As Bud Moore boarded the troop transport that would finally bring him home, he closed his eyes and tried not to think of the horrors he'd seen the past year and a half. Then, he prayed.

Some of Moore's memories from his service in World War II would never fade. The first wave into Utah Beach on D-Day. The Battle of the Bulge. A total of five major engagements with the enemy. Five Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. Nearly nine full months on the frontlines, without so much as a day's break. Moore saw things virtually every day that no man should ever experience in a lifetime.

He won't discuss some things even now, more than 65 years later. They're better left unsaid.

At long last, the war was over. On Nov. 1, 1945, Moore stepped on board the U.S.S. Excelsior to begin the journey back home to Spartanburg, S.C. Unlike Gen. Douglas MacArthur, he would not return. He would not come back to this place that had cost him and so many thousands of others so dearly.

"When I walked on that gangplank, I looked up to the Lord and I said, 'Lord, if You'll just get me back these 5,000 miles I've got to go and get me back home, I promise You one thing. I won't be back.' And I ain't never went back," Moore said earlier this week.

He could not possibly have known that he would one day be one of the first 10 men elected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Moore would go on to win NASCAR championships with drivers Buck Baker and Joe Weatherly, as well as a Daytona 500 with Bobby Allison. Such honors didn't exist when Moore boarded that boat, not that it really even mattered. All that Moore cared about was that he was going home -- alive.

"In World War II, we killed everything that moved," Moore said bluntly. "If it was a dog or a bird or a person or who, it didn't make any difference. That's the same way the Germans were. They'd do the same thing."

Utah Beach

Beginning with the Nazi invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Adolph Hitler had held the vast majority of Europe in an iron grip for nearly five years as D-Day approached. Too many towns to count were reduced to rubble as Allied and Axis forces pushed each other to the brink, and millions lost their lives.

Bud Moore received five Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars for his service in World War II.

Moore received his draft notice on June 1, 1943, just a few days past his 18th birthday. A little more than a year later, he boarded a landing craft with other members of the 90th Infantry Division, which was attached to the 4th Infantry Division for the upcoming assault. The tiny craft was surrounded by others as far as the eye could see, and immediately, Moore knew that this was not just another drill.

The date was June 6, 1944, forever more to be known as D-Day.

Approximately 24,000 troops were headed for Utah Beach, the westernmost of five planned landing sites on the north coast of France. According to the Army's D-Day website, planners added it almost as an afterthought, hoping to use nearby Cherbourg as a major port as soon as possible. Although it was not as heavily defended as other striking points to the east, some 200 casualties were sustained on the sands of Utah Beach.

Bud Moore was nearly one of them. A machine gunner, Moore was weighted down with a 51-pound tripod and backpack as he stepped off the landing craft in the first of four planned waves onto the beach. Rather than moving into knee-deep surf, though, Moore and his comrades wound up in water very nearly over their heads. The worst few hours of Moore's life up to that point were about to begin.

"I stepped in a shell hole trying to get out of that water and went under," Moore said. "I [almost] got drowned. Finally, I did get out of there. I just headed straight across the beach, got on the other side and I sat down behind the sand dunes, still spitting up the water and everything to get to where I could breathe. I'd just turned 19 years old. I couldn't believe what was happening, all the guys getting hurt."

That's all Moore has to say about that.

Battle of the Bulge

Day after day, Moore fought his way across France. Three times over the course of the next few months, he was hit by shrapnel only to be bandaged up and sent right back to the front lines. When the 101st Airborne found itself surrounded in Bastogne, Belgium, during the infamous Battle of the Bulge, Moore headed there with elements of Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army.

“

I looked up to the Lord and I said, 'Lord, if You'll just get me back these 5,000 miles I've got to go and get me back home, I promise You one thing. I won't be back.'

”

-- BUD MOORE

"Patton pulled our division back, and we was in this little town," Moore said. "Patton was standing on the courthouse steps with this big microphone. He briefed us and said, 'I know you boys ain't had a hot meal and anything. ... We've got a bad situation. [The 101st is surrounded], and we've got to go up there and get 'em out, and we're gonna kill every S.O.B. on the way.'

"We did."

Moore received the first of two Bronze Stars for his service on D-Day and in the long months afterward. The second, basically, was for being at the wrong place at the wrong time during the Battle of the Bulge. As it was, Moore and a comrade captured a German regimental headquarters completely on their own.

