Bastrop resident Robert C. Richards went ashore on one of the most famous beaches in history and has lived to tell about it at age 92.

But his beach wasn’t a beach for surfing or catching rays.
As Richards sat in his living room on Monday afternoon he recounted what happened on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 several hours after the historic D-Day invasion assaulted Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich.
Richards survived that day and another seven months of combat, during which he was wounded twice while serving as a Ranger scout with the 2nd Infantry Division.
“I landed around 4 p.m. on June 6 and served as a spotter for LCIs coming in on Omaha Beach,” Richards said, referring to small troop transports called landing craft-infantry.
And if the brunt of casualties were mostly over for that day on the four beaches the Allies landed on, the Germans were still shelling the beach and strafing it with fighter planes, Richards added.
Richards performed his landing duties so well on D-Day he received a special commendation from a colonel supervising the beach landing in his area.

Seeing action
Richards, born and raised in Williamsport, Penn., would soon see enough action away from the beaches.
As a scout he went out in front of advancing infantry units to set up fields of fire – that is, optimal directions for machine guns to fire at the enemy.
Richards also acted as an artillery spotter, calling in map coordinates for the location of German troops sighted.
“I was a corporal and I worked with another man, a private first class,” Richards said. “I was trained at both Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio and Camp McCoy in Wisconsin.”
His training also included a stint in Northern Michigan training on using snow skis in combat. Before landing in France he would undergo further Ranger training in Northern Ireland.
Richards described his German opponents as “damn good soldiers and dedicated.”
He was wounded the first time only 11 days after D-Day.
“I crossed in front of a German machine gun position,” Richards said. He was hit in the upper arm and grazed near his right eye.
“I was airlifted back to England for six weeks and then it was back in combat,” Richards said.
Richards shared a letter from his company commander at the time he was wounded in France, from Thomas Birch of Colorado Springs, Colo.
“I remember Mr. Richards as being one of those selected to constitute an advanced party (for scouting) for our regiment after the D-Day landings,” Birch wrote. “That assignment was an important one and obviously involved extra-hazardous duty.”
Richards was put out of combat action for good, he said, during the Battle of the Bulge in mid-December 1944.
An artillery or mortar shell exploded nearby and although fragments did not hit him he received a severe concussion from the shock wave of the exploding shell.
“It was the first day of the Battle of the Bulge,” Richards said.
He would remain in Europe, assigned to working with the Red Cross in Dijon, France until the end of the European war.
He received the Purple Heart twice and would also wear a Bronze Star, given to the 2nd Infantry Division for its performance under fire.
Richards returned to the U.S. and worked at a silk mill and then for an aircraft manufacturer before becoming a traveling furniture salesman, a job he said he loved.
He would go on to marry a Texas woman, which together with his sales position in the southern U.S., would bring him back to Texas.
“My wife, Gracie, from San Antonio and I had three children,” Richards said proudly. “In 1966, I left Pennsylvania and moved to San Antonio.”
Richards said he would like to return to France to honor his fellow soldiers, but doesn’t know if he’ll make it.
“I would sure like to go back there,” Richards said softly as looked at his military medals on his kitchen table.
And then he held up a photograph of him coming off of Omaha Beach the day after D-Day. An Army photographer had snapped it.
It is one of his prized possessions from the war, he said,