Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • A2

A2 loc A Friday, June 6, 2014 ecatur, i llinois www.herald-review.com ostmaster: Send address changes to: Herald Revie 601 E. William Decatur, IL 62523-1142. Eight-week subscription a tes are: Carrier home-delivered, mail $54.64. The Herald Review is published daily a 601 E. William Decatur, IL 625231 142, by Lee Publishing, a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises eriodical postage paid at Decatur, Illinois post office Herald Review (USPS 150-800) Lotto 06-09-12-27-30-34 otto jackpot $8 million Lucky Day Lotto Midday 09-23-33-35-38 Lucky Day Lotto 06-17-20-27-36 My 3 Midday 2-9-8 My 3 Evening 0-7-9 Pick Three-Midday 1-0-7, Fireball: 9 Pick Three-Evening 0-0-4, Fireball: 3 Pick Four-Midday 6-4-8-0, Fireball: 4 Pick Four-Evening 3-2-5-1, Fireball: 5 Mega Millions jackpot 45 million Powerball jackpot $221 million Winning numbers selected Thursday: www.herald-review.com/lottery Events Dancing Sno wbird Reunion Dance, 7 Prairie a nd a nce ub, i liopolis.

$5. (217) 428-1560. Etc. Ar genta Yard Sale, 8 a a genta. Drag Racing, 5 les unty agway sa arleston.

$10. (217) 345-7777. Junk Drop Off Days, all-day, wnship ed, Mount Pulaski. Make a Mess-terpiece, Part i ddler a mp, 9 a Museum of i linois, catur. $13.

(217) 423-5437. Moweaqua Pow Wow Spring Festival, all-day, Moweaqua. Food, entertainment, contests. Native American Culture Exhibit Opening, 5 Madden a ts nter, catur. (217) 423-3189.

Paxton Town Wide Garage Sales, 7 a i ty of Paxton. (217) 379-9174. Quilted Keepsakes Quilt Show, 10 a H. Moore Homestead Witt unty Museum, inton. $3 adults, $1 ages 12-18, ages 11 and under free.

Rules of the Road Review Course, 9:30 a Macon unty nior nter, catur. Spring Fling, 8 a ovill Golf urse, catur. $30 entry fee plus green fee and cart fee. Stand Up for Grace Community Sale and Fundraiser, 8 a catur nference nter and Hotel. a proceeds will benefit the By Grace i sabled and phans ntre in Kayole, Kenya.

Exhibits Anne Lloyd Gallery, Madden a ts nter, catur. a tive a erican a lendid Heritage. Chevrolet Hall of Fame Museum, catur. $7 adults, ages 12 and under free. (217) 791-5793.

Decatur Airport Gallery. ta Burch. Gallery 510, catur. a rol Kessler. (217) 422-1509.

Macon County History Museum and Prairie Village, catur. $2. (217) 422-4919. North Gallery, ck rings nservation a ea, catur. a lan Perry, photography.

(217) 423-7708. Second Floor Gallery, catur Public i brary. a lly Van a tta, photography. Wildflour Bakery catur. Pam Marty, watercolors.

Music Allert on Concert in the Park, 5:30 a lerton Park, Monticello. (217) 333-3286. Bach at Noon: Music for the King of Instruments, noon, inity theran urch, Peoria. (309) 676-4609, ext. 207.

Bement Country Opry with Kim Biehl, 8 p.m., Bement untry ry. $10. (217) 877-6499. Coffee Concert, 8 inity theran urch, Peoria. $16 adults, $10 students.

(309) 6764609, ext. 207. Nightlife Big Daddy DJ and Karaoke, 9 Flashbacks, catur. Blues, Booze and Burgers with Plan 6 a i Hall, catur. Buddy Love and The Hardly Play Boys, 8 le i me i catur.

Clayton Anderson, 9 iderz, ng eek. with Kim Rambo, 8 :30 Hideout, a lton i ty. Docta LD 9 Bar, catur. Eric Burgett Band, 9 i mbuktu a loon, ng eek. Hi-Tek Redneck, 9 Friendly Bar Grill, catur.

Rock of Ages, 8 ck ock Barrel, catur. On Stage Str 2 and 8 i ttle eatre on the uare, llivan. $37.50 adults, $35.40 (217) 728-7375. 6 Barn i i i nner eater, Goodfield. $35.

(309) 965-2245. Health Fishing Clinic, 1 uthwind Park, ringfield. For people who have experienced an accident, brain injury or stroke. Participants should bring fishing poles. (217) 788-3461.

Meetings Decatur Breakfast Sertoma Club, 7 a ovill Banquet Facility, catur. (217) 877-2338. Seniors Decatur-Macon County Senior Center, 10 a Fitness ass; 1 Bingo. (217) 429-1239. Support Groups Al-Anon, 7 James a tholic urch, catur.

