OTIS SAMPSON
Age: 99
Born: Jan. 19, 1911
Hometown: Dartmouth, Mass.
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army
Years served: 1930-1934: U,S. Army, 3rd Cavalry Division; March 1942-October 1946: U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
Rank: Staff sergeant
Family: Wife Marion; three children, Dawn Diane Sampson of Los Angeles, Gary Gavin Sampson of Washington and Otis Sampson Jr. of Rhode Island; six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II Wednesday through Sunday through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran David Cocks of Palm Desert.
More
Staff Sgt. Otis Sampson, as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, made four combat jumps during World War II — including at Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Sampson, who turned 99 in January and may be one of the oldest living World War II veterans in the Coachella Valley and possibly the country, was shot twice during his tour of duty in World War II — in his right arm and right buttock.
He said he still carries shards of shrapnel in his body.
In July 1943, Sampson made his first parachute jump but literally encountered a snag on his way down to the battlefield.
“I landed in Sicily through an olive tree,” he said with a laugh.
Sampson got tangled in the branches of the tree, quickly freed himself and then went looking for the rest of his platoon.
“I was trying to find my outfit. We were way the hell off course. We were considered lost. It was all messed up,” he said.
While the men were scrambling around trying to get organized, their movements attracted the attention of a U.S. ship sitting off the coast.
The ship fired a round at the men of the 505th — who were eventually recognized as U.S. soldiers — but the men went on to regroup and do some serious damage to the enemy, according to historical accounts.
No less than noted historian Stephen E. Ambrose, in his New York Times best seller, “Citizen Soldiers,” (1997), noted Sampson's reputation as “the best mortarman in the division ”
“As mortar sergeant, my men and I had a chance at various times to inflict heavy casualties, from Sicily to Italy, Normandy and Holland, our 60mm mortar left its mark,” Sampson said.
Sampson also praised his “insurance weapon,” the Thompson submachine gun — known as a “Tommy gun” — which, he said, played a big part in his personal survival.
Sampson — then 5 feet, 4 inches tall and 32 years old — had previously served in the U.S. Cavalry from 1930 to 1934.
He said he has vivid memories of World War II, where he spent 40 days in Sicily, pushing the Germans across the island.
Not long after Sampson landed, he was engaged at close range with the enemy.
“I ended up knocking out a pillbox,” he said. “I killed my first man with a grenade, then I went in the pillbox and took the other (man) prisoner.”
Inside the pillbox, Sampson came face to face with his first casualty.
“I looked at him and he was dying,” Sampson said, adding that he remembered thinking, ‘Now if they get me, we're even,'” he said.
“It's war,” he said. “You kill all you could.”
Jumping into Salerno, Italy, Sampson and the men drove toward Naples, with orders to take the city.
With Naples secured, the men pushed on to the Volturno River.
“Entering a town that afternoon on a narrow paved road, a machine gun opened up on the forward units of our company,” he said.
Bullets came pouring down the center of the highway.
“We all dived into the high brush that grew in the roadside's gullies,” he said.
Advancing, Sampson's E Company came under heavy shell fire.
“The Germans were shooting us with 88's,” he said. “The ground was soft from the rain and some of them didn't detonate. I waded in water up to my armpits as we continued forward. One 88 landed 10 feet from me, but it didn't explode.”
On the afternoon of Oct. 6, 1943, the men were on the move, heading for the Volturno Railroad Yard.
The sound of machine gun fire broke out as they were nearing the yard.
“We ran into the Germans and they opened up on us and we lost a couple of men,” he said, adding, “I had the best shoot-out of the war.”
The men were in the middle of a firefight and Sampson, during what he thought was a lull in the action, just about got hit as a burst of burp gunfire shattered the tree branches nearby.
Sampson saw the helmeted head and shoulders of two German soldiers across the way — and noticed the barrels were pointing right at him.
“Two guns were shooting at me,” he said.
They were shooting too high, he added, riddling his backpack, instead of his head, with bullets.
Sampson made every bullet count, he said.
“I was sure of every shot I took,” he said. “I only shot one or two shots at a time.”
Sampson, who qualified as a sharpshooter during his training days, emptied lead into the enemy soldiers, ultimately winning the short-lived firefight.
For his actions, which helped save his platoon, Sampson was awarded the Bronze Star for “meritorious achievement in ground operations against the enemy.”
After Italy, the 505th was sent to England to get ready for the Normandy invasion.
“The day came for us to jump and we were all ready and a storm came in and we were held up for 24 hours,” he said.
The next day, Sampson and his fellow paratroopers made the jump from about 1,000 feet, which was about 400 feet higher than usual.
“The wind was blowing,” he said. “I just cleared the top of the trees.”
In Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, the day after D-Day, Sampson and his mortar crew laid heavy fire on German soldiers entrenched in the dense hedgerows.
Ambrose, in “Citizen Soldiers,” recounts the battle:
“That afternoon E Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, moved out to drive the Germans farther back Lt. James Coyle's platoon, “laid down a base of rifle and machine gun fire, greatly aided by a barrage of mortars from Sgt. Sampson. Then the tanks shot their 75mm cannon down the lane.
“Germans fell all around. Sampson fired all his mortar shells, then picked up a Browning Automatic Rifle. ‘I was that close, I couldn't miss,' he remembered. ‘That road was their death trap. It was so easy I felt ashamed of myself and quit firing. I felt I had bagged my quota.'
“Soon there were 200 or so (Germans) in the field, hands up Coyle and his men had effectively destroyed an enemy battalion without losing a single man.”
