By Pete Letheby
pete.letheby@theindependent.com

His third trip, however, will be the most special. A World War II veteran, Hood will be among the 100 Nebraskans aboard an Honor Flight to D.C. on May 21 to visit the National World War II Memorial.

"I went ahead and sent in an application from American Profile," said Hood, referring to the supplement that appears in The Independent's Tuesday editions. "I kind of forgot about it."

Then he received notice last year that he was chosen for the D.C. excursion. Other Central Nebraskans making the trip are Benjamin Somer of Grand Island; Calvin Dahlke of Alda; Jack Burger, Robert Bock, Millard Nouzovsky, Loyal Ruhl, Jean Steckmyer, Loren Turner and Marlin Wells of Central City; Reinold Schutte and Gerald Natvig of Hastings; and Donald Slaughter of Kearney.

Honor Flight is a nonprofit organization created solely to fly World War II vets to Washington, D.C., to visit the National World War II Memorial. The memorial was dedicated on May 29, 2004.

Hood served in the U.S. Navy from April 1943 to February 1946. He was aboard an LCT (landing craft tank) amphibious ship just off the Normandy coast during the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.

Hood was originally part of the invading force but plans were altered.

"I was right there," Hood said. "We went from Portsmouth, England, over to Normandy on a destroyer escort. I saw much death."

Hood was drafted -- or "selectively volunteered by greeting of the president," as he put it -- as an 18-year-old in Coffeyville, Kan. After D-Day he returned to Norfolk, Va., and was scheduled to be a part of an invasion of Japan that wasn't needed because the two atomic bombs ended the war.

Central City's Jean Steckmyer, a 1940 graduate of Grand Island Senior High School, flew 39 B-24 missions out of Italy in 1944 and 1945. He was a member of the Army Air Corps, which later became the United States Air Force.

"I enlisted in September 1942 in the Aviation Cadet Program," Steckmyer recalled. "I was put on active duty in January 1943 and transitioned in July 1944 to Italy."

Steckmyer flew missions over Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland and northern Italy, all countries occupied by the Axis Powers -- Germany and Italy -- at the time.

Like Floyd Hood, Steckmyer said he hasn't been to the nation's capital for decades. It's the same with Grand Island's Ben Somer, who served in the Pacific Theater during the war.

"I served on an APA (attack transport)," said Somer, "and on a hospital ship, which brought troops back to the States."

Hospital ships were medical facilities on the water; the U.S. Army and Navy had 39 such vessels during World War II.

Honor Flight will recognize the veterans at a dinner in Omaha the night before the trip to D.C. Wives also will be in attendance at the dinner.

Hood and his wife Jessie have been married for 58 years. Steckmyer and his wife Joyce also have been married for 58 years; her first husband died during a World War II mission in Alaska.

Ben Somer and his wife Phyllis were married in 1948 and have lived in Grand Island since 1950.

With about 1,200 American World War II veterans dying with each passing day, Honor Flight wants to get as many of them as possible to the nation's capital to visit the memorial erected in their honor.

Honor Flight first flew in May 2005 when six small planes flew out of Springfield, Ohio, with a dozen World War II vets. The venture quickly expanded into other states, including Nebraska.

Earlier this year Nebraska comedian Dan Whitney -- better known as Larry the Cable Guy -- and his wife Cara announced that they would donate funds to fly 100 Nebraska World War II vets to D.C.

A group of 25 Custer County World War II vets took a similar trip last June, and Buffalo County has plans to take a similar group of veterans in late May or June of this year.

"This is something special for these guys," said Dick Pierce of Miller, a veteran himself and a county commissioner who is active in putting together the Buffalo County group.

There is a sense of urgency to the Honor Flight mission.

In 2000, the U.S. Census tallied the number of surviving World War II veterans at 5.74 million. By 2007, that number had dwindled by nearly 50 percent to 2.89 million, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. And within the next five years, that number will be halved again.

By the year 2020, the V.A. estimates that only 210,000 of the United States' 16.1 million World War II veterans will be alive -- or just over 1 percent of the Americans who served in the military during that worldwide conflict.

The following recollections of D-day was written by Floyd Marvin Hood, a World War II veteran who lives in Grand Island.

June 1944, our group assembled at Portsmouth, England, for the invasion. There had not been many air raids during the period I was over in England.

But the Sunday before the invasion, a church party was gathered up by a small boat to go ashore to a church service. Apparently a German airplane dropped mines in the channel. As the mines were set off I could feel the concussion in the water.

Every ship, gun, emplacement and other installations had a barrage balloon tethered to it by a steel cable. We figured with all the Americans and their equipment the balloons kept England from sinking. Eisenhower finally gave the order to embark on the invasion.

The first day was to have been on June 5, but the weather became too bad. We had started out but were called back into port.

The next day, June 6, was a little better. Orders were given. I was a communications person under a Navy LT commander who requested that I go aboard a destroyer escort for the trip to Omaha Beach. I was there at Omaha on D-Day, H. hour about 6:30 a.m., June 6.

I was scared not knowing what would happen.

When morning broke guns were firing. The USS Texas, Nevada and Arkansas battleships were shooting over our heads with their 14-inch guns. Our ship was probably 3,000 yards off Omaha Beach.

I could see the beach quite clearly. Underwater obstacles were showing. The Germans were fighting from shore.

Omaha was in the form of a crescent of semi-circle. The German88mm guns were trained onto the landing areas so that gun flashes could not be seen from out at sea. A USS destroyer was sent in close to the beach with its five-inch guns to knock them out.

I saw a disabled LCT that was broken in half with men and equipment on it. Another LCT was alongside trying to get the men off; splashes were being put on both sides of the vessels.

Our captain said it was time to go. I never did know what happened to them.

That was a rough day. I saw men dying. Radio reports were coming in for ammunition and other supplies. It didn¹t look like were going to be able to make it on the beach.

I saw the bluffs that the 2nd Ranger Battalion had to scale in an attempt to disable the big guns atop the bluffs. We were too concerned about our safety to observe much.

Going over from New York to England on the troop ship, somehow I met a guy from my hometown, Coffeyville, Kan., that was in the 2nd Ranger Battalion. He made it home OK, but he said the Rangers suffered 50 percent casualties.

Finally the landing on Omaha was accomplished.