Editor’s note: This is part of a profile of the late Adolph McVoy which ran in The Reporter on June 2, 1994. It commemorated the 50th anniversary of D-Day and ended up as being the first of an 18-part series on Rockdale veterans and their World War II experiences.
By MIKE BROWN
His D-Day buddies called Adolph McVoy “Tex” as they stormed Omaha Red Beach 50 years ago Monday in the epic invasion that brought Nazi Germany to its knees.
“I don’t think anybody over there knew my name was the same as that other guy’s,” the long-time Rock-dale feed and grocery store owner said. “My first name is Alfred and I went by Tex so I don’t ever recall being kidded about it.”
There wasn’t much kidding as the l6th Infantry, Second Battalion of the First Division hit the Normandy Coast, the second wave of the invasion to free mainland Europe.
Pfc. McVoy, age 24,was with them. He had left a job at George Hollander’s store on the corner of Main and Milam in Rockdale and would return to that location after the war to establish McVoy Grocery & Feed.
But for two years he was part of history.
‘DIE INLAND’— McVoy’s memories of June 6,1944 are pretty much like those of other D-Day veterans. So much was happening it was impossible to take it all in.
“We got off the boat onto the landing craft and hit the beach,” he said. “I had a rifle and I fired at the areas where the puffs of smoke were coming from and you know they were firing at us.”
A captain in McVoy’s battalion achieved a certain measure of fame with a line that has been quoted in several reports of the battle.
“I think we had the toughest beach,” McVoy said. “There was a pretty good hump on the beach, almost a hill, and we were kind of pinned down and this captain yelled out, ‘If we’re gonna die, let’s get the hell off his beach; let’s die inland’.”
CLOSE CALL—Inland he went. “I made it but a lot of boys didn’t,” he said.
McVoy had some close calls that day. A shell hit his helmet and a large piece of shrapnel narrowly missed him.
But the closest call came a bit later. His signal battalion had begun their job of stringing communication lines—“That’s why we went in so early in the battle”—and he had bedded down for the night in a hole scraped from the Normandy soil with the air battle still raging above.
“I got up the next morning and left for a short time,” he said. “When I got back, I looked in. I had slept on an overcoat, a raincoat and a blanket. A 50-caliber slug had gone through all three, right where my chest had been and buried itself in the ground.”
He kept the slug.
It was a tense time in Southern England pre-invasion 1944.
Word came down the chain of command that the troops would cross the channel in two days. “Most of us were ready,” he said. “There were a couple who shot themselves in the leg to get out of going,” McVoy said.
“I actually did get some sleep on the night of June 5,” he said.
And how does he account for surviving the next day? “The Lord was with me,” McVoy said.
ON TO GERMANY— Any battle has its ironies and D-Day was no exception.
“The second day four of our P-51’s came over,” McVoy said. “Some of our anti-aircraft batteries mistook them for German planes and opened fire. They shot down two. Not an hour later four German planes came over, we opened fire and missed every one.”
The invasion was successful and American troops hit the road to Paris.
“We got in the outskirts of Paris and they, stopped us to let General DeGaulle come by so he could lead troops into the city,” McVoy said.
“The French were real nice to us. They were throwing flowers into our path one day and a German prisoner we had looked up and said, ‘a couple of days ago they were throwing them at us’.”
Then the Americans turned east through Belgium on the way to Germany.
“We kind of lucked out going into Germany,” McVoy recalled. “We were ready for a big battle—there had been some hand-to-hand fighting—but the air corps caught a big Nazi convoy just ahead of us, and hit them pretty good. All we had to do was take prisoners and we just walked into Germany.”
McVoy also survived the Battle of the Bulge, the savage “last hurrah” of the Third Reich in the closing days of the war.
He returned to Rockdale and operated his legendary grocery and feed store until 1999.
McVoy passed away in 2006 at age 87.
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