Islander recounts D-Day attack

GALVESTON — Ross Novelli is 92 years old, but the Galveston resident who participated in WWII’s D-Day still remembers his service, and what it was like to land on the Utah Beach at Normandy 67 years ago.

Novelli attended Texas A&M University in 1936, a time when the school was partnered with the military. All students were required to spend two years in the school’s ROTC program.

“After two years, if you had made good grades and not goofed up, then the war department would offer you a contract for two more years of military training, and they would pay you,” Novelli said.

Novelli decided to accept the offer, which would let him enter the Army as a second lieutenant. He was paid 25 cents a day.

“Now remember this, in 1938 you could buy a great big hamburger for a dime,” said Novelli, who graduated from A&M in 1940.

“I became a second lieutenant in the field artillery reserves, thinking I would never be called to war,” he said. “A year and a half later, I got a telegram, and I was called to active duty.”

Novelli was sent to Fort Sill, Okla., for a refresher field artillery course before being assigned to the 90th Infantry division at Camp Barkley, Texas. From there, the lieutenant was sent to Louisiana, then California.

“They sent us to the desert because we were scheduled as the division to go against Rommel,” he said. American and British soldiers were fighting against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s troops in North Africa.

“We had a miserable time in the desert. There was no civilization around there; it was sand and sagebrush,” Novelli remembered. However, Axis forces surrendered before Novelli’s group was finished with its training.

“They took us from the desert of California and shipped us all the way across the U.S. to New Jersey,” Novelli said. “We didn’t know it, but we were getting ready for D-Day.”

In 1944, Novelli and his division were shipped overseas to England, where they stayed for a few months.

“We went down to Wales for some extra training, just before we went over the English Channel on D-Day. And it rained all the damn time we were there,” Novelli said.

“In fact, my telephone operator turned to me and said, ‘Lieutenant, do we have to come down here and practice how to be miserable?’ I said, ‘Corporal, I don’t call the shots. Go tell the Colonel, tell him I said so, too.”

Soon enough however, training was over. Novelli remembered the day the 90th Division came up on Utah Beach.

“We crossed the English Channel, no problem. We had good air cover,” he said. “I was in the artillery, and naturally, we couldn’t unload our heavy Howitzers until the infantry had taken some ground for us.”

The infantry went in a day ahead of the artillery unit. Novelli and the others waited on the ship until they could land with their guns.

“We were sitting off the beach a few hundred yards.” Novelli said. “The Germans had a wonderful high-velocity Howitzer cannon. After you got into combat, you learned when you heard in the distance a ‘pop,’ you hit the ground, because that thing would be on you.”

Novelli and his battalion landed on the beach on June 8, 1944, two days after the date that Americans consider D-Day.

“The war department considered everything for the first two-weeks as part of D-Day,” he said.

“The first night we got in late, and none of the sleeping bags or any equipment had gotten to us yet. I slept the first night in a hole in the ground, and I was wrapped in one of our parachutes.”

The parachute had been left by a member of one of the airborne divisions that had gone in earlier. Novelli recalls cutting a piece of the material and carrying it with him for years as a handkerchief.

His training proved useful a short time after D-Day, when Novelli and a small combat patrol led by Lt. Col. James Costain were pinned down by machine gun fire.

Novelli and most of the others were able to escape, but Costain and another man were trapped.

“I went on back to my artillery headquarters. When I got up [there] they said, ‘I thought you were dead,’ Novelli said. “I said ‘Look, the colonel’s been hit, there’s some men still in there. We have to go back and help them.’”

Novelli returned with a fellow lieutenant and fired smoke rounds into the area, hoping the cover would provide opportunity for the men to escape. The soldier was able to get away, but Costain had been killed.

Novelli received a Silver Star for his attempts to rescue the men, and received a French Liberation Medal for his role in D-Day.

“We had many things you could never forget,” Novelli said. “Remember our deceased comrades that didn’t make it. God bless them.”