My father was SFC Robert G. Gehrett,101st Airborne, 502nd PIR and served during WWII.

Dad participated in D-Day, Holland and the Battle of the Bulge. He was not injured, but left at the end of the Battle of the Bulge with frozen feet and spent several months in a hospital in England. On D-Day, he landed six miles behind enemy lines right outside St. Mere Eglise in a field surrounded by hedgerows. He was far from his DZ and he was also alone. He said, “Everyone was very scattered. I found 3 guys from the 506th PIR and then as we walked towards town we started finding more and more of the 502nd unit.” “I remembered most was that their orders were to gather troops and head towards Carantan securing the area – when we got near Carantan we were told to dig in and dig in deep – the next thing I knew here came about 400 planes and they literally leveled Carantan (as we say here – turned it into a parking lot). I wasn’t expecting that.” The 502nd PIR fought at Carentan until 29 June 1944. There were 13,250 paratroopers at the start of the battle, but only 8,000 survived it, hence the name of the battle, Purple Heart Lane.

He never spoke of the war when I was small. All that I knew was that he was a paratrooper, that’s it. My Mother, sister and I all remember Dad jumping up in the middle of the night running down the hall yelling “Gerri’s!” So we knew that he suffered from nightmares. It’s kind of funny, but when Dad and I would watch war movies or the television shows, Mash or Hogan’s Heroes, Mom would say “turn that off, you’ll have nightmares”.

The photo of the two soldiers is Dad with his brother, Jim on the left and taken after the war back home in 1945. When he was age 70, we were sitting on the beach at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina when a WWII veteran came along and saw Dad’s screaming eagle hat. He stopped to talk. My sister and I were so amazed at the things he told, and we knew we were getting a real history lesson! After that, he would answer questions, but never really opened up. After my Mother passed in 2009, my sister arranged the Band of Brothers Tour of Normandy and Belgium for the two of them. He loved the trip and the respect that he received from people he met and made many friends there. He returned to Europe in 2011, and we have a recorded video of him sitting with re-enactors answering their questions. I love this picture of Dad taken while visiting Carentan with the 506th meeting and shaking hands with the 502nd in 2011. The image of the young boyscout playing taps brought my dad to tears…

One of the most memorable comments he made to me, was when I was asking him questions in a questionaire from the WWII Carlisle museum that kept asking how he felt about various things during the war. He said to me “it was our job. We worked for our Country and did what we were told, and we didn’t have time to think about how we felt about anything”.

He worked full time for the DC National Guard and was in the Reserves for all my growing up years. It was a different era, and he was active duty during the riots and burning of Washington DC in 1968, protecting the Nation’s Capitol..

My father was a real American Hero, as so many are!
~Catherine Washburn

We are grateful to Catherine for sharing her family service with Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, where we are all connected. For more information about Robert G. Gehrett, please visit www.usairborne.be

God Bless all who serve and keep us safe!

Veteran Tributes: www.facebook.com/ComesASoldierswhisper
Comes A Soldier’s Whisper www.ComesASoldiersWhisper.com

‪#‎FamiliesServeToo‬ ‪#‎SupportOurTroops‬ ‪#‎ComesASoldiersWhisper‬