The way Moore tells it, the incident began when he spotted a German soldier running in a house for cover. He opened fire on the windows with a water-cooled machine gun mounted on the dash of his Jeep, eventually setting the house on fire. One enemy fled the structure one way, while another came out with his hands in the air, surrendering.

That's one man captured, several more to go. Trying to get back to their company, Moore and his buddy took a wrong turn.

"We were supposed to have made a right-hand turn, but we didn't ... we kept going straight," Moore remembered. "We went down there maybe another 300 or 400 yards, and we run into this block building. We seen a couple German soldiers running in and out of it, so I fired the machine gun at them, around the windows.

"The Jeep driver, he could talk a little bit of German. We told [the already-captured German soldier] to go up there and get 'em out of there, [adding], 'If they don't come out, we'll bring some artillery in there and blow that building down.' ... I don't know how many enlisted men there were, and had five German officers. ... I couldn't believe it."

Imagine the sight, Moore and the Jeep driver triumphantly rolling back into company headquarters with more than 20 captured soldiers in tow. Moore had kicked up one heck of a fuss, and his lieutenant heard it all.

"My lieutenant said, 'Boy, what in the hell was going on over there?'" Moore said with a faint trace of a smile. "I told him, 'You sent us in a bunch of hell!' ... He couldn't believe we had all them German soldiers and had all these officers. He said, 'That's what all that racket was going on over there?' I said, 'Yep, that's what it was ... just me, me and the Jeep driver.' It was something."

Ricky Rudd famously taped open his eyes at the 1984 Daytona 500 as a driver for Bud Moore.

The Aftermath

Moore remembers all too well the date of his most serious injury -- it was Feb. 22, 1945, when a German round tore through his right hip. He'd been in combat since those first few steps onto Utah Beach the previous June. He reported back to his company on April 1, and just a couple of days later, Moore received yet another shrapnel wound.

That's five Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars.

Later that month, on April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin, Germany, and in the early morning hours of May 7, the unconditional surrender of all German forces was signed. The war in Europe was over.

"We did some celebrating, I'll tell you that," Moore said with a sly chuckle.

“

I left too many friends of mine over there. You know ... war is war, and war is hell. I'll put it that way. A lot of people don't realize just how bad it can be.

”

-- BUD MOORE

Although hostilities had ended in Europe, Moore fully expected to be sent to the Pacific, where war still raged viciously with Japan. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, however, the country was forced into surrender. Bud Moore had officially fired his last shot in anger.

Moore started tinkering with race cars not long after he returned to the United States. His interest in the sport grew through the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s, and he wound up winning hundreds of modified races with longtime friend Joe Eubanks behind the wheel. Moving on to the Grand National ranks, Moore helped field a Hudson Hornet for Eubanks with co-owner Phil Oates in the early 1950s and then turned the wrenches for Buck Baker's championship team in 1957.

Through the years, a mind-boggling assortment of drivers drove for Bud Moore Engineering. Joe Weatherly won Grand National championships for Moore in 1962 and 1963, and after Weatherly lost his life at Riverside in early 1964, the car owner went road racing for most of the rest of the decade and early the next. After returning full time to NASCAR, Buddy Baker swept both Talladega races and a couple other events for Moore in 1975. Bobby Allison won the 1978 Daytona 500 in Moore's famed No. 15 Ford.

Then came Benny Parsons and a kid by the name of Dale Earnhardt. Ricky Rudd, Morgan Shepherd and Geoffrey Bodine also won races while driving out of Moore's shop in Spartanburg. All told, entries fielded by Moore are credited with 63 wins, 298 top-five finishes, 463 top-10s and 43 poles in a total of 959 starts.

Moore was offered the chance to return to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He considered going back, but in the end, he just couldn't do it.

"I left too many friends of mine over there," Moore said quietly. Moments later, he added, "My wife [Betty] probably would've enjoyed going over there, but like I told her, 'You know how many nightmares I had after the war, and how much you used to wake me up and beat on me and do everything else?' I just felt like if I went back over there, I might start all that again.

"You know ... war is war, and war is hell. I'll put it that way. A lot of people don't realize just how bad it can be."

Related:
• Moore selected in second HOF class | Selection Video
• Veterans to ride along with Newman at Phoenix