When Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches 70 years ago, Percy Strothers was about 15 miles from the channel in England.

A member of the all-black 775th MP Company, he was helping with security, protecting a military installation and guarding Army prisoners.

“We were at a place called G-18, it was an ammunition dump,” Strothers, 89, said. “We had two prisoners I had to take to work every day. Ten days later, we were told to get on the trucks and we went across the English Channel to the French side. I didn’t even know there was an invasion until we got over there. I was 18 on D-Day, I was 19 the day after.”

A Vicksburg resident, Strothers was 16 when he enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school.

“I joined in April of 1943. I was a volunteer. I put my age up to get in. I told them 17,” he said. “It wasn’t as strict like it is now. I just raised my age.”

He took basic training at Camp Pickett, Va., where was trained as a combat medic with the 714th Medical Battalion, a unit that was assigned to go to the South Pacific. It was transferred to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where illness put him in the camp hospital, and his unit left for combat without him.

When he left the hospital, Strothers was re-assigned to the 775th, a unit of older men, adding, “most of the guys were twice my age, they were from National Guard units in New York and Ohio.”

The 775th was assigned to Sioux City, Neb., to guard an ammunition dump, and Strothers said the unit was expected to be there for the duration of the war, until two of its members crossed the line.

“Two fellas in my company got in trouble,” he said. “They did something bad to a captain that was over a service company, and 15 days after they arrested those two fellas, I was at Camp Kilmer, N.J. with my company. They (Army officials) said we wanted to fight, so they wanted to send us where we could fight.

“Back then, that was like a death sentence,” he said. “There were 50 of us and just two men got in trouble. They punished the whole company for what those men did.”

Strothers and his unit left for England on the Queen Mary, the legendary luxury British liner that had been stripped and refitted to ferry large numbers of troops from the U.S. to the war in Europe.

“They said we had 45,000 men on board that ship,” he said. “Before we got to England, we had word that a German U-boat was behind us, so we landed in Scotland and took a train to England.”

The group arrived at G-18, “and we got our training from MP to SG, that’s ‘social security guard,’ guarding prisoners.”

When his unit landed at Normandy on D+10, they experienced a rude welcoming from the enemy, a nighttime air raid that hit another section of the beach.

“They told us to dig in that night and I went to sleep,” he said. “I woke up that night and I could hear machine guns. It turned out I was hearing 37s (37mm anti-tank guns). I was wondering why they were shooting 37s at the planes, because they were too high, and then the 90mm (antiaircraft) guns opened up. They couldn’t hit anything, either, because the planes were too high.”

The air raid on the beach wasn’t Strothers’ only experience with German warplanes.

“The next day, about just dark, we were moving up in trucks to near St. Lo, and two German fighter planes appeared and shot up our trucks,” he said. “They said about 20 of my company were killed, and some others went back to the hospital and they had to be replaced. When the attack came, I jumped out of the truck and into a ditch.”

Another time while they were at St. Lo, a German air attack forced him and others into foxholes. “You could hear the bullets hitting the ground,” he said.

After a stay near St. Lo, Strothers’ unit was attached to Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army, “(and) things really picked up.”

“It could be raining all morning, and by 3 in the afternoon, you’d see dust,” he said. “He’d have those tanks moving and kicking up mud.”

Part of the 775th’s duty, he said, was to work with the Red Ball Express, the extensive convoy system used to supply the Army during its advance through Europe.

“They would send two of our men up to guard the ammo and they would bring prisoners of war back to us,” he said. “At one time, we would take them to back to the beach to be taken to prisoner of war camps in England or the U.S. We had one large prisoner camp in Verdun, France. Later, we were guarding cities.”

It was during a time when the Allied advance stopped because of a lack of supplies, that Strothers unit received a visit from Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the Army’s first black general officer.

“He told us he was going to sign a citation commending us for the work that we were doing. He said, ‘You’re doing a good job and I’m going to recommend you for a citation,’ I don’t know if he ever did it. I never saw a citation.”

The 775th stayed with the 3rd Army for the duration of the war, participating in the Battle of the Bulge and ending up in Banberg, Germany, a city in Bavaria north of Nuremburg at the war’s end.

“I returned back home on a small ship,” he said. “I went over on a ship with 45,000 people, or so we were told, and came back with 1,200. We got about half way out there and we ran into a storm like a tornado. That storm would take that ship up and leave it in the air, and it fell in the ocean. I started praying. I don’t know how in the world that ship survived.”

When he reached New York, he said, he and other soldiers were treated to steaks and received a half-pint of bourbon. He later went to Camp Shelby, where he mustered out and took a bus home.

“There weren’t but five black soldiers on the bus and were sitting in the back,” he said. “We were about 50 or 60 miles out of Camp Shelby, and the bus pulled over and there were two highway patrolmen and one of the patrolmen got on the bus asked the bus driver what was a problem. The driver told the trooper ‘those five (the black soldiers) were cutting up, and hadn’t said a word.”

Strothers and the other black soldiers were put on the side of the road, where a black man — for a price, later gave them a ride home. “It cost me $20 to get home,” he said. “That was a bad part of my journey in the Army.”