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Ernest T. Roberts

Branch of service: U.S. Army

Years of service: Inducted February 1943; discharged April 1946 as a private first class.

Ernest T. Roberts recounts the horrors of Omaha Beach in disturbing detail. He recalled landing craft blown apart before anyone could get off, sending arms and legs flying. As he struggled to reach shore, the water surging around him was red with blood. He ditched his weapon and crawled onto a beach so thick with dead there was hardly room to move. He came across a dying soldier, entrails strewn on the sand, who handed him a rifle and told him to shoot as many Germans as he could.

Roberts' eyes welled with tears.

"You have to be in it to ever really know what combat is," he said. "It's bad."

At St. Lo, on D-Day plus 28, he was shot six times at nearly point-blank range. Roberts fired his rifle at the German but doesn't know if he died.

"I don't know if I ever killed one, and I don't care," he said, "but I saw a lot of them fall."

He went on to fight in Brest, France, and into Germany, where he ended the war as part of the occupation army in Bremen. He came back to Oklahoma and married his sweetheart, Lola, raising two boys in Bakersfield after moving here to work as a painter with his brother.

Roberts said he's willing to talk about his experiences because of the lessons they carry, lessons that he said have made him question the war in Iraq.

"War is bad. War is bad. I think it's a good thing to let the kids know," he said.

(this article first appeared in The Californian in 2004, 60 years after D-Day)