his spirits. Seeing the memorial after nearly 70 years of thinking no one cared about their sacrifices was the biggest highlight of his trip to Europe.
Still, like so many veterans of war, he feels less than a hero and more of a survivor.
"At the beginning I laid down crawling and I said, 'I'm not going to die like a dog,'" Larson said. "I walked — I didn't run. Doggone it, I didn't care about mines or anything else, and I had the dumb luck to make it."
Sgt. Larson was awarded five Bronze Stars along the way — not bad for a kid who turned down a chance to play football at Boston College just to serve his country.
E-mail ddenmon@wfaa.com
