The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 24

Recognizing three D-Day Veterans still among us,
and remembering one who recently left our ranks.

BY DAN SMITH

A CASE OF MUTUAL NEED
Earnest Fulcher tried to enlist at age 14, and the laughter he received held him
back for only about six months. He entered the Navy at 15, and endured the
trauma of Omaha Beach to the extent that "my ears still ring today," at age 92.

Earnest Fulcher as a
young Navy enlistee in
1942, and in 2019 as a
92 year-old who still
preaches at a church
near his home in
Christiansburg, Virginia.

THE FINAL SALUTE

he simple truth was that by 1942,

Earnest Fulcher needed the Navy
more than it needed him, despite
World War II having begun just months before
he tried to enlist the first time. He was 14,
weighed 88 pounds and was barely five feet tall.
The enlistment team all but laughed him out of
the room, instructing him to "come back in a
year" and try it again.
But Fulcher was not a young man who gave
up easily and, frankly, his home situation was
near the desperate point. His mom had died
and his stepmother had her own family to
care for. His grandmother died shortly
thereafter and left his grandfather
unable to care for him. He was sent to a
family he liked, but ultimately that didn't
work out, either. So, it was the Navy or
homelessness.
"I started eating bananas, skin and all," he
said, in order to gain weight. By then he had finished sixth grade in school and had decided that
was enough. He would get his schooling in the
Navy, which, for him, meant "three meals and a
bed to sleep in. I was kicked from pillar to post
when I was little" and he wanted stability.
Six months after the rejection, he was back at
the recruiting depot with a new birth certificate
(one that had been created to give his birth date
as 1924; "They didn't give birth certificates when
I was born," he says) but was still slightly under

the minimum weight of 104 pounds. He was
accepted, despite the weight, but he was still just
15 years old.
He wanted to "see the world," as the posters
promised, and was immediately sent to Trinidad
for six months' training as a ship's cook. Then
stationed on a sub-chaser, PC-524, his crew
patrolled the Mediterranean (Algeria to Italy to
Southern France) on the way to invading
Germany. His ship was seriously damaged
(going aground on rocks) at one point, and he
served briefly on a mine sweeper based in
Naples, but finally the gathering of the armada
loomed as D-Day came.
His ship waited until daylight to approach
Omaha Beach, he says, "because the channel
hadn't been swept" of mines, a decision the
crew of 66 men questioned. As daylight
emerged "we watched hundreds of soldiers get
mowed down" from the 524's perch at the very
head of the invasion, only a couple of hundred
yards from the beach.
He was on deck through the first day-all
day and the following night-fighting with
depth charges and deck guns. "We were up all
night because we were the lead ship," he says.
He and his mates were shooting the 20mm and
40mm guns, adding to the noise and confusion
and death.
"My ears still ring today," he says, shaking his
head. "The noise was just constant."

The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019

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