Iselin man recognized for role long ago on D-Day

BY JAY BODAS
Staff Writer

COURTESY OF ED GORMAN Ed Gorman was recently presented with a citation from Sen. Joseph Vitale on the deck of the USS New Jersey for his role in the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach in June 1944. WOODBRIDGE — More than six decades ago, local resident Ed Gorman became a part of history when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, on June 6, 1944, history’s largest amphibious landing ever. He was recently honored for his role in the war on the deck of the USS New Jersey by state Sen. Joseph Vitale.

“I was fortunate enough to revisit the beach six years ago,” said Gorman, an Iselin resident. “I went back to France for [several] days, and getting back to revisit the beach and seeing the remnants of the fortresses and pill boxes where the gun placements used to be brought me back. For several hundred yards, they had every inch of the beach covered, and 60 years later, I still wonder how the hell we made it up the beach,” he said.

Gorman joined the Army as an enlisted man when he was still in his late teens. His father was a World War I veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart, but his parents were hesitant to let their child go to war.

“I was 17-and-a-half when I wanted to enlist, but my parents wouldn’t sign for me. I had to wait until I was 18. I think my father was proud to have me serve, but at the same time he was well aware of the realities and horrors of war,” he said.

The invasion of Normandy was massive by any standard, involving an armada of more than 5,000 ships and some 150,000 allied soldiers.

Out of all the beaches, Omaha Beach was where Allied troops took the most severe casualties, and it was there that Gorman’s unit landed.

“The weather was so bad on D-Day that General Eisenhower had to make the lonely decision that it was a go,” said friend Jack McGreevey, a former Marine drill instructor and father of the former New Jersey governor.

“We sat aboard these ships for three days, with guys getting seasick, and then the decision was finally handed down that it was a go, and we set sail on the afternoon of June 5,” Gorman said. “By the morning of June 6, we were maybe five miles offshore when we hit a mine on the way in. We stopped a mile offshore and were trolling back and forth. A British destroyer laid out a smoke screen to protect us, and there were shells landing behind us while our boat followed the smokescreen,” he said.

Gorman’s craft then hit a second mine, and a German airplane dropped bombs on either side of them, narrowly missing his boat. When they finally made it to land, Gorman, a radio operator with the Joint Assault Signal Corps (JASCO), was ordered to help establish and maintain all land, air and sea communications.

“When we finally got to shore, we were under constant fire,” he said. “Our primary function was to get everything moving, get off the beach, and then establish permanent communications with the whole Army Corps.”

At Omaha Beach, his unit faced a crack division of German troops, and artillery rained down on them as they made their way across the beach.

“There were bodies everywhere, but they had to ignore it and keep going and keep the communications going,” McGreevey said.

By the end of the day, allied casualties numbered more than 10,000, with 2,200 dead. Gorman was one of the few members of JASCO to play a role in the invasion.

“There were only five outfits like ours in the whole army, of which only two saw combat, the 294, which was mine, and the 293. We were there for four to five months, and we then returned to England,” he said.

Following the war, Gorman spent 34 years working with the national staff of the Boy Scouts of America and now manages his own sales, marketing and construction business.

Recalling memories of what he faced in the war still brings tears to his eyes.

“I can say we were very fortunate, as my outfit lost only one man, but we had many casualties in the form of injuries,” he said. “When you look back on it now … I was a kid, and I had to do it. You do the job that you are trained to do.”