World War II Honoree

Dell Hardman Higgs

Branch of Service

U.S. Army

Hometown

Salt Lake City, Utah

Honored By

Lorinda Anderson

Relationship

Daughter

He joined the Utah National Guard March 1939, when he was 17 years old. He was in Camp San Luis Obispo waiting for a discharge when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He was drafted the next year in October and stationed at Fort Douglas, then Fort Ord, then assigned to the 143 Ordnance Recovery Company where he transported worn out tanks and half-tracks from the Desert Training Center to Los Angeles. He shipped to England in February 1944, in a convoy of 200 ships. While in England, he transported vehicles from the docks to depots inland. In June he boarded LSTs and landed on Omaha Beach two days after D-Day. He was in the middle of the English Channel on an LST loaded with tanks, trucks and equipment. They had to wait for two days for the beach to be cleared so they could land. When he arrived at Omaha Beach, his company had to waterproof the vehicles. The night of June 8 he was in water waist deep at Omaha Beach waterproofing vehicles. His unit would also go in and remove all blown up and disabled vehicles and take them in for repairs. His unit transported anything with wheels or tracks. He saw service in Normandy, Paris, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Ardennes. After Normandy, he was assigned to the French Forces. His company drove the Red Ball Express for a while. They drove 6x6 trucks and transported supplies to the front lines. He was also at the Battle of the Bulge. A few days later, he was in the hospital because of blood poisoning in both feet due to over exposure to snow and wet. He went by train to Paris and spent Christmas there. He then went on a hospital ship to England and recuperated there. He was in the hospital recovering for 67 days. After that, he could no longer drive transport. From there he was sent to the 9th troop carrier command where he finished out the war. He did airplane repairs for a couple of days. They looked at his records and he was then sent to the message center at the air base in Ipswich, England. He did encode and decode of messages. All the messages came to the message center and were there sent to wherever they were supposed to go. He also went to London as a courier when Germany surrendered. In May of 1945, a point system was developed for getting troops home. He had earned enough points to be at the top of the list. He had 6 years of service and 5 campaign stars. He also had campaign ribbons. He got on a ship in Belgium and sailed for 10 days. He sailed the North Sea, the English Channel, and was 20 days on the Liberty Ship from Antwerp. He was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when Japan surrendered. He landed in New York August 24, 1945. Four days later he was home and discharged from Fort Douglas a month later.