From The Archives:A Local Vet Remembers D-Day

Quinn Blevins remembers D Day. He remembers tough army training in the Georgia swamps in the year before the invasion. He remembers landing in England in January and the secretive planning involved. Blevins was part of an assault team, whose job it was to destroy German bunkers with flame throwers and TNT.

On June 6th, at 6:30 in the morning, Blevins and the other men left their ship, headed for Utah beach. They were tough, ornery and above all, prepared.

"A lot of people ask me… Was you scared. Actually, no. We had so many years or months of training, and it got so hectic, that we knew we had a job to do, and we had to do it. And there were no ands, ifs, or buts about it."

Of the thousand men in his battalion, every one of them except the chaplain, was either killed or wounded.

Blevins himself, suffered bullet wounds to the stomach. He says it would have been much worse without the navy and air force behind them, bombarding the coastline.

"I remember some destroyer coming down with us, and he must have been dragging bottom. And he was laying those 5 inchers down in the barb wire. And that was our biggest fear, because if we get tangled up in the barbed wire, and they wrecked that barb wire and let us get on through."

It’s been 40 years since D-Day, but Quinn Blevins remembers the details clearly. He’s also not likely to ever forget it was tough. In fact, it was Hell, but it was a job that had to be done.

"in our briefings, they stressed one thing to us men. The future of western civilization depends on your shoulders. I’ve always been proud of that."

Like many Normandy veterans, Quinn Blevins is no longer with us

His Niece tells us he passed away in 2000