United States Naval Veteran Eugene D. Dollard of Hamlin is a member of the vanishing Greatest Generation who survived fighting Germans in France during World War II. He was recently honored by the Ambassador to France for aiding the liberation of hundreds of thousands from the grips of Nazis 77 years ago.
By presidential decree of French President Emmanuel Macron, the Legion of Honor Medal awarded is the highest honor conferred for military bravery and service, notably initiated by French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.
As a distinguished recipient of France’s Legion of Honor Medal, Dollard is in good company, sharing prominence with other American recipients, including Generals Dwight David Eisenhower, Douglas Mac Arthur, George S. Patton, and Admiral Michael Mullen.
So, what is there in a person’s history that turns an average man into an extraordinary human being? At a glance, you might consider Eugene Dollard of Hamlin to be average. Despite his 96 years, he maintains several businesses, attends church every Sunday, and keeps company with his wife, Marci. Yet, there remains an untold story of commitment and selfless service that remain the core components of his identity sharpened as a World War II Veteran. Fighting valiantly to secure our freedoms, he faced a tyrant on stormy Omaha Beaches on D-Day and later on the bloody beaches of Okinawa.
In 1943, at 18 years of age, with one semester at the University of Notre Dame under his belt, he answered the call by enlisting in the United States Navy. Gene endured three months of grueling training, divided between Sampson Naval Base, Geneva, NY, Lido Beach, Long Island, and then onto Quonset Point, Rhode Island, for gunnery school. Assigned to the US Naval Amphibious Division, he departed from Hoboken, New Jersey, on the newly commissioned USS Henrico.
After refitting at Bayonne Naval Supply Depot in New Jersey, his ship headed out to Great Britain. In a cat and mouse game to distract the Germans, his ship constantly moved about England’s and Scotland’s harbors, including Weymouth, Portsmouth, and Greenock, preparing and amassing for the greatest armada in history.
On D-day, June 6, 1944, beneath swirling gray skies, Eugene D. Dollard, United States Navy, rode the angry rising swells and rough, tumbling, mountainous breakers of the English Channel. Endless numbers of ships sailed as the largest invasion in history was to unfold. Eugene’s ship, USS Henrico, took in Eisenhower’s 1st Division in the initial wave on Omaha Beach, providing supporting naval artillery for the landing forces.
“It was wholesale slaughter where 7,000 men were killed in the first 24 hours,” said Eugene.
Eugene was in charge of the LCVPs or small crafts off the USS Henrico APA 45. Merciless German firing off the French cliffs hammered the beach and waters. Under enemy aircraft fire, the heroic French Resistance ran to the small boats to assist. Aboard ship, Eugene manned twenty-millimeter machine guns. He scrutinized the water – nothing but blood. Under a heavy barrage of bullets, Eugene landed on the beach and dove in the trenches. He crawled out and scrambled through corpses and scattered limbs, dragging numerous wounded men into the trenches to administer first aid.
“Most of them were shot up pretty bad. I talked to many French Resistors who were happy to see us. They wanted to get rid of the Germans. You heard the Germans backing down, but then another German division arrived with crack SS Troops. We kept bearing down on the cliffs where they had bunkers with built-in cannons and machine guns. Ear-splitting gunfire whistled like swarming bees. There hovered an asphyxiating pall of acrid smoke, burning flesh, men wailing, chaos. My friend, Charles Gartley, was killed on the fifth wave.”
From the bloodbath of Omaha Beach, he moved to North Africa – Morocco (French Colony), and Oran, Algiers (French Colony). “I remember riding horses with swastikas burned into the animal’s flanks across the Algerian mountains.”
While in the Mediterranean, the USS Henrico was hit, remaining faintly above water level. Later in Naples, Italy, they picked up General Patton’s 3rd Army, delivering the troops to St. Tropez, and then onto Marseille for Southern France’s D-day Invasion on August 15, 1944. “In Marseille, I remember the tank battle on the many steps of a Cathedral. The Cathedral was saved by Allied and tenacious French forces.”
Gene was transferred to the USS Chilton for the Pacific tour, island-hopping to the Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands, and onto the chain of the formidable Ryukyu Islands. In June 1945, at Okinawa Island (closest to mainland Japan), a thirty by fifty mile stretch of land, Dollard faced the greatest carnage of the war. The Japanese nickname “Violent Typhoon of Steel” referred to the ferocity of the fighting, the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles up against a massively enemy-entrenched island. Fifty thousand Americans died. Gene did not escape injury. His ship heaved, struck by a fierce kamikaze, and he was wounded.
Later on Awase Beach, Okinawa, he was assigned the Herculean task of overseeing vast supply shipments, including trucks, tanks, food, jeeps, and weapon carriers. Despite the fact the US had taken over Okinawa, the Japanese still loomed menacingly, and securing the island proved problematic.
Gene said, “You could pretty much set your clock. At 1 a.m., the Japanese would bomb the island.” While in a bunker during one of these bombing raids, he observed shadowy figures along the beach. He crawled out into the darkness and tackled a Japanese general.
With a knife held at Gene’s throat, it emerged a life and death struggle. Gene yelled to his two companions for help. “They were new recruits from the states with no combat experience and froze like deer in the headlights,” he said. Born with an instinct for survival and with superhuman strength, Gene wrenched the general’s arm in a half-nelson move. He gladly turned the Japanese general over to the Military Police. Gene survived terrible typhoons rivaling our hurricanes, asserting the South China Sea to be the roughest in the world.
In 1945, after three years of brutal war, Gene Dollard stood honorably discharged from the United States Navy, returning home to pick up his life. He finished at the University of Notre Dame, including law school, and chose to take over the family business in Hamlin, where he resides as a successful businessman of 74 years.
If you happen by Dollard’s Town and Country Liquor Store in Hamlin, stop in and shake hands with Gene. For you’ll be holding the hand of a man who by all appearances seems average yet whose lasting legacy of hardship, struggle, and survival demonstrate the highest standards of character and dedication. Inspiring generations to follow, Eugene Dollard is an average man turned extraordinary, thrust into remarkable events, selflessly serving our country in order to protect the freedoms that we as a nation enjoy today.
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