Two weeks into battle -- dodging artillery fire and stepping over the bodies of his fallen comrades -- Austin Cox crouched behind a Norman hedgerow, laid down his rifle and picked up the other weapon that helped save his life in the Second World War: a pen.

My Dearest Jeanne, he wrote to his bride.

. . . I am in my little home which is about 3 ft. underground, sometimes called a foxhole. I've always wondered why they call it that, now I know; it's not the nicest place in the world but at times you sure wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.

I have your picture right over my heart and every night I can lay here and look at you until it gets too dark to see you. I know your ears must burn an awful lot for every nite I have a nice long talk with you. I guess you will think I'm nuts but it sure makes me feel a lot closer to you.

We can never be beat now for every mile we go is bringing us that much nearer to home and to the ones we love. . . . All my love to the sweetest girl in the world,

Austin

The first steps of the first mile toward home were taken 55 years ago today, when Cox, a 24-year-old from Crisfield, and 175,000 other Allied soldiers landed in Normandy as part of the largest armada in history against Hitler's Fortress Europe.

It was June 6, 1944.

Several thousand Allied troops never made it beyond the first few feet, let alone the hundreds of miles that followed before victory in Europe in spring 1945.

For Cox, who survived, June 6, 1944, marked the beginning of a streak of luck that lasted until Berlin fell. He enjoyed a lifetime of good fortune during his 11 months in combat, day after day of narrow escapes that included a German bullet that rattled in and out of his helmet.

Of the 43 soldiers from the watermen's town of Crisfield who landed on the beaches of Normandy, six never returned home.

Of the survivors, just five are left in the town today.

Looking back, Cox is convinced that the letters he wrote to his wife and the ones he received from her almost daily played an equally powerful role in keeping him alive during the war.

The best soldiers had "somebody that loved them and wrote to them. Some boys lived and died without getting a letter," said Cox, now 79.

Jeanne wrote more than 400 of them. And he replied as often as his nerves and daylight allowed.

"I was trying to put into words how I felt. It was about wishing I'm dead. I wanted to be wounded. I wanted to be anything. I wanted to be out," he said.

All of Jeanne's letters are lost, reduced to ashes one by one in foxhole cooking fires. Cox's unit was required to destroy all correspondence.

"That was the worst experience I had," he said.

Sealed in Pandora's box

Cox's letters survived, sealed in a small box in his Crisfield home and unopened by the author for 50 years.

Like many soldiers who shared his experience, Cox was tight-lipped about his war, preferring to look forward to the life he built after it rather than the destruction he left behind.

He preferred to keep this "Pandora's box," as he called it, closed.

All that changed with the great fanfare surrounding the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the attention given to World War II veterans in Tom Brokaw's book, "The Greatest Generation," and Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning film, "Saving Private Ryan."

Cox submitted a brief testimonial to a World War II Web site last year and typed up a two-page description of his military experience for his family, telling his six children: "As you all have read and seen so many war stories I can only say that everyone that was there has their own little war and hell inside of them."

Old stories surface

Lately, he's allowing that hidden part of him to emerge.

"I've clammed up for 50 years," said Cox.

Nowadays, he said, "I can't sleep because it's on my mind."

He finds himself staying up late in the blue glow of his television screen watching old war movies like "Battle of the Bulge."

He can still recall the sound of a German shell, the taste of corned beef hash heated in his helmet, and when he looks over his letters he remembers the terrible knot in his stomach when he tried to write to his wife about it all.

Censors kept tight restrictions on what he could write.

"The letters were really about nothing," Jeanne, now 75, recalled.

Yet, they both agree, the letters convey a time and a place they both are glad are past.

"He gets very emotional about it," Jeanne said. "It's hard for him to look. It's too heavy."

My Dearest Jeanne,

Well darling today is the 4th of July, the day they shoot all the fireworks at home. I can't say that I'm missing any of the bangs this year. I got a new issue of clothing today. I was beginning to feel pretty badly with the ones I had on. How I wish I could take you in my arms now. It seems I miss you more than anything about this time every evening for I just lay here and do nothing but think of you.

All my love, Austin.

They met in 1942 at the corn exchange dance hall in Witney, England.

Austin was a dimple-cheeked American, fresh off a six-day trip across the Atlantic.

Jeanne was an 18-year-old Londoner with two brothers fighting in the war. She had joined the British Land Army, replacing the farmers who went to battle.

Their romance was quick, "foolish," Jeanne recalls now. He begged for weekend passes to London, where they stayed at her parents' Abbey Road home.

On some of their first dates, they stood on the balcony of her family's home and watched German bombs fall on the city. On a visit to Stonehenge in November 1942, Cox asked Jeanne to marry him. Their wedding was July 12, 1943.

Less than one year later it was D-Day.

Days of invasion

Ten thousand planes blackened the skies over the English Channel. More than 6,000 fighting ships, transport boats and landing craft dotted the water like game pieces on a playing board, pushing toward the coast of Normandy.

