Frank Walden Tells His D-Day Story

Frank Walden is a hero, but he doesn't want to hear it.

"The heroes are there," he says, meaning the beaches and cemeteries of Normandy. "Still there ... I'm just one of the boys."
That was 68 years after D-Day, a hellish day he endured as a corpsman tending to the wounded on Omaha Beach — before he became the wounded himself.

For decades Walden didn't talk about the horrors of D-Day. His wife Barbara didn't know. He never told his dad and his older brother and he now regrets that. As reunions with his Navy unit became more frequent, Walden changed his philosophy.

"It's pretty gory and you can't tone it down," he says. "And I don't think we should."

Frank Walden grew up in a number of houses and boardinghouses in Oakland, "half a step ahead of the bill collectors, I guess." He joined the Navy at age 17 in 1942: "When the Japanese bombed (Pearl Harbor), I was ready to go."

He signed up for radio and signals, but the Navy needed corpsmen. He went through 10 weeks of medical training at Farragut, Idaho. As the invasion of France neared, Walden's unit received training in landing crafting procedure. The hit the beaches in bases at Fort Pierce, Fla., and Little Creek, Va.

D-Day

In 1944, Walden's 6th Naval Beach Battalion was shipped to England, moving to different spots near the coast, making trial runs on landing craft launched into the English Channel. In the training on English soil, the corpsmen learned how to use .45 caliber pistols. But those were taken away for D-Day — Walden doesn't know why. For D-Day, the battalion was assigned to the Army for its landings in Normandy.

At 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Walden was on a Landing Craft Infantry, an LCI, with ramps that dropped from port and starboard. The starboard ramp didn't function, damaged by Nazi shelling from the shore.

Walden went out the port side into water over his head. Machine gun fire peppered the water, 100 feet out from the beach. Walden clung to a stretcher with floats, inside of which was wrapped a corpsman's medical equipment.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Walden was thinking.

The water was full of bodies. Once the corpsmen got to shore and got organized, one of Walden's tasks was to go back into the water and bring in wounded soldiers and bodies. A doctor ordered the corpsmen to keep their heads down.

During his time on the beach, Walden says he saw only one Nazi soldier. He dashed out of a pillbox and fled over the hill. "Everybody was shooting at him," says Walden. "Must have been 500." They all missed. The Nazi soldier escaped.

'Big mistake'

At 4 in the afternoon, Walden and corpsman Virgil Mounts, age 16 (got into the Navy with a fake ID, Walden says) camped behind the shelter of a disabled tank on the beach. "That was a big mistake," Walden says. The tank was a magnet for fire.

Two soldiers brought a wounded soldier on a stretcher to Walden and Mounts. Then a shell burst nearby. Some of the shrapnel shot through the soldier on the stretcher into Walden's arm, collarbone, back and leg. Walden's shoulder was broken. Two big chunks of flesh were missing. (Walden doesn't know what became of the soldier on the stretcher.)

Walden was unconscious for a short time and awoke to feel the soldier on the stretcher kicking and shouting for Walden to get off his legs.

Walden walked down the beach to Omaha Beach, Easy Red Sector: "I don't even know who treated me." In another hour or so, he was evacuated on one landing craft, then transferred to a larger one in the channel. Someone on the craft gave him a German helmet as a souvenir.

He spent a short time in England, and then was transferred by hospital ship to a naval hospital in Bethesda, Md. Eventually he was transferred to Oak Knoll Hospital in the Oakland hills. He was reassigned to active duty and went on a ship to bring back a group of Section 8s (psychological issues) to San Francisco. Then, after the war was over, Walden did 18 months of duty in Panama.

When he was discharged, his family had moved to Walnut Creek. His father and brother worked as firefighters but Walden resisted those urgings. "No more uniforms," he says.

He worked at a service station and an Emeryville factory before he broke down and joined the volunteer firefighters. That led him to a county firefighter job with the Central Fire District. He retired in 1978.

The credit for the Navy catching up with the medals of the medical corpsmen on Omaha Beach goes to Ken Davey of upstate New York, the son of a doctor who was with the battalion.

"He got it done," Walden says. "I thanked him."

Walden got his bronze star in a ceremony on the 68th anniversary of D-Day at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.

Frank and Barbara live in a pretty residential neighborhood a 10-minute walk from downtown Walnut Creek. They have three adult daughters: Denise Pigott of Oregon, Sandy Wolfe of Modesto, and Carrie Newberg of Pleasanton.

Frank and Barbara are active with the Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church. He uses his pickup truck to deliver furniture in a church program for formerly homeless people moving into homes. On some of the duties he chats with a Vietnam war veteran who saw combat action.

"I'm 86 and maybe I should start slowing down," Walden says. "They (the church) keep me busy."

During World War II and since, Walden has reflected on war. "It amazes me, the money spent on things to maim people and kill them. Why can't they stop all this and save lives? We're losing the cream of the crop every time we go to war."

He scoffs at the notion when a war is called a "police action." "If you're out there shooting at someone, and someone is shooting at you — it's a war."