Robert Johnson didn’t make it to Omaha Beach until the day after D-Day, but that didn’t mean the danger had entirely abated.

“There was enemy fire, still a good deal of artillery fire on D-plus-one,” Johnson, a retired Lawrence resident, said recently of the beach, where he landed June 7, 1944.

As his landing craft approached the coast of France, Johnson — a recently promoted captain who was the senior officer onboard — had to decide where to come ashore.

“I was supposed to land on the area of the beach that was far east of the area where we actually landed, but where there was a lot of artillery fire,” Johnson said.

“As we came in, I would observe an artillery round hitting on one side of a landing craft, the second round on the other side, then the third round invariably destroyed the landing craft,” he said. “So I made the judgment that was not the place to land.

“That was a deviation from the plan. But I credit that decision with saving my unit from serious disaster.”

It was the last combat Johnson would see.

He spent the next four months on Omaha Beach with a quartermaster unit, helping bring ashore men and supplies to support troops and supplies taking on German forces in France. At other beaches, concrete “mulberries” were put in place as temporary docks for ships to offload supplies. The mulberry washed ashore at Omaha, forcing Johnson’s unit to bring materiel ashore using amphibious trucks.

“We were successful in moving more tonnage in our beach than they moved on the British beaches using the intended mulberry,” Johnson said.

Robert Johnson served as an officer in World War II at the Omaha Beach invasion. He's pictured Friday at his Lawrence home next to his uniform.

Johnson ended the war in Rheims, France, a few blocks from where Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was living — and where Eisenhower accepted the German surrender on May 7, 1945.

After Allied forces defeated Japan in August 1945, Johnson married his wife, Simone, at the cathedral in Rheims.

He said the war taught him to improvise, innovate and question authority.

“Authority is not always right,” Johnson said. “The things I did that disregarded authority, like coming in on the wrong area of the beach — had I not done that, I would have probably lost my entire unit. Doing it, I saved my unit.”

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