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Tom Pemberton

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Transportation officer Tom Pemberton's first job in Vietnam was at Tan Son Nhut Air Base taking care of cargo. Later, the Army inherited responsibility for the Saigon port from the Navy and he moved to that location. During the offloading of tanks from a ship, a crew member forgot some basic safety, with expensive results. (6:59)

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Tom Pemberton was in charge of an area at the Saigon port and he recalls the sad story of a Vietnamese stevedore who wandered behind a stack of pallets for some reason. (2:47)

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Following personal leave to attend his father's funeral, Tom Pemberton returned to Vietnam with a new assignment, auditing stevedore contracts at the Saigon port. When his time was up, he returned to the Army Reserve Advisory Group in Jacksonville. It was a good post, but there was one difficulty. It fell on this unit to notify families in Florida of a soldiers death. (5:43)

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Landing at Tan Son Nhut air base to begin his second tour, Tom Pemberton could see flashes on the ground. It was VC fire aimed at his plane. The transportation officer had a staff job monitoring motorpools and cargo operations. Then he had a highway traffic control job in which he tried to keep convoys from running into each other. (4:53)

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After two Vietnam tours, Tom Pemberton had an assignment at the Army Infantry Training Center at Fort Polk. The career transportation officer no longer had to worry about rocket attacks, he had to worry about dozens of buses and the occasional crazy recruit. (4:43)

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Tom Pemberton spent the last of his twenty years in the Army in Europe. The transportation officer put his experience to use in one last arena before retiring. (2:29)

Tom Pendergrast

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New college graduate Tom Pendergrast chose the Navy in 1943 and headed to Officer Candidate school at Columbia University. During the unbelievably intense three month program, he only got the chance to see New York City once. From there it was LCT training and learning the tricky job of piloting the flat bottomed craft. (5:29)

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Tom Pendergrast got a little nervous when his troop ship developed mechanical trouble and had to drop out of the convoy on the way to England. The ship was repaired before any enemy subs took notice and he arrived in Falmouth, where he continued to train and prepare for the coming invasion of Normandy. (7:59)

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Tom Pendergrast's LCT had been loaded and ready to go on June 5th with all the others, but the miserable weather delayed the fateful invasion for a day. After a cramped day and night aboard the craft, just waiting, they received the word to go and through the night they went, silent and without lights, with only the ship ahead as guidance. (4:54)

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Everything was going according to plan. Tom Pendergrast guided his landing craft full of tanks and jeeps toward the shore at Utah Beach. Just before he got to his anchor point, a German mine was drawn up from the seabed into the propellor and five hundred pounds of TNT exploded. (8:51)