He may have been sitting in an easy chair in the living room of his longtime home on Faulkner Avenue in West Dayton two days ago — some three dozen birthday cards taped to the wall behind him, a pair of portraits of his late wife on the wall to his left, his golf bag and clubs propped in a corner to his right — but Marion Miller suddenly was back at the Battle of Anzio almost 80 years ago.
The German forces that had formed a defensive front around the Anzio beachfront were waging an all-out assault on Allied troops who were coming ashore. German planes were overhead. The big artillery guns of the Axis were booming away in the hills.
The Battle of Anzio — part of the Italian campaign of World War II — took place from Jan. 22 to June 5, 1944.
Allied forces — according to “Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome” — suffered 43,000 casualties, including 7,000 dead. Several Royal Navy ships were sunk.
Miller, part of the U.S. Army 179th Transportation unit, was on a ship there that he said was loaded with ammunition — “500-pound bombs, 105mm shells, all kinds of ammo” — that he and his fellow Black soldiers were about to unload.
“That was the only really frightening time for me,” he said quietly. “The (Germans) bombed us 45 minutes straight. They were trying to hit our ship. They knew it was loaded with ammunition. But we had those PT boats firing up at them. The sky was red with tracers and everything.
“If we’d have been hit, with all that ammunition, we’d have been blown to kingdom come and there wouldn’t have been nothing left.”
Miller’s ship wasn’t hit.
And, as it’s turned out, there’s been a whole lot left.
On Wednesday, Miller turned 100.
The feat was celebrated with a gala celebration at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church on Free Pike four days prior.
Miller — who wore a dark suit and dress shirt, snappy gold and black tie, a fedora with a red feather and a gold lapel pin shaped like a golf bag with two clubheads…
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