BOB HEMSTREET
Age: 85
Hometown: Sheridan, Ore.
Residence: Palm Springs
Military branch: U.S. Army; 83rd Infantry Division, 453rd Anti-Aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion
Years served: February 1943 - November 1945
Rank: Private first class
Family: Wife Mary; three children, Billie Jean Stevens of Portland, Ore., Jodie Lee Lanier of Portland, Ore. and John Hemstreet of Sheridan, Ore.; six grandchildren
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U.S. Navy veteran Raymond Staats of Desert Hot Springs.
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U.S. Army Private First Class Bob Hemstreet shot down enemy fighter planes and bombers in five major campaigns in Europe — including the Battle of the Bulge — during his tour of duty in World War II.
Hemstreet, a member of the 453rd Anti- Aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion, blasted German aircraft out of the sky from behind the trigger of a .50-caliber, half-track mounted machine gun.
Hemstreet's battalion landed in Normandy on the night of the D-Day invasion, June 6, 1944.
“It was hell,” he said. “We had a few dry runs. We knew we were in on the invasion.”
During training while based in England, the men, sleeping in tents, on random nights would be awakened, told to pack up and head for the ship for a trip to their next combat destination.
“We'd get to the ship and they'd say, ‘No, we're not going,'” Hemstreet said, and the men would return to their sacks.
The men were roused a couple of other times and put through the same exercise — never knowing if the next time would be for real.
“We didn't know it until we got into the (English) Channel and the airplanes started shooting at us,” he said. “All of our ships had balloons suspended on cables about 200 to 300 feet in the air. If the airplanes got too close to the ship, they'd hit the cable.”
Once near the beach, the landing craft ramp opened and the men spilled out into the darkness.
“We went into the water, we got ashore — we were the second wave — and there were all kinds of bodies and busted tanks,” Hemstreet said.
Digging in on the beach, Hemstreet got a good look at the enemy from close range.
“I stood up to stretch and I looked right in the face of a German,” he said. “His eyes looked as big as the moon.”
The men were standing about 10 feet apart — each as scared as the other.
“He ran and I could remember seeing those big boots running away from me,” he said.
There was non-stop bombing and shelling while the soldiers were on the beach.
When they were finally able to get up and walk around, they came upon a big crater that had been made by a bomb.
When Hemstreet looked down into the crater, he saw five German soldiers.
“They threw off their helmets and yelled, ‘Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt,'” Hemstreet said. “I ordered them out of the hole, disarmed them and sent them to the back.”
Hemstreet was awarded a Bronze Star for his troubles.
The fighting was intense and disorienting.
“Everything was such a mess,” he said. “You just tried to survive.”
Hemstreet and three other soldiers were listed as “Missing in Action” for six days when the truck they were driving broke down while in France.
He said the Germans used horses for their artillery, so Hemstreet and another soldier grabbed a couple of horses they came across and went into a small town.
“We took this little village, just the two of us,” he said.
They freed the men being held in a small POW camp in town — most of whom were from Dunkirk, where the Germans had driven the Brits back to the shore of France in 1940.
The men found a German command car and did their best to camouflage the vehicle so they could drive it back and rejoin their battalion.
“We rubbed off the swastikas with mud,” and painted on a star, he said.
They met some German artillery on the way back.
“The barrel was trying to zero in on us,” he said. “German vehicles were different than American vehicles. I couldn't get it in reverse.”
After a few panicked moments later, the men sped off.
“We were glad to get back,” Hemstreet said.
But once they rejoined their comrades, they had to give up their new set of wheels.
“The captain took away the command car — and then the colonel took it from the captain,” he said.
Some of the fiercest fighting took place in the thick hedgerows of France — but the soldiers eventually found a way to get through the dense hedges.
“We made bulldozers and installed them on the front of the tanks,” he said. “It was the ingenuity of GI soldiers. We pushed those hedgerows right down.”
