Clarence “Mac” Evans; phony D-Day veteran

Someone sent us their work on this fellow, Clarence “Mac” Evans, a native of Clarksburg, West Virginia now living in the New Orleans area, who has been claiming for years that he was part of the 29th Division’s assault on Omaha beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944. He claimed that he was with “G” company, 2d Battalion, 116th Infantry in the first wave of the assault on Fortress Europe. For example there’s this account in NOLA.com;

He was 17 on June 6, 1944, when as a 135-pound soldier in G Company, 2nd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, he stormed ashore in the first wave at Omaha Beach in a LCVP, a New Orleans-built Higgins Boat. His 11 months of fighting across Europe began at 6:30 a.m., that day.

“It was a slaughter,” Evans said. “Company A and Company B went in right on target, and within 30 minutes, both companies were gone.”

His G Company was supposed to land with A and B companies but was forced to go ashore about 3/4-mile away. There, Nazi bunkers were invisible to the Navy destroyers miles offshore that were supposed to remain in an area already swept for mines. But unable to effectively target the Nazi bunkers, the destroyer squadron’s commander ordered the group to leave the safe waters and to move closer to shore.

“Then the five-inch guns, they could see where they were shooting,” Evans said. “And those five-inch guns were firing flat trajectories, and that’s when things started to break loose. So we really owe our debt of holding the beach to the destroyers of the Navy and to the paratroopers inland that kept the enemy from sending in reinforcements.”

And another NOLA.com link;

But on D-Day, June 6, 1944, that made Evans and his fellow soldiers easy targets for German troops as soon as the front went down. When he saw his buddies being picked off, Evans said he cut off all his equipment and climbed over the side, leaving his rifle behind as he dropped into the chilly water that was becoming bloody.

“I crossed the beach with nothing but wet clothes,” he said. “I didn’t even have a slingshot.”

Several hundred people sitting on white folding chairs in the museum’s U.S. Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center grew quiet as Evans described the carnage he saw on Omaha Beach and his reaction to it.

His dominant memory was of a soldier “trying to put his entrails back in” his uniform after he had suffered what turned out to be a mortal wound, Evans said. “For 71 years, there hasn’t been one solitary day that has passed when I haven’t seen that boy.”

Because of what Evans experienced on D-Day, “It doesn’t take long to develop hatred in combat when you see your friends fall,” he said. “You lose your humanity, and it’s hard to get that humanity back because there’s so much hatred in you.”

Nevertheless, he said he kept on fighting, advancing to the Ruhr River until he was sent home in February 1945 after being hit with a mortar shell. In addition to that physical wound, Evans said he returned to the United States with what has since been called post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I carried that war home with me,” said Evans, who said he started drinking heavily.

Of course, he has a Discharge to support his claims;

Remember that serial number 35847110, that will be important later on. All of the dates have been changed so that he could be in Europe for D-Day. His actual birthdate, according to records was November 14, 1926, he joined when he was 17 in December 1943 – that wouldn’t have put him in Europe for the invasion, though, so he altered those dates by one year on his discharge;

The Army doesn’t know that he was with G Company 2/116th infantry like he says. They think he was with Company C, 723rd Railway Operations Battalion and that he was stationed at Lincoln Army Airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska. At least that’s where he was when he went on leave to get married on June 7th, 1944;

He was married on June 12th, that year, just six days after the Normandy invasion;

Then to celebrate his nuptials and the invasion of France, he went AWOL on June 14th;

He returned to duty on June 18th;

He did finally make it to Utah Beach on D-Day+136, October 22d, 1944 with “A” company of the 743rd Railway Operations Battalion. His arrival doesn’t seem as eventful as he made it sound though;

Evans spent the remainder of the war in Antwerp with his railway operations unit. It’s easy to keep track of him in Antwerp because he was on sick call several times during his tour there, so he shows up in the morning reports of the company;

He really didn’t get an opportunity to earn a Combat Infantry Badge or a Purple Heart. He reenlisted in Munich, Germany as a PFC on November 29, 1945, and he did make his sergeant stripes eventually, but not until a few years after the war. So much for his claim that he was sent home with shrapnel wounds in February, 1945;

You can also note in the photos above, the lack of a Purple Heart, no 29th Division patch, no CIB, no Bronze Star in the earlier picture. If you think that there might be two Clarence Evans, you’re probably right, but the serial numbers in the morning reports, 35847110, all match the one on the bogus discharge.

Evans has reaped the benefits of his wild-ass stories, the Légion d’honneur was awarded to him from the French government in recent years;

He got free trips to Normandy pretending to be a D-Day survivor. Folks tell us that he was a guide on the Stephen Ambrose tours of Normandy until someone put a bug in their collective ear about his lies;

If you’re wondering why there is no FOIA, it looks like his records were completely destroyed in the 1973 National Archives fire and Evans took advantage of that by manufacturing his own version of his military career. But his constant appearance in the company morning reports tracks his career pretty well during the war.

A number of journalists in Louisiana have been alerted to this story, but they probably need a little shove to get it told to a wider audience.

Category: Phony soldiers, Valor Vultures