POWERGRAMS

Olsen, above, on shore leave. Far right, Olsen today in front of his Mobile home. 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. 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 3 Photo by Dan Anderson

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