When the coxswain lowered the ramp of Austin Cox's landing craft, Cox saw more dead men than he had in his entire life. Bodies floated in the water; others lined the beaches like seashells.

Cox stepped onto Omaha Beach in the early afternoon with members of the 29th Division's 115th Infantry.

That morning, members of the 116th Infantry had suffered heavy casualties breaking through German defenses. In one company, 94 percent of the men were killed or wounded.

Cox's regiment was the first to back up the weary and splintered 116th.

"When you look at D-Day as a whole, the 115th Infantry is one of the first to arrive totally intact and fight as they were supposed to fight," said Joseph Balkoski, World War II historian and author of "Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy."

"When they came through, there was indescribable carnage. They had a spooky experience climbing up the beach, passing dead comrades," Balkoski said.

It was not the military experience Cox had expected when he joined the National Guard in 1939, mainly so he could pocket an extra $21 per month.

One of nine children of a Crisfield waterman, Cox dropped out of high school to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, where he worked in the canteen.

He took home $30 per month: $25 for his family, $5 for himself.

Called up for service

His National Guard unit was called up for service just as war broke out. The military had trained Cox as a cook and an infantryman. But his unit valued him more for his skills with a rifle than with a frying pan.

He was a grunt, living day by day on cold K-rations in colder foxholes sheltered only by the sky. New draftees replaced the wounded and dead in a steady cycle. Often he never got to know the men who fought beside him before they died.

"We hardly had time to put them on a roster before they were gone," Cox recalled.

"The violence of World War II from D-Day to May 1945 cannot be conceived. There were incredible casualties. That's what makes the soldier think he survived a hell on earth that only he could comprehend," Balkoski said.

"If you were a guy holding a rifle, you were very lucky if you weren't killed or wounded within a month."

Cox marked time by the days since he had last seen his wife, who was pregnant with their first child.

August 8, 1944

I have the most trouble writing now that I ever had. I guess it's because we are on the move so much here of late and I can't get myself settled down it's just my nerves, that's the only thing I can blame it on. There was another beautiful sight in the sky today, thousands of heavy bombers. It's enough to make anyone cry with joy because they make everything easier. Everytime they come over you can always see the prisoners list get bigger for they just come right over and give themself up by the hundreds.

The war would last 10 more months. Cox's 29th Division helped take a German U-boat base in Brest on the Brittany Peninsula and then fought its way across Western Europe into Germany.

While his unit was guarding the perimeter of Wurzburg, Germany, a Panzer tank fired on it, wounding Cox and two other soldiers. He recovered and returned to his company, fighting to the Elbe River.

Cox earned four battle stars, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and other commendations for his valor.

After the war, Cox, Jeanne and their daughter, Christine, born while Cox was still fighting, settled in Crisfield, where he became a plumber's apprentice and had five more children.

After several years, he bought a used funeral hearse -- trucks were expensive and in short supply -- and started Austin Cox Mechanical Inc. It is now one of the largest plumbing firms on the Eastern Shore.

Cox pushed his war years behind him, though he was often asked to stand guard during military funerals of Crisfield men who died in the war.

Grieving family members asked him what their sons talked about, grasping for some last message or memory. He often had to disappoint them.

"It was things that 22-year-olds said," Cox remembered. Most were not worth repeating, he said. Most never thought they would die.

"Before the war, I had only seen a dead person in a casket," he said. "Then I saw more dead in one day than in all my life and all your age. Then you had to bury them. I had to live through it twice," he said.

Return to Normandy

Lately, Cox has been living through his war years a third time, especially since taking a trip to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

"He has been a different person," said his daughter, Christine Cox Tyler, who lives in Raleigh, N.C. "It seemed to touch places we've never seen before."

In 1995, on her 50th birthday, Cox gave his daughter a packet of letters tied in a pink ribbon. The letters, addressed to Christine and her mother during the war, were all written by Cox from the front lines.

They remain unopened.

"I have not untied the ribbon," Christine said. "It's as though I'm invading their privacy.

"As long as they are wrapped, I can keep part of me forever a child. When I open them up, I have to be an adult and have an adult point of view."

She is waiting for the right moment to cross that line.

The 55th anniversary of D-Day will pass quietly in Crisfield. No parades or dinners are planned. Cox expects this year -- as every year -- he will be recognized at his church's morning services, standing briefly to the applause of the congregation.

"I feel like I've been very blessed," Cox said. "I don't know why I was specially picked. I have a beautiful wife and six beautiful children. I must have been specially picked for that reason."

It was a future he had envisioned for himself, when he was still a young man.

I could write a book about all that has happened since I was last with you, he wrote to Jeanne one evening in May 1945, days after the European war had ended, but I would rather wait until I get there with you and then we can talk to our heart's content.

I dream about that every night when I lay down, how we shall lay close together at nights and talk about all the so many different things we have done and dreamed about since the day we parted. There are some things that I want to forget for there was some pretty nasty experiences and that can only be forgotten when I am once more with you.

The lights are about to go out now my darling but some day soon I hope to be able to keep them on all night if we want.

Forever and Always,

Austin

Pub Date: 6/06/99