Soldiers News
Mr. and Mrs. George V. Pavlik have received word through the Red Cross that their son, Vincent Pavlik, A.S., in the U. S. naval training station at Farragut, Idaho, was down with scarlet fever, but that he is now recovering and is able to sit up. The Red Cross maintains a liaison service for the benefit of the personnel of the armed services, to keep their families informed in case of sickness which prevents soldiers and sailors from writing home themselves.
Source: LeMars Globe-Post, August 2, 1943
Vincent Pavlik arrived home Wednesday evening from Urbana, Ill., where he had attended diesel school and left on Sunday for Little Creek, Va., for a month’s training in landing boat tactics.
Source: LeMars Globe-Post, Nov. 29, 1943 (photo included)
Mrs. George Pavlik received a letter from her son, Vincent Pavlik, for Mother’s day. He wrote that he is now in England. This is the first word the Pavlik’s have had from Vincent in over six weeks.
Source: The Globe-Post, May 18, 1944
“Gum Chums” Are Among Hazards Of Normandy, V. Pavlik Writes He’s In Navy, But Slept In Castles and In Pup Tents
“Gum Chums” are not the least of the hazards encountered in France by American forces, according to MoM3/c Vincent Pavlik, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Pavlik, a censored letter from whom has just been received by his parents.
“Gum Chums” it appears, are French children of 5 years or less. Wherever the Americans go, they are mobbed by the “gum chums” with demands for candy and gum.
Vincent writes that he is returning to France, after some time spent in England, following the original invasion in which he took part. He operated an LCI out of one of the big LST ships, and transported men to the beachheads, and later, wounded to England.
Some of his duties were ashore, and he wrote that he slept in fox holes, pup tents and in old castles. “The straw mattresses in the castles felt good—but there were no modern conveniences—sometimes not even water.”
He mentioned that the automobiles in England are even smaller that the Austins which used to be seen occasionally in the United States, and wonders how his Dad would get along in one. For amusement, he said, he liked to pick up the whole hind ends of these little cars.
Source: LeMars Globe-Post, July 24, 1944
British Don’t Seem To Know It, But U.S. Men Are Fighting Hitler, Too.
Vince Pavlik Adds Footnote to Gammick Item On Omaha Beach.
A newspaper article by Gordon Gammick, war correspondent, was clipped by Mr. and Mrs. Geo. V. Pavlik and sent to their son, Vincent, who is serving on a L.S.T., in the European theater of war. Mr. Gammack wrote of an English newspaper reporter who gave the English, all credit for making “breaks” for the Americans (in the invasion) into France. Mr. Gammack remarked that he thought of the boys at Omaha Beach and St. Lo.
Last Friday, Mr. and Mrs. Pavlik received the following interesting letter from Vincent, who was a graduate of ’42 Class of the LeMars high school and has been in the Navy since June, 1942, and has been overseas since April 1943.
“I got your December 4th letter yesterday so I’ll answer it now. You asked if I were ever on ‘Omaha Beach.’ I thought that I told you, but guess I didn’t. I lived on that darn beach for a month, from D-day till Fourth of July. They were shooting when we came and they were still shooting at German planes when I left, on the night of July 3rd. I’ll try to tell you how I spent the month of June, when I only wrote a V-mail.
“We went to France in one of the biggest convoys of the war. We had everything from destroyers to PTs as escorts. The sky was filled with every kind of plane in the book. We were in ‘general quarters’ all the way with all guns manned. Behind us was a Seabee barge, we were towing.
“We went in and waited till D+1 before landing our troops or dropping our boats. The destroyers were going up and down the beach shelling German positions in short. Up a small valley, on one of the beaches, I could see where they were hitting. Once in awhile a German 88 would let loose a few shells at the ships. Our destroyers finally knocked them out. The big ‘Texas’ was blowing hell out of the Germans way behind the lines and the big shells sounded like a train when they went over us.
