Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:00 | Ray Hutchins was drafted at nineteen years old to became part of the coming Normandy invasion. The Georgia boy encountered some unfamiliar cold weather while training, before shipping out to England.
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After a slow Atlantic crossing, Ray Hutchins landed at Liverpool and began his job directing the transportation of Army vehicles across England. The half-tracks and other heavy vehicles needed assembly before they could be used. Eventually he moved to Southampton, where many ships were being loaded for Normandy.
When the word came that D-Day was on, Ray Hutchins loaded ships in Southampton for a couple of weeks, then he got on one. It was eerie landing at Omaha Beach after the successful invasion. Once ashore, the transportation specialist followed the front lines into the interior of France.
Ray Hutchins has some vivid memories of sleeping in the cold, wet hedgerows, hunkered down and trying to be inconspicuous. His transportation company trailed the front line all the way to Belgium.
He could hear the buzz bomb. Ray Hutchins was billeted with an English family and on his first night there, he heard the closest one he'd ever heard. It actually was a good thing if you could hear it coming.
After the war, Ray Hutchins had some German prisoners working for him in the motor pool, and some of them were the best mechanics he had. There was a lot of work to do, including collecting and shipping war vehicles.
