Robert Leslie Garbett Jr. (March 18, 1919 - June 6, 1944)

Company B, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division

By Ryan Dane Rasmussen and Harrison Smith

Early Life

Robert Leslie Garbett Jr. was born on March 18, 1919, to Robert Leslie Garbett Sr. and Bertha Mae Garbett (née Stewart) in Pleasant Hills, MD.¹ His father, Robert Sr., was born on August 14, 1893, in Arabi, GA. Prior to 1917, Robert Sr. previously served four years in the US Navy as a quartermaster.² Robert’s mother, Bertha, was born on August 22, 1898, in Pennsylvania.³ After Robert Sr. and Bertha’s marriage, the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter Mary Alice on April 13, 1917, in Wilmington, DE, and then Robert Jr. less than two years later. In 1920, Robert Jr, his parents, and his sister Mary Alice lived in Wilmington where his father worked as an electrician for a railroad shop.⁴ By the following year, the family had moved to the Hampton Roads region in southeast Virginia where the family grew with the birth of a daughter June Emily on January 16, 1921, in Phoebus, VA (now Hampton) and Frank on August 6, 1923, in Newport News, VA.⁵ While living in Newport News, the family attended the Second Presbyterian Church where the church baptized various members of the family in 1923 including June and Frank.⁶

Robert Jr. (line 32) in the 1940 Census, Philadelphia

By 1930, the Garbetts had returned to Wilmington where the family lived in a rented house worth $24 and owned a radio. In Wilmington, Robert Sr. worked as an electrician at a shipyard.⁷ By 1940, the family had migrated north to the nearby city of Philadelphia, PA. Robert Jr. (as seen here) worked as an elevator operator in an office building. In 1939, he worked forty hours per week for all fifty-two weeks of the year and earned a yearly income of $950 (approximately $21,000 in 2023 dollars). His father Robert Sr. worked as an electrical engineer in an office building. In the previous year, he worked for seventy hours per week, earning a yearly income of $2,000, (approximately $44,210 in 2023 dollars).⁸ Robert’s mother Bertha and sister Mary Alice also entered the workforce. Bertha earned $900 per year as a sorter at a canned goods manufacturing plant, while Mary earned $600 per year as a machine operator at a radio manufacturing company. Robert Jr’s younger sister June is listed as a “new worker” in the census meaning she did not have any previous work experience.⁹

Military Service

On October 16, 1940, over sixteen million American men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five registered for the nation’s first peacetime draft. By this time, Robert, now twenty-one, registered for the draft in Phoebus. Having moved back to the Hampton Roads area, he worked at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company.¹⁰ Prior to World War II, Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) was one of the five largest shipbuilders in the US with the government providing additional funds to expand with construction occurring before and during the war, placing Robert at the forefront of American naval production. During the war, the company produced ships ranging from small craft to Liberty ships, battleships, aircraft carriers, and destroyers. At the peak of the war, the NNS employed more than 31,000 people, During World War II, NNS ranked twenty-third among American companies in the value of wartime production contracts.¹¹

Despite his status as a valuable wartime worker, Robert enlisted in the US Army on May 3, 1941, in Richmond, VA. After he completed his induction and initial training, he joined the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division (ID).¹² The 116th Infantry was a part of the Virginia National Guard.¹³ It was one of seventy-six National Guard regiments that the US government called to federal service between 1940 and 1941.¹⁴ It was mobilized on February 3, 1941 in Staunton, VA, and assigned to the 29th ID. After joining the 29th ID, the 116th transferred to Fort George G. Meade, MD on February 20, 1941.¹⁵ Robert likely joined the 116th during its time at Fort Meade.

After a little over a year's worth of training in Maryland, the 116th moved to Fort A.P. Hill, VA, now renamed Fort Mary Walker, on April 22, 1942.¹⁶ On July 8, 1942, the regiment moved to the Carolina Maneuver Area between Fort Jackson, SC and Fort Bragg, NC.¹⁷ The 116th then transferred to Camp Blanding, FL in August of 1942 for their final phase of Stateside training. In preparation for deploying to Europe, the 116th arrived at Camp Kilmer, NJ on September 20, 1942. It embarked from New York seven days later and arrived in England on October 2, 1942.¹⁸ Finally, after eighteen months of arduous training and preparation, Robert and his comrades set foot in Europe.