Alcoholics Anonymous: Back to Basics, 8 a ntral ited Methodist urch, catur. (217) 413-7454. Alcoholics Anonymous: Road to Recovery, noon, iscopal urch, catur. (217) 422-3766. ha enin day an your week with our calendar every ursday More events: www.herald-review.com Contact us bmissions of items for the Herald view calendar must be made in writing and received by noon Monday the week prior to publication.

Mail items to a lendar, Herald view, 601 W. William catur, i 62523-1142 or email Phone calls will not be accepted. Highlight Zombie 5K 1:30 Fairview Park Main Pavillion, catur. Proceeds support Friends of the catur Public i brary. $20.

D- a Continued from a 1 interviewed me, he asked if I had a girlfriend back home. I said He asked if I had anyone I expected to see back home, I said not really, my parents had both My mother died when I was 19, and my dad died when I was 21. He said you get into this outfit, probably not going to get Floyd was assigned to Company of the Fifth Ranger Battalion one of the two Ranger battalions that stormed the beach at Normandy 70 years ago today. was there that day it was bad; it was he said. bad part was thousands of men were killed on Omaha Beach.

Their training and all that was lost. Back then, communications what they ar today. Communications were a big thing. about me; I think a tribute to the ones who died For D-Day, the 2nd Ranger Battalion and the 5th Ranger Battalion had their mission take out any enemy gunners on Pointe du Hoc. ask me how I felt, but I really remember; I suppose we were scared; be a fool if you he said.

was our first combat. We just knew we were going to hit a beach all we knew. Floyd says he hit the beach in the second assault wave just after sunrise. I was running across the beach the machine guns were scrapping the sand in front of he said. sad part about this, the real heroes on Omaha Beach that day were the amphibious engineers.

The Germans had about 60 feet of wire, apron barbed wire they called it, that a rabbit crawl through. the reason Omaha Beach was so terrible, no one could get off the beach. They finally blew it later on, but they have communications. Wave after wave kept oming The amphibious engineers continued attempts to blow through the apron wire. just laid there; the Germans were shelling you and you get off the beach.

Then when we did get off the beach, I told someone one time it seemed like at every attempt there were snipers shooting through the hedge plus you have mines. Some of his experiences with the Rangers are still raw. Some battle stories are riddled with pauses to hold in tears while his service decorations hang on the wall just above the back of his chair. could tell you a lot of war stories, but I came home to forget the war and pretty hard he said. decorations up there on the wall my son put those in a display box for me so they hang there now.

I threw them in a cigar box when I got home, and forgot about them, but now up where they should Stories to be told E.J. Armstrong grew up making models of World War I airplanes; however, he was never able to talk with anyone who served during the First World War. So when the Mattoon man found himself in the top turret as a gunner on the B-17 running two missions over Normandy on D-Day, he decided share his stories once he made it home. The Mattoon native, now 90, has a 40-page booklet explaining his service in World War II, including inf ormation about his decorations, photos from decades past showing young men in uniform and details from his Honor Flight trip, but one piece of paper stands out: his flight log, which outlines his 31 missions including his 29th and 30th missions on June 6, 1944 D-Day. Armstrong was sworn into the Army Air Forces on Jan.

14, 1943. He wanted to enlist and work as a mechanic far, far away from enemy lines, but he was drafted out of high school, and as luck would have it, he was assigned to the Air Force. After training stateside, he was assigned to Europe in the B-17 Flying Fortresses. long est mission was 11 hours. I have been to Normandy at least five times.

In fact, I was there the day before, but I had no idea what was going to be there the next During briefing, Armstrong said the attitude was similar to how doctors would be going into a major medical operation. going to have a real serious operation. You want to do it, but do it and get it over that was the he said. In his notes from the first mission, Armstrong recalled that they could barely see the end of the runway. He said when they returned from the first mission the ground crew came outside and yelled, to which the air crew responded, where do you think By the time the second mission was prepped, the overcast skies had br oken, he said.

The D-Day missions were the only runs that his crew completed and made it back without eceiving damage to the airplane. Armstorng is retired from the University of Illinois, and throughout his career managed several area airports, including the Coles County Memorial Airport, the Tuscola Airport and the Effingham Airport. He is a certified pilot. Supplying the mission It was 1943 when 17-year- old Wayne Foran signed up for the Navy. Less than two years later, Foran landed on Omaha Beach as a signalman in the fourth wave of the D-Day invasion force.

