Lloyd Carter, 88, this year’s Hull Festival Parade grand marshal, says that certain words, like “home” and “mother” have a particularly soothing effect on the soul.
Surely both those words were on his mind and in his heart the day he “wiggled like a snake” into the sand of Omaha Beach during the Allied invasion of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. A member of the First Infantry, also known as “the Big Red One,” he was among thousands of soldiers who landed on the mine-ridden beach that day.
Perhaps it was the thought of his mother, praying for him, on their farm in Bogart that kept him going as he used the body of a soldier with “half his face gone” to shield himself from enemy fire.
“It was a lot like the opening scenes of ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ only worse,” he said, referring to the film’s opening sequence showing the horrors of the Normandy invasion.
Not long after, as he waded through a swamp and then reached down to pull his equipment up beside him, a bullet shattered the bones of his right forearm. His platoon leader, whom he heard was killed in the fighting later that day, dragged him backwards to a safer spot and bandaged his arm before he moved on. He remembers the man, whose name he has forgotten, telling him jokingly that he’d ruined his new field jacket.
In his pack Carter had sulfa pills, a morphine shot, some sulfa powder and bandages for wounds. He swallowed the sulfa pills with water from his canteen as shells continued dropping fiercely all around him, but couldn’t bring himself to inject himself with the morphine. He lay there throughout the day, waiting, as fellow soldiers prayed, screamed, and hollered all around him. He remembers that the sounds faded as the day wore on. He lost track of time but remembers that either from shock and fever or the cold of his wet wool suit, or both, his teeth started to chatter uncontrollably. An “aid man” came by at some point, but Carter says he waved him on, telling him that there were others further ahead more in need of his assistance than he was.
It would be sunset before he’d be helped back to the beach and loaded onto a Navy boat - which promptly got stuck on a sandbar as he lay on its metal bottom in the rough sea. “I thought to myself, well, I’m gonna’ die right here,” he said, before the officers finally managed to wiggle the boat free. He remembers that a Navy soldier gave him the morphine shot he still carried and put his coat over his face to shield him from the waves that splashed into the boat. But the thing that comforted him the most was the soldier’s voice, speaking softly and soothingly as he patted his other arm, telling him to breathe slowly and that his teeth would stop chattering.
“I did what he said and my teeth stopped chattering,” Carter said. “But it was (the tenor) of his voice that calmed me…you can never get by without other people.”
When they reached a Navy ship, he was taken onboard where they cut his clothes off to examine him for other wounds.
“There I lay, naked, with just my Testament, a pocket knife and my billfold,” he said. When the ship arrived back in England, they found some sailor’s clothing for him to wear before he was taken to a field hospital and then to a regular hospital further inland.
It was 36 hours before his arm received proper medical treatment. A doctor set the bone and put a cast on, leaving a hole so he could “smell the wound” to see if infection or gangrene was developing.
It would take 18 months of treatment and surgery in hospitals in England, Rome Georgia and Atlanta before he was discharged and allowed to return home, his right arm usable, but now an inch and a half shorter than his left.
It was the culmination of his army career that had also included tough campaigns in Africa and Sicily before the D-Day landing. Through it all, he says the Lord watched over him.
For his bravery and service, Carter was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, the Silver Star for bravery and gallantry, a Presidential medal and a victory medal.
Carter cites the words of the Apostle Paul to describe how he survived that experience, and other difficult times in his life.
“Paul said in whatever circumstance he found himself in, he was content – in other words, you handle what happens to you as best you can and you move on,” Carter said.
GRAND MARSHAL
After his long rehabilitation and the end of World War II, Carter returned to his family’s Bogart farm and under a GI program went to work as an apprentice painter for the local Chevrolet dealership – a job he kept for 40 years.
Carter has lived in Hull for the past 60 years – 51 years in the brick home he and his late wife Beatrice built in 1959. The two were married 49 years before her death 15 years ago in 1995. The couple raised three children: Carol, Kathy and Chip. He has four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
These days, Carter stays busy tending a large garden in back of his home and according to Mayor Paul Elkins, is Hull’s “best known walker.”
“He can be seen early each morning taking a four-mile stroll up Hwy. 72 and Glenn Carrie Road,” Elkins said. “Neither rain, sleet nor snow can keep Lloyd from his morning stroll.”
Carter is also a Hull Baptist Church deacon and usher and credits his longevity to his faith in God.
He will be on hand to head up the Hull Festival Parade, which will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 29.
The festival will feature musical entertainment provided by Fourgiven, Joe Tapley and Betsy Franck and the Bareknuckle Band. There will be a variety of vendors on hand featuring food, games, a dunking booth, novelties, children’s activities and much, much more, according to organizers.
Net proceeds from the event will go to “There’s Hope for the Hungry” Food Ministry, sponsored by Hull Baptist Church.
