Mobile’s Eddie Olsen had a front-row spot at the D-Day invasion
Ann and Eddie Olsen have been married since 1960. (photo by Dan Anderson)
Friday, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day. Alabama NewsCenter salutes Alabama Power employees who, like so many other brave men and women in our country, touched history.
Mobile’s Eddie Olsen thought the D-Day invasion of Normandy would never begin.
The Alabama Power underground cable splicer had the best seat in the house for one of the war’s most famous, pivotal campaigns: manning a .30-caliber machine gun on an amphibious “landing craft, vehicle, personnel” (LCVP) ferrying soldiers from larger boats in the English Channel to the beaches of France.
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had originally given the command to begin the invasion June 5, 1944. But weather predictions on June 4 called for poor conditions and the attack stalled.
Eddie Olsen during his World War II service. (contributed)
Olsen’s 36-person LCVP launched June 3 from Dartmouth, England, only to be put in a holding pattern in what was to be the largest amphibious surprise attack in history.
“We just rode in a big circle for three days out of sight of land, of either England or France. We rode around. Slept. Had chow,” Olsen recalled in a matter-of-fact tone.
The 1944 invasion of now-famous beaches nicknamed Omaha, Utah, Juno and Gold spelled the beginning of the end of the Third Reich, as Allied troops began their assault from the west on Nazi Germany forces occupying Europe.
Even as the invasion got underway, it didn’t get exciting for Olsen.
“It was three days into it, and this Bf 109 (German fighter plane) came off the beach right at us,” Olsen, now 91, said from his home on Old Government Street in Mobile. “It scared the living hell out of me.
“I opened up on him but he kept coming. Of course, there were two .30-caliber guns in the boat and both of us were firing. There was a support boat behind us with a .50-caliber gun, and he was firing.
“We were hoping we would get him or his own would get him (via friendly fire),” Olsen recalled. “But he kept coming toward us.”
The Messerschmitt plane finally went down but with all three guns blasting away, Olsen doesn’t know who should get credit for the kill.
“All of a sudden this big black bowl of smoke came up. He was high enough to bail out. So he flew upside down and did a free fall out of the plane, and his parachute deployed.
“We were hoping the wind would blow him over us so we could capture him in the water, but he came down on the beach.”
Once Allies established a beachhead, Olsen and his Navy cohorts provided gun cover for supply ships. He was front-row-center watching fierce battles as Allied air and naval power pounded German positions.
“It was just like in a movie. You would see bombers coming in and dropping bombs and German artillery shooting at them. We could see the damn bombs falling out of the planes. And when they hit, they literally shook the ground.”
Olsen particularly recalls the 16-inch shells fired from American battleships up to 20 miles offshore zinging over his head on the beach.
“They sounded like a baby crying when they go over you. But it didn’t bother me. I knew they were doing some good.”
The remainder of the war for Olsen was anticlimactic. He was sent to Honolulu, then Manila in the Philippines, where he manned a 20 mm gun on a destroyer.
“I never did have to fire it, thank goodness,” he said.
After the war, Olsen joined Alabama Power working in a substation, but soon transferred to maintenance and repair of electric cable beneath the streets of downtown Mobile.
“I loved my job, although it wasn’t exactly a clean job as far as the manholes go,” Olsen said. “It was better than being on a line crew. My feet didn’t fit those poles.”
He met his wife, Ann, who worked in commercial sales with Alabama Power from 1953 to 1962. They married in 1960, and are still together.
