He’s 104 and landed on a Normandy beach after D-Day. He has stories to tell.
SAVANNAH ― By the time 2nd Lt. Avery Low’s boat landed at Utah Beach in June 1944, the machine guns on the bluffs went silent. The tides and waves had washed the blood from the sand. The quartermaster had cleared the debris left over from the D-Day invasion less than two weeks earlier.
Low and the men of the U.S. Army’s 537th Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Field Army rolled off the landing craft and into Normandy as the First Army fought to secure the surrounding countryside. Over the 11 months that would follow, they supported the Allied advance that liberated France, overwhelmed the Germans on their home soil and pushed on to Austria.
The 537th were “no damn heroes,” says Low, now age 104. Just mechanics, technicians and electricians doing things that anyone else with those skills would do if called upon by their country. That meant fixing cars, repairing tanks and jerry-rigging artillery as Operation Overlord fought the Nazis.
“We were just playing soldier,” Low says, “but logistics folks in war never get enough respect for how they kept things together.”
As the world marks the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, Low is telling that broader story. He’s never been one to trade war stories at the VFW hall or the American Legion Post. For decades, he’s shared his memories almost exclusively with his son and caregiver Jamie and other family members.
Last year, though, France bestowed on Low the French Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest honor. And the man who has lived quietly in a ranch home in suburban Savannah since 1979 became a local celebrity.
“His niece is a nurse who had a patient who got the award, and she called the French consulate to let them know about Dad,” Jamie says. “I think he was mad at first, but I also think he’s happy to tell about his experiences.”
Low’s story is an engaging one, proof that combat isn’t only about facing death, triumphing over adversity and mourning loss. Low knows the horrors of war: He was with Gen. George Patton in April 1945 when U.S. troops encountered their first concentration camp at Ohrdruf. He recalls seeing piles of dead and decomposing prisoners and the frail, desperate survivors and says Holocaust deniers are “full of crap.”
He remembers the fear he felt looking to the skies from a poorly dug foxhole and seeing the bay doors of a Luftwaffe bomber slowly swing open.
But Low’s sadness over his experience is tempered by his pride in the accomplishment and the many light-hearted experiences along the way. He uses the word “liberated” liberally — not just in what the Allies did for France, but also for what the 537th did for a luxury car they discovered hidden beneath hay in a barn (it was painted red and black and Low, a Georgia Tech man, immediately commissioned a new paint job), for barrels of cognac left behind by the fleeing Nazis (they were too big for the Infantry men to carry) and for wooden-wheeled cannons abandoned along the France-Germany border at World War I’s end (the 537th replaced the rusty parts and used the guns for harassing fire, lobbing shells into enemy territory to confuse the Nazis).
“We liberated many things,” Low says. “Us towing those WWI cannons behind our jeeps was a sight.”
Management skills and personality to spare
Low is a marvel himself. He receives visitors in the porch behind his home, and he insists on walking down the ramp that connects his living room to the space by himself, slowly but confidently with the assistance of a cane.
His voice is steady and his hearing is, if not keen, adequate. He’s quick with a smile and unafraid to chide Jamie when he tries to steer conversations. The love between father and son is touching, with Jamie kissing Avery on the head and smoothing out the hair that still grows behind his temples.
It is Jamie who organizes a display that helps Avery tell his story. A scrapbook full of photos and maps tracing the path of the 537th. A framed portrait of Jenny Low, Avery’s wife, whom he met soon after being called to active duty. She was working in the office of an Army ordnance depot in Texas where Avery had been assigned.
“I’ve never been much of a lover, but I fell in love with that little girl,” Avery says. “She never got rid of me.”
Low was in Manchester, England shopping for a birthday present for Jenny on the morning of June 6, 1944 when word spread of the D-Day invasion’s start. Low abandoned the gift search and jumped in his jeep to return to the 537th temporary headquarters in nearby Holmes Chapel.
He knew his group of specialists would be in the follow-up wave and he needed to finalize preparations. A mechanical engineering student and ROTC cadet at Georgia Tech when his call-up orders came, he’d shown prowess at managing men and operations. He was the second-ranking officer in the 537th, effectively a COO who worked closely with the master sergeant to keep things running.
“I wasn’t an expert in anything, but I could read a blueprint,” he says. “And I was organized.”
He also possessed a mischievous personality that endeared him to his men and fellow officers.
One morning in eastern France, he awoke to find a one-star general’s car parked outside the camp. The men had gone to a nearby town the night before to visit a brothel only to have their car “borrowed” by other revelers. So they “borrowed” another car in the parking lot, not noticing the markings on the door.
“I told them to remove the star and change the serial number,” Low says. “The one-star wasn’t going to want to explain why his car was there anyway.”
Then there was the day the 537th had to qualify at the rifle range. Low was doing his turn changing targets downrange when one officer, an expert marksman but an insufferable braggart, shouldered his gun. He fired a full round of shots, but instead of sending the tattered target back to him, Low signaled “Maggie’s Drawers,” a flag on a staff signaling the shooter had missed the target.
“He was up there adjusting the sights and checking the gun, all frustrated,” Low says. “We eventually had to let him in on the joke. He didn’t find the humor in it. The rest of us did.”
Low also liked to prank his closest friends. The 537th officers shared a tent when on the move, and Low’s best friend, Lt. Leroy Kinney, had packed along an air mattress where everyone else slept on the ground. As soon as Kinney fell asleep, Low or another officer would crack open the valve. By the morning, the mattress was flat and Kinney was sleeping on the ground, too.
Then there were inspection days. As Low likes to say, the members of the 537th weren’t soldiers but were expected to act like them. So they used shortcuts, such as putting paper clips in their trouser legs to make them appear creased and crisp and using empty oatmeal boxes to fill up their backpacks.
“We thought we were so smart, then the sergeant comes in, takes out his billy stick and whacks that pack,” says Low as he pantomimes swinging a club. “Hollow boxes make a distinct sound.”
The last of the best generation
Such memories have stuck with Low through the decades. He returned to the U.S. in the winter of 1945 as part of the Magic Carpet boatlift that brought 8 million service members home. He and Jenny settled in Atlanta so Low could finish his engineering degree and they started a family.
He later received orders to return to active duty at the outbreak of the Korean War, but by then he had two small children and a third on the way and received a deferment. He’d “played soldier” in one combat zone and had no desire to do so again in another part of the world.
By then he’d begun his career as a division engineer with Atlantic Coastline Railroad. He’d spend 40 years with the company, staying with them through mergers first with Seaboard Coastline and later with CSX.
Avery and Jenny Low had nine children together and the couple lived happily well into their late 90s. Jenny died in 2021 at age 98. Avery and Jamie still light a candle in memory of her each time they sit down for dinner.
As for his own mortality, Avery will tell you he’s looking forward to his 105th birthday in September without a trace of either pride or concern. Yet he understands he’s among the last still alive to come ashore at Normandy during the Allied invasion of 1944.
“I’m glad people still take the time to recognize what happened on D-Day, the sacrifice,” Low says. “It changed history.”
About the Author
Adam Van Brimmer is a journalist who covers politics and Coastal Georgia news for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
