‘Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.’
—Seneca (5 BC–65 AD)
There is no improvement that can be made to the original caption: “Bursting in flame when Nazi machinegun fire exploded a hand grenade, this Coast Guard–manned LCVP, packed with troops, was piloted safely to the Normandy beach on D-Day by a 23-year-old Texan, Coast Guardsman Delba L. Nivens, coxswain, of Amarillo. Nivens unloaded his cargo of invaders and, assisted by his engineman and bowman, put out the fire and made the run back to his Coast Guard–manned assault transport in a hail of German machinegun and mortar fire.” The specifics not mentioned in the caption are that their transport was the USS Samuel Chase (APA-26); their destination was Easy-Red Beach, one of the two easternmost beaches of Omaha Beach; and their “cargo” was a unit of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division—the Big Red One.
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