“The small boats, with me in one, went in loaded with infantry. They carried a lot of high explosives with them. One bunch carried eighty pound of H.E. per man. When we went in close, I got behind my machine gun and Ward got behind his. We waited for snipers fire, but we didn’t get any then.
“We beached once and returned for another load. On the second ……
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…… landing the rudder of my small boat broke, so we were stuck on the beach. We tried to get off but the tide dropped too fast and soon were high and dry. My officer came over from the other boat to see what was wrong. After seeing that we were out of action until the tide came back, he decided that we should act as stretcher bearers. We grabbed the stretchers and headed for the front line.
“Bodies were all over the beach and some of the army medics were dragging some into lines and covering them with blankets. We held our heads down close to the ground and reached the breast works where they Army was sniping at the Germans. Pete and I got a guy out of a foxhole and ‘shot’ him full of dope. His foot was almost shot off by machine gun fire. We took him to the beach. My officer was an LCVP to beach and we loaded it with wounded. The VP left for the ship and we went back for more wounded.
“About that time, I saw ten army medics drown, because the small boat left them out too far from the beach. I couldn’t do anything because they sank like rocks, with all their supplies on their backs. I managed to get ten or fifteen soldiers out of another boat before they went down. I kept doing the ‘life guard’ stuff for about two hours, then the tide started in so I went back to the small boat to see if we could get it off.
“Pete, my coxswain, and I rigged up the emergency tiller and sat down to eat. We still kept our heads down for the German snipers on the hill were busy again. They hit the boat, but we still kept eating our fruit cocktail out of the can.
“When we floated enough so we could get off, we backed out and started for the ship. Just then an 88 opened up and hit the LST that was about twenty feet from where we had been sitting. Then another shell hit on the other side of us. I don’t know if I was scared or not, but I felt tight as a wire and felt like yelling or something. We were lucky, for the Germans were shooting blind, and they ended up hitting a tug in the smokestack. Then our destroyer made hamburger of the 88.
“Pete and I got the boat back to the ship and I started to fix it. We unloaded the tanks we had and went back to England in one night and returned to France the next evening.
“That time we lowered the boats for good. We stayed on the beachhead for a month. At first we slept in an LCI that was a headquarters ship. Then we made a hut in the small boat and slept in that. That was OK, except the flack made holes in the canvas when it fell during air raids. Then that darn storm broke.
“The storm lasted for three days and nights, but the high seas lasted for two weeks. And we didn’t eat for most of the time. All the supplies were used by the Army and even they didn’t have enough.
“In the storm we and rest of the small boats were ordered to beach. We did—but we tried to ride the tide, we smashed into each other. My boat had a two foot by one foot hole in it’s side. I put two coats in it to stop the water so we made it in. The storm washed up some mines, and some of the boats hit them. I saw three boats blown up around me. Some of the boys had to swim for it when the boat filled up. Well, we made it in, but over two hundred small boats were wrecked, and a lot of big ships were smashed for a while.
“I then went up to a Navy demolition outfit, and worked with them. We lived in foxholes for ten days, and about froze. For two nights it rained and made our foxholes into swimming holes. Then I went to a Seabee camp, where I was until I went back to England.
“When I get back to the U. S., I’ll tell you what happened, if want to know. I could write all night and still not tell anything much of what happened.
“If that ‘Limey’ newspaper man thinks the Limeys had the hardest fighting, he should have been with those guys at Omaha Beach.”
Source: LeMars Globe-Post, January 1, 1945
Our Neighbors in Service
LeMars, Iowa – Vincent Pavlik, petty officer in the navy, returned by airplane to his ship at New Orleans after spending a 30-day leave with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. George V. Pavlik in LeMars. It was his first leave at home for nearly two years. He spent 16 months in the European Theater of operations and returned to the United States on July 1. He took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day when he transported infantry to shore on his L.C.I. During the month following, he worked with the navy demolition outfit which removed German mines from landing areas so that allied troops and supplies could be more safely landed.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, August 31, 1945