Record of Robert Garbett’s marriage to Hazel Whitehouse in Oxford

Despite the 116th Infantry’s deployment to England and close proximity to the warfront, the Allies were not yet ready to open the second front in Fortress Europe. In the meantime, Robert’s regiment continued to train and prepare for the eventual invasion. While in England, American troops interacted with the local populace. By July 1943, Robert met an English woman named Hazel Jean Whitehouse of Oxfordshire, northwest of London. The two were married on September 21, 1943, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, an Anglican parish church, in the village of Iffley, Oxfordshire, England (as seen here).¹⁹ Soon thereafter, Hazel became pregnant.²⁰

In the late-spring of 1944, Robert and the 116th trained and prepared for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, more often referred to as D-Day. During this time, Robert formed a strong friendship with Pvt. Harold “Hal” Baumgarten, a nineteen-year-old from New York who transferred from Company A to Company B after four servicemen were seriously injured or killed in an accidental explosion.²¹

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Robert was assigned to Company B, where he was positioned at the front of a Higgins boat and acted as its Signal Corps Radio (SCR) man.²² The Allies divided Normandy into five sectors – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.²³ Company B was assigned to Dog Green, a subsector of Omaha Beach²⁴. Robert’s Higgins boat landed at roughly 6:40 am and, from the moment the doors dropped, the team suffered an endless hail of machine gun fire. Company B of the 116th Infantry advanced through crashing waves and across a German-fortified, bullet-riddled beach. Robert Leslie Garbett Jr. was killed below the seawall, at the site of the modern-day National Guard Monument.²⁵ Harold Baumgarten, Robert’s best friend, found him on the beach. In his 2006 memoir, Baumgarten memorialized this moment:

At the base of the wall, lying face down in the shallow, bloody red water, was Robert Garbett, Jr. My Best buddy. His head was facing the water at a forty-five degree angle to the wall. He apparently had been shot off the wall or spun around by a sniper’s bullet. How did this five-foot, eight-inch soldier get out of our boat in water that was neck deep for my height? He had reached D-1 before me, without discarding any of his equipment. His rifle was clutched in his left hand, and around his left shoulder was slung his walkie-talkie radio. His primer cord, bandoleers of ammo, and hand grenades were on his dead body. I started to cry, and my tears ran down red from my bloody face. This was one of the saddest moments in my life.²⁶

Robert was only twenty-five years old when died on the beaches of Normandy.²⁷

Legacy

Robert Leslie Garbett Jr. was initially buried in the St. Laurent-Bayeux Cemetery in France’s Normandy region. However, this would not be his journey’s end. In 1945, the US Government began the Return of the World War II Dead Program. The program returned soldiers, many buried in temporary cemeteries, to be closer to their families for burial. The program took many years to complete.²⁸ By June 1948, Garbett’s body, along with several other Florida-based veterans, returned to the US. By this time, his father, listed as his next of kin, lived in Gainesville, FL. On August 24, 1948, over four years after his death, Robert was reinterred at the St. Augustine National Cemetery, FL to be closer to his family. Robert Jr. now rests among his fellow Veterans in Section D, Plot 171.²⁹

In 1947, Robert’s widow, Hazel, remarried in Oxfordshire.³⁰ By 1950, Garbett’s parents Robert Sr. and Bertha still lived in Gainesville. Robert Sr. continued his craft of working as an electrician for a construction company and Bertha managed the affairs at home. The couple eventually moved to Friendswood, TX, more than 20 miles southeast of Houston, TX. Robert Sr. continued working as an electrician until his death on October 23, 1960, at the age of sixty-six.³¹ Bertha continued to live in Texas, eventually moving to Brookshire, TX, about 40 miles west of Houston, where she lived until her death on October 23, 1985, at the age of eighty-seven.³² Robert Jr’s oldest sister, Mary Alice, married Walter Lindsey McCraw in Newport News on November 30, 1944. By 1950, the couple lived in Stewarts Creek, NC where Walter worked as an electrician for a steel company.³³ In 1960, she remarried Charles Carl Alvin Koett in Hernando County, FL.³⁴ She eventually moved to Cleveland, TX, northeast of Houston where she lived until her death on April 21, 1990.³⁵

On December 23, 1940, Robert Jr’s youngest sister, June, married Ben Robertson Hatcher in Elizabeth County, VA (now part of the city of Hampton).³⁶ Yet, by 1950, June had remarried. Now married to John Webb, the couple lived in Houston where John worked as a bellhop at a hotel while June worked as a waitress at a cafe. She eventually moved to Brookshire, likely to be near her mother, where she lived until her death on August 28, 1988, at the age of sixty-seven.³⁷ Robert Jr’s youngest brother, Frank, followed in his footsteps in military service, enlisting in the Army Air Forces on April 6, 1943, and serving in the Air Force until April 30, 1964.³⁸ Frank eventually moved to Rialto, CA where he worked as a truck driver for Kaiser Steel for over fourteen years until his death on December 25, 1980, at the age of fifty-seven.³⁹

In 1989, a group of D-Day Veterans and supporters formed what became the National D-Day Memorial Foundation. The foundation’s goal was to raise public awareness of the events of June 6, 1944. The group gained the attention of the US Congress and, in 1996, it established Bedford, Virginia as the site of the memorial. President Bill Clinton designated the eventual memorial as the US’s official monument to D-Day. The choice of Bedford was due to its D-Day casualty rate. Based on its World War Ii-era population, Bedofd suffered the highest per capita losses from D-Day. It also boasted thirty-seven soldiers within the 116th Infantry Regiment. On June 6, 2001, standing beside Veterans of D-Day, President George W. Bush dedicated the National D-Day Memorial.⁴⁰

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