Local seaman remembers ‘The Longest Day’

SHAWANO — The Longest Day actually lasted a week.

That was the time that the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet participated in filming the 1962 Darryl F. Zanuck film “The Longest Day,” a documentary drama about the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The invasion was the start of the final push to bring World War II in Europe to an end.

For one local veteran, it was a week he never expected when he joined the Navy in 1959.

Curtis Lienau, Cecil, was a master-at-arms on the USS Pocono AGC 16. In 1961, their tour included the Mediterranean Sea and, eventually, the French site that stood in for Omaha Beach in the film.

His ship was the communications flagship, joined by others in the background as a flotilla. Ahead of them, an armada of smaller ships created the impression of the invasion.

“They sent the little landing craft first, then the big ships in the back, with smoke coming out of their pipes,” he explained. “It was such a dramatic thing with hundreds of little boats in front of you. That’s what made the movie.”

He estimated “thousands” of sailors were involved in the re-creation of the invasion.

Lienau has seen the film and said he found it very interesting. He couldn’t pick out his ship among the many onscreen, but he said he enjoyed watching the battle and thought it was “very realistic.”

Though it appeared authentic in the movie, not everything was as it seemed. The “wooden” crossed barricades on the beach were made of rubber for the filming.

One of the aspects that was realistic, though, were the explosives.

“A frogman blew his hand off setting devices to explode on the shoreline. Those were real explosives going off,” Lienau recalled. He said it was the only injury that he heard of during the filming.

The filming took about a week, Lienau said. Actors were on several of the large vessels. Although many of the scenes were filmed “over and over,” the actual shots of the invasion were “pretty much one time.”

The officers on the Pocono were involved with the actors, he said, but most of the crew didn’t get to see them. He said he was supposed to get a commendation for his part in the movie, but it never came.

The other impact of the ship’s participation, he recalled, is that “we ate good. Porterhouses for 560 crew members,” he said, and the 500 Marines aboard the ship.

The film is available through the Shawano County Library.