Jack Webster Green was born in 1923 to John S. and Mabel J. Green. He died June 6, 1944 and is memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing, Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. He had a son, Gary John Green, he never got the chance to meet.
Pvt. Green served with Co. B, 149th Engineer Combat Battalion and was lost at sea when the landing craft he was in (LCI-92) hit an underwater mine as it approached Omaha Beach and was then set on fire by German artillery positions.
USS LIC(L)-92 was lost due to enemy action at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. At 0810 on D-Day, an explosion occurred in Troop Compartment #1 causing the compartment to catch on fire. The ship was consequently stranded on Normandy beach.
A terrifying blast lifted the whole ship upward with a sudden lurch from the bow. A sheet of flame and steel shot out from the forward hold. The ship quivered as if it were pulling apart and the concussion threw the three of us in the conn backward and down hard. The heat was like the midst of a blast furnace. We were stunned for an instant and our ears were ringing with the deafening vibrations. Seconds later another shattering explosion shook the ship like a toy boat and a rain of shrapnel splattered the shivering LCI. In that first blast from the mine, which set fire to the main fuel tanks and blew out a holt in the starboard side big enough to drive a Higgins boat through, 41 soldiers in the forward troop compartment were trapped in a fiery furnace, most of them being killed instantly. The first explosion blew two of the soldiers out the hatch and the sheet of flame shot aft through the pilothouse ports.
Sources: ancestry.com; World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing Army and Army Air Forces Personnel from Iowa
