Gunner’s Mate Second Class John Anthony Fuller, United States Naval Reserve. Service Number: 6805378

Early Life

John Anthony Fuller was born on 23 September 1922 in San Diego, California. His nickname was “Doc”. His father, Robert Harry Fuller, born 16 March 1899 in Czechoslovakia, died 24 July 1980 in San Diego, California, owned a dairy. His mother Lelia Frances Parr was born on 8 May 1901 in Connecticut, and died on 8 April 1974 in La Mesa, California. John was the eldest of four children in the family and had two younger brothers and a younger sister. Robert Harry Fuller had been previously married to Frances Margaret Potter, born 9 October 1903 in California, died 15 April 1997 in Santa Barbara, California.

John A. Fuller married Dorothy Jean Haynes, born 10 September 1924 in San Diego, California, died 10 July 2016 in Longview, Washington. The date of their marriage is unknown. Dorothy lived in La Mesa, California at the time of her husband’s death.

In 1940, John A. Fuller was single, had completed two years of high school and worked for his father’s dairy business.

Military

John Anthony Fuller registered for the Draft on 30 Jun 1942 in La Mesa, California. At that time, he worked for the Lightfoot Lumber Company. After boot camp and follow-on training, he was assigned to the Navy Demolition Units.

The Navy had a significant role in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion. However, long before that day, the Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDUs) had to perform pre-invasion recons of the beaches and shore placements, even going as far as to bring buckets of sand back to make sure the beach could support the specialized amphibious tanks that would go ashore to provide close-in gun support. The Navy’s role in D-day was to provide shore bombardment, the follow-up gunfire support, plus transporting and landing many of the Army troops who stormed ashore.

The Naval Beach Battalions were naval elements of the Army Engineer Special Brigades for the invasion of Normandy. NCDUs were formed up about one year before D-Day. They were made up of 1 officer and 5 enlisted men. They trained alongside the Scouts and Raiders at Fort Pierce. They were organized by Lt. Cdr. Draper Kaufman, an explosives expert, with the specific goal of clearing beach obstacles.

In Late 1943, 10 NCDUs had arrived in England from Fort Pierce, FL, to meet and train with their British counterparts for future missions. In early 44, the units split and joined with the 2nd, 6th, and 7th USN Beach Battalions, the organizations, set up to coordinate and facilitate the Army landings. At this time, eight additional six-man units arrived from the U.S. to be split among the Beach Battalions.

The NCDU men were not the Frogman you would see in the movies of the same name. They were more like the man you would see in the movie Carlson’s Raiders. They mainly operated from rubber rafts and were not expected to spend long periods in the water. They wore fatigues, combat boots, and steel helmets. The men were in excellent physical condition but operated mainly in shallow water.

The more recons that were done on Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” showed it becoming more formidable by the months. So as new personal from Ft Peirce arrived and the subsequent arrival of some Army Combat Engineers enabled each of the NCDUs to double in size. In April, of 44 the officers leading the Navy units and their Army counterparts were briefed about a hypothetical long, wide gradual sloping sand beach with a 25-foot tide change.

On that beach, and extending into the surf, they could expect minefields and a variety of devilishly designed obstacles placed to block and cripple landing craft. To clear the beach, the invasion planners envisioned an aerial and naval bombardment sweeping the coastline. Then the initial wave of infantry, supported by specially designed amphibious tanks, would land during low tide after dawn and rush to secure the beaches. Following in their wake, the NCDUs would land with a mission to blow a 50-yard gap in the German obstacles and place markers so landing craft coming in later that morning at high tide would have a straight, unobstructed path leading to the beach.

The Americans were assigned beaches “Utah” and “Omaha.” At 0630, H-Hour, on the morning of June 6, 1944, 11 NCDUs came in with 8th Infantry Regiment at Utah. With the Army securing the beach, the Navy demolition men went to work and quickly blew eight 50-yard gaps and had enough time to expand one gap to 700 yards. This allowed successive waves of troops, ashore and quickly secured a substantial beachhead by midday.

Four sailors were killed on Utah, and 11 others were wounded. Because of their efficient work, the units on Utah beach received a Navy Unit Commendation.

At Omaha, the Germans were better entrenched and had built a more robust network of obstacles. Sixteen teams, each with 7 Navy and 5 Army engineers tasked with clearing fifty-foot-wide corridors through the beach obstacles. One of the first teams ashore was wiped out as it landed, and another lost all but one man as it prepared to set off its lengths of twenty-pound explosive charges. Casualties were appalling: of the 175 NCDU men at Omaha, thirty-one were killed and sixty wounded—a 53 percent loss rate. It also didn’t help that the pre-invasion air and sea bombardments mostly missed their marks. As a result, the invaders were savaged by heavy artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire that ripped into the NCDU landing craft. Also, choppy seas swamped many of the amphibious tanks, depriving the invaders of needed of close-in firepower. However, the survivors succeeded in clearing five main channels through the obstacles and three partial channels before the rising tide forced them to withdraw. By the end of the day, about one-third of the obstacles had been destroyed or removed.

Through the gaps poured the reinforcements needed to hold off any counter attacks and to take the fight inland. Seven sailors earned the Navy Cross for their work that day. For their heroic actions, the Omaha NCDUs received a Presidential Unit Citation.

Death and Burial

John Anthony Fuller was Killed in Action on 6 June 1944 on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France during the D-Day invasion. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart Medal and was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, Plot: H, Row: 6, Grave: 20.

Sources

https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=17961

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56644697/john-anthony-fuller

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74776698/the-los-angeles-times/

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=2238&h=18580557&tid=&pid=&queryId=a2185579c38b70cdb0b4b7553f145a46&usePUB=true&_phsrc=5ru-1842734&_phstart=successSource

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?dbid=5247&h=944781&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=2442

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/9170/images/42861_647350_0539-01072?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.254394497.88623285.1617124122-1128903496.1596401247&pId=64778

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?dbid=2324&h=109331&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=5247

http://omaha-beach-memorial.org/public/ind_folder_cemetery.php?id=59189

https://soldiersystems.net/2019/06/02/scubapro-sunday-d-day-navy-combat-demolition-units-the-frogmen-of-d-day/

"This story was written by Robert J. “Red” Mulvanny, U.S. Navy (Retired) and is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story."