Foran had just traveled from the beaches of England on the LST 372, which carried smaller boats as well as trucks and tanks, in the force that numbered thousands of ships and aircraft. He remember being was more worried about where we were gonna sleep and said Foran, now 88. were so many, many ships, so many airplanes flying over us, that I thought we were pretty As part of a small landing unit, Foran searched for sur vivors on the completely quiet Omaha Beach on the evening of June 6, 1944. The unit ound none. German aircraft flew over us into the harbor, and I know how he knew it was there, but he dropped a bomb right next to our said Foran, a retired Piatt County assessor.

shot it down before it did anything else. Five or six guys were wounded from flack One of six brothers who all served at some point in the military, Foran never held a gun. Instead, he aided in the transport of trucks, tanks and other equipment ver the course of 38 trips from England to France. say it was a pretty big Foran said. was the biggest battle ever, I guess not that I had much to do with he added humbly.

Foran, of Bement, revisited the beaches of Normandy 20 years ago on the 50th celebration of D-Day. He has a photo fr om when he sat in a packed crowd as several notable public figures, including President Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II, walked in a procession. celebrated it (D-Day) more after said Foran, who has organized several meet-ups over the past several decades with other Navy veterans. Nowhere to go Nodding to a black-and- white Facebook picture pulled up on his iPad, Jim Hahn, 94, says his landing craft was slightly different but the general look of Seventy years ago today, then 24-year-old Hahn waited on the landing craft in a jeep he had waterproofed himself, ready to drive to the killing zone on the 25-mile-long Beach 46, also known as Omaha Beach. As soon as the gangway opened, Hahn and other men in the 467th Anti-Aircraft Artillery quickly realized the initial plan of being the econd wave to hit Omaha Beach had failed and he had to take cover rather than push forward.

were a little said Hahn, now a retired Caterpillar machinist. told us to dig a foxhole because there any place to go. They killed us there any Hahn estimates that his unit stayed under cover of foxholes until about 3:30 p.m. Pointing to an aged yellow piece of aper originally dictated by his Lt. Col.

Cecil G. Remington, the telegram dates to 1 944 shortly after D-Day and mentions the many casualties spread across the beach. things I remember because a little Hahn said. was actually said that the water was red from the first wave (of The invasion involved thousands of ships and aircraft, and it as not until a couple of days before that Hahn heard of what he and his unit were being sent to do. never could quite figure out how it get out, that we were gonna Hahn said.

have his SS troopers there. If them guys had been right in front of us, I be Afterward, Hahn never fell far back from the front lines as American forces pushed through Nazi-occupied France. He was in Europe for a total of two years and spent most of them driving Lt. Col. Remington to different posts until his ervice was over, including Paris, where he want to go but I say Hahn has never talked much of his war stories until the past several years and has never revisited the Normandy beaches.

think about what I did and I really just did what I was sent to Hahn said. things like that you just forget. But I never went back. I leave anything he adds with a laugh. 238-6869; (217) 421-7963 MED i ai Continued from a 1 been provided to 2,832 people who were deceased.

According to the report by Illinois Auditor General Bill Holland, the agency failed to match up death records with the lists of people receiving taxpayer-funded medical benefits, resulting in millions of dollar being paid out to insure thousands of people who had been dead for more than 60 days. In a memo issued in April, the agency said it has or is in the process of recouping these overpayments, and will recoup all verpayments by the end of this Medicaid system provides health insurance benefits for poor and dis abled residents has been under a microscope in recent years, with lawmakers approving a series of changes in 2011 designed lower costs. kurt.erickson@lee.net|(217) 782-4043 Va Continued from a 1 by Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, and Sen. ohn McCain, would allow veterans who wait 30 days or more for VA appointments or who live at least 40 miles fr om a VA hospital or clinic to use private doctors enrolled as providers for edicare, military TRICARE or other government health care programs. It also would let the VA immediately fire as many as 450 senior regional executives and hospital administrators for poor performance.

The bill resembles a measure passed last month by the House but includes a 28-day appeal process omitted by the House legislation. GM Continued from a 1 and engineering executives who failed to disclose the defect and were part of a of Five other employees have been disciplined, she said, without identifying any of them. The automaker said it will establish a compensation program covering those killed or eriously injured in the more than 50 accidents blamed on the switches. GM said not say how much money will be involved, but a Wall Street analyst estimated the payouts will total $1.5 billion. Herald Review, Jim Bowling Wayne Foran of Bement was a signalman in the fourth wave of the D-Day invasion force.

Above left, Submitted photo This photo of E.J. Armstrong shows him in his flight gear during his military service. Herald Review, Lisa Morrison Jim Hahn holds a photo of himself in uniform some 70 years ago. Hahn sat on a boat two days waiting for the D-Day invasion to begin. Kevin Kilhoffer, Review Former US Army Ranger Clifford Floyd, pictured at his Mattoon residence, recounts his participation in D-Day..