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The following story ran in The Meadville Tribune on Veterans Day:



Arden C. Earll had an interesting conversation with Michelle Obama not too long ago.

Yes, Michelle Obama.

“She said, ‘Arden, I’m getting kind of hungry. I hope I can find a McDonald’s some place,’ ” Earll recalled.

This was in June in Normandy, France, at a memorial ceremony for the D-Day invasion. Earll and a few other D-Day vets were tasked with escorting the first ladies of the U.S., Canada, England and France to the ceremony. And that’s when Earll, a retired postal worker from Elgin — a tiny town between Union City and Corry — and the first lady of the United States had a chance to yak it up about Big Macs and fries.

“She was very down to earth,” said Earll. “She and I visited for a while.”

Of course, 65 years before that very day, and pretty close to the spot where he and Mrs. Obama were chatting so pleasantly, things were a lot different for Arden Earll.

It was early in the morning on June 6, 1944. And the teenage Earll stepped from the hold of an LCVP landing craft, onto the sands of Omaha Beach, and into one of the fiercest battles of World War II.

“We landed at a little town called Vierville,” said Earll, who invaded Europe with the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Division H Company.

“There was a little gully, what we call a draw, running from Vierville-sur-Mer to the beach,” said Earll. “That was the first penetration off of the beach in 1944.”

Earll said he doesn’t mind talking about that day, even though he lost friends in the battle, and even left a little bit of himself there on the sand.

“The Germans,” he said, “were trying to knock out our tanks, anything that was big, you understand. There was a tank, and I had to go past it. And just as I started around it, they started shelling the tank. That’s what got me.”

A shell exploded to the right of Earll, spraying his arm and leg with fragments.

He kept fighting.

“A field medic bandaged me up,” he said. “I was still mobile. I could still walk. And I had no place to go anyway. We couldn’t get the wounded off of the beach. So I stayed with them all the rest of that first day, and that first night, and the second day and second night.”

On the third day Earll finally made it to a field hospital, which promptly shipped him back to England to heal.

He later rejoined the 29th Division soon after the battle at St. Lo. And he stayed with the division until the end of the war.

He was discharged on Jan. 6, 1946, a recipient of two Purple Hearts, a Presidential Citation, a Bronze Star, the Combat Infantry Badge, an ETO Ribbon and a medal for the liberation of Vierville-sur-Mer.

He’s since returned to Normandy a number of times, usually with his wife of 51 years, Shirley.

“Shirley and I have been back five times,” he said. “So, I’ve been there six times. The first time was 1944 and, of course, she was not with me then.”

His first trip back was in 1988, at the commemoration of a monument located at the head of the Vierville Draw, honoring the men of the 29th Division.

Each time he returns, he notices the ranks of his fellow D-Day veterans getting thinner, victims of time rather than machine gun and mortar fire.

“Right now some people are beginning to think about 2014,” said Earll, who turns 85 on Nov. 18. “That will be our 70-year anniversary.

“Will we be around? I don’t know. Have to wait and see.”

Earll says that he thinks about his fellow soldiers a lot.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I don’t really care so much about seeing the beach. We go to (France) to remember those Americans that did not come home.”

People call Arden Earll a hero. He doesn’t see it that way.

“They come up to me and thank me for my service in World War II,” he said. “Now, really, I don’t feel that I did anything. The ones they want to thank are those Americans who never came home, that are still over there in Europe and the Pacific, all around the world.

“Those are the ones who deserve the thanks. They paid the big price.”



Pete Chiodo can be reached at 724-6370 ext. 275 or by e-mail at pchiodo@meadvilletribune.com.