I hope a more specifically personal question is okay to post here.
I found a record of my Pap's application for veteran compensation, and those are the service dates he had filled out. I don't know anything else about what his position/rank/etc. might have been (if those are even applicable?), but I know he was Military Police. He entered active service in Pittsburgh, PA if that makes a difference.
To me these dates make it sound like he got on a plane in the US on June 5th and was shipped somewhere to begin battle on June 6th. Am I interpreting that correctly? The only thing I know of happening on June 6th 1944 was the invasion at Normandy, and when I google that date that's the only info that comes up. Did the US Army send troops anywhere else on that date? If so, is there any other information I could look for in my Pap's records that could indicate where he might have been sent? i.e. if only soldiers from XYZ locations or XYZ enlistment dates were sent to Normandy, etc.
Here's a screenshot of the relevant part of the paperwork.
I haven't found any other documents about his service so far, and sadly he passed away a long time ago and I'm no longer in contact with any living relatives on that side of my family, so I have no other way of finding out about his time in the service. If you all could help me out I'd be super grateful.
If he ended domestic service on June 5 I can guarantee he was not in the first wave at Normandy on June 6.
Some main reasons are transportation: while he theoretically could get on a plane on the fifth, this is pre-intercontinental jet travel, and it would be a slow flight over the Atlantic. Such a flight would also only be made in small numbers (he would have to be a really high priority individual), as most US troops transported to Europe were sent and returned by ship. There's a much higher chance that if he went to Europe it was on the Queen Mary with thousands of other personnel, rather than by plane.
It's worth noting that by April, 1944 there were already some 1.5 million US personnel in the UK in preparation for the invasion of France. These troops were largely on the southern coast and had already been engaging in weeks of exercises prior to Operation Overlord. The infamous Exercise Tiger, which saw landing forces surprised by German torpedo boats during a training exercise off the English coast and a thousand personnel killed happened in April, for example.
Finally a soldier earmarked for Overlord who needed to show up on June 6 was already late. The original plan was for the operation to start in May, and this was rescheduled to June 5. Just a few days before this Zero Hour, the operation start date was postponed again to June 6 to take advantage of a break in bad weather on the Channel. Consequently, everyone who went over in the first wave had already boarded their transports on the English coast a few days before the 6th, and sat on them through some miserable stormy weather waiting for the order to go ahead.
hey there,
Looks to me he left stateside 5th or 6th June 1944 towards his theater.http://ww2troopships.com/crossings/1944.htm might help you out. :)
If you want to you could try to get his records: https://aad.archives.gov/aad/
*edit of link