Roxbury WWII vet returning to Normandy

ROXBURY – Seventy years after Kenvil resident Alfred Sippel first made his way to France, he's going back.

The last time, as a 17-year-old boy — barely shaving and barely trained — he arrived at Omaha Beach on a naval troop transport filled with other impossibly young soldiers, many of whom would never return home.

This time, he will make the flight with his youngest son, Steve, and his granddaughter, Janet Lemma, as an honored guest for the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.

"Years ago I made a little promise to myself that if I lived long enough, I'd want to go back and pay my respects to the guys I still knew there," said Sippel, 87, a retired locomotive engineer. "I figure I'm getting near the end of my rope, and I just wanted to go back and pay my respects to some of the guys who weren't as lucky as me."

Lemma said her grandfather had talked about going back for previous reunions and, this time around, "He kind of looked to me to make it happen. Once I started rolling with it, he was still iffy about going. Then he was excited. He doesn't talk about it much. He says nobody is interested, but I am."

"It was different back then," Sippel said. "Kids those days couldn't wait to get old enough to go over. They have a volunteer military now, and most everyone doesn't want to go in the service."

Sippel actually quit school at age 16 to join the Navy. Two weeks shy of the minimum age of 17, he was required to produce a letter of permission from his mother and a copy of his father's death certificate.

"I maybe had some peach fuzz on my face," he said with a laugh. "They wanted dumb young kids who didn't know any better."

He was sent to the Finger Lakes region of New York for training at a base near Seneca Lake.

"We only had five weeks of training," he recalled. "We got our haircuts and our shots. There was a lot of snow up there in February, so we drilled in the snow. They taught us how to jump off a 20-foot platform into a swimming pool in case we had to abandon ship. We went to a rifle range and shot three rounds from a .22 rifle."

Date with destiny

Ready as he would be, Seaman Sippel boarded the Queen Mary, a luxury ocean liner appropriated for the war effort, along with about 15,000 other troops bound for England and a date with destiny.

"There were six guys from Denville on that boat that I knew of, three Army and three Navy," he said. "Denville was a much smaller town back then, but it was well-represented on Omaha Beach."

He still recalls most of the names, including Bobby Hogan, the son of the mayor of Denville, who was trained as an Army medic.

"He was killed about a week after the landing," Sippel recalled. "Jack Scofield Bob Wilkins, we all went to boot camp together and we all participated in the landing."

Sippel, Scofield and Wilkins were assigned to different landing ship tanks, or LSTs, huge ships designed to transport heavy equipment, including Sherman tanks, and troops to the beach.

Sippel was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner on his LST, which arrived at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

"The First Army infantry, the Big Red One, crack of dawn about 6:30, they were the first on the beach," he said. "They were pretty much wiped out. We were next with the combat engineers. Some of them were shot as soon as they got off the boat. We dragged them back and were lucky enough to get off the beach. You were too scared to have anything go through your mind. You just did what you were supposed to do. We were supposed to get them off and get out of there, but you couldn't leave them there. They would have drowned."

Over the next five days, Sippel said his LST made 19 trips back and forth across the English Channel, picking up troops and equipment and adding them to the greatest land invasion in world history.

"We hit all five beaches before it was over," he said.

All the while, they took fire from German land artillery.

"They were dropping 88 shells on us," he said. "That was the best piece in the war, the German 88. It was uncomfortable, I will say."

Even more terrifying were the German fighter planes, with Sippel recalling how he once broke his anti-aircraft gun as a plane bore down on his ship "close enough that you could see the pilot."

Atlantic to Pacific

Eventually, his mission completed in the Europe, Sippel was transported back to the United States, spending Christmas 1944 on the Atlantic Ocean. When he arrived, he signed up for an amphibious scout team.

"We were sent to California for advanced training in anticipation of the invasion of Japan," he said.

That invasion, of course, never happened as the Japanese surrendered following the nuclear bomb attacks ordered by President Truman.

"My favorite president, Horsemeat Harry Truman," Sippel said. "He saved a lot of our hides, and a lot of other hides."

Spared a final round of combat, Sippel returned home, married his wife of 65 years, Marilyn, and started a family that includes three children, including Steve and John Sippel, also of Kenvil, and Deborah Stewart of Chester, and two grandchildren.

"We moved from Denville to Kenvil, that's as far as we got in New Jersey," he said.

His long career as a locomotive engineer began on steam engines along the Lackawanna Railroad before the name was changed to Erie-Lackawanna and diesels took over. He retired 25 years ago and enjoys a quiet life as a family man, with hobbies that include collecting and repairing old fishing tackle.

"I used to fish a lot at the Splitrock Reservoir, but my fishing partner passed a way a few years ago, so I don't go that much anymore," he said.

A charter member of the Denville Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of the Kenvil Veterans of Foreign Wars, he does not participate in a lot of VFW activities, but on June 6, he'll march with other veterans, visit Normandy and the two cemeteries filled with soldiers killed during the invasion. He will also attend a veterans-only picnic and no doubt share some vivid memories with his former comrades-in-arms.

"I guess you just wonder why you were one of the lucky ones," he said.

"I think it will be an emotional trip for all of us," Lemma said.

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-428-6627; wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com.