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Sharpsburg veterans hear gripping story of D-Day

By CAROLYN CARY
ccary@TheCitizenNews.com

The Sharpsburg Sharpshooters Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp 1729, was honored to hear a speech by Helen Denton concerning her part in D-Day activities.

She was one of nine children in her family in South Dakota, and five of them served in World War II. Denton served in the Woman’s Army Corps from 1943 to 1945. She mustered out with the rank of corporal.

She was sent to London and took dictation from a team of officers, two British, one Australian, one American and one Canadian, for about six weeks. At the end of each day of typing, every page would be stamped “Top Secret” and a guard would come to the room and burn the carbon paper and the typing ribbon.

“I was more concerned,” she said, “about making perfect letters than the content of what I was typing.”

After the battle plan was complete, she took her work to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man she recalls as very gentle and very military. He asked her if she realized what she had typed and she replied that she did.

It was the invasion plans for D-Day. She knew the plans but not the date.

The WACs were housed in an apartment unit three floors underground. At midnight on June 6, 1944, they heard planes going overhead all night and all the next morning, and she said it didn’t take too much to know D-Day had begun.

She met her husband in the Army and they married after they returned home. He was from Clayton County and died in 1982.

She retired from Delta Air Lines in 1982 and met a number of fellow retirees at the camp meeting.

She now lives in Fayetteville and spends her days in volunteering, whether it is at the American Red Cross, speaking to schools or commanding a VFW post.

“I’m very proud to have served my country in the manner in which I did,” she said. “And I’m proud that all five of us returned home.”