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Natalee Waters / The Roanoke Times Command Sergeant Major Hubert Williamson, a member of the 29th Division, bows his head during the dedication of the National D-Day Memorial on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, while talking with fellow D-Day veterans, Williamson smoked a Philles Perfecto cigar. He started smoking them when he liberated a German soldier in Dusseldorf, Germany during the war. |
BEDFORD - This time, they arrived by bus, climbing down slowly on a hot, humid and sunny day, nearly six decades after the horrific ordeal that proved their heroism in a battle that changed the world. They were marked by their uniforms, some with medals, many wearing overseas caps, that identified them as veterans.
Decades earlier, on June 6, 1944, they had manned battleships, or rushed off boats into the cold sea, or parachuted behind enemy lines near Normandy, France - soldiers in the greatest land, sea and air invasion in history.
The horror, sorrow, fear and heroism were recalled as that generation of men who waited 57 years to be recognized were honored Wednesday at the dedication of the National D-Day Memorial.
The 2-hour ceremony came after a 14-year, $14 million crusade by Roanoke D-Day veteran Bob Slaughter. It was a pageant of patriotism. Small American flags, some carried by hand, others waving from veterans' hats, dotted the memorial's middle plaza where all of the thousands of seats were taken by 9 a.m.
The skies were filled with the soft rumble of World War II-era P-51 Mustang fighters, and, at the end, the thunder of F-15 jets, which passed over in a missing man formation.
Music from a military band started the program. It ended with the echoing booms of a 21- cannon salute, and the soulful, spine-tingling mourn of taps from a lone bugle.
President George W. Bush, who delivered the keynote address, was visibly moved by the ceremony. By some accounts, a tear rolled down his cheek as he spoke. By others, his lower lip quivered.
"You have raised a fitting memorial to D-Day, and you have put it in just the right place - not on a battlefield of war, but in a small Virginia town, a place like so many others that were home to the men and women who helped liberate a continent," the president said.
"Upon this beautiful town fell the heaviest share of American losses on D-Day ... When people come here, it is important to see the town as the monument itself."
Wednesday's event was the second big gathering at the D-Day Memorial. The first was last year, on Memorial Day, when the 44-foot-tall Overlord Arch was dedicated, but the sprawling granite and concrete memorial had hardly been begun.
Last year, veterans were teary eyed and somber. This year, after weeks of rain, the morning's bright sunshine cast a celebratory glow. Veterans arrived hours before the ceremony began, smiling and laughing.
They were the stars of the show. Those who weren't signing the programs of young girls and boys three generations younger were posing for photographs or giving interviews to hundreds of American and international journalists.
As Thomas Mayhew waited in line about 8 a.m. to enter the memorial, the 80-year-old Franklin County resident reflected how the recent attention to D-Day helped him to start talking about his own experiences.
An anti-aircraft gunner in D-Day's fourth wave, he recalled that as soon as the boat he landed in was emptied of soldiers, it was filled with the wounded.
Carl Lampe, 82, traveled from Ohio to join about 10 members of the 29th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop. They stood out in line with their bright blue "29 Let's Go" caps.
Lampe lost his helmet on the beach in D-Day. Before shrapnel struck him in the head and knocked him unconscious, he recalled trying to take a helmet off a soldier lying on the ground, motionless. When the man opened his eyes, Lampe told him: "I'm sorry, I thought you were dead."
At least one veteran felt a bitterness that the memorial couldn't assuage. Gordy Smith of Chesterfield County said he still found his experiences in World War II too painful to talk about. As for the memorial, he said, "it's 57 years late."
When the ceremony began, 16,000 people were there to pay tribute to the largest massing of D-Day veterans since the invasion's 50th anniversary in Normandy in 1994. Much of the crowd had left their homes before dawn to make it to the memorial in time to get one of 11,000 folding chairs put in place earlier in the week.
"I am especially grateful to see several generations here," said Slaughter, the memorial foundation's chairman who has worked to educate younger generations about the men and mission behind the invasion.
"Today a dream has really come true," said Del. Lacey Putney of Bedford. "It's a once in a lifetime celebration for this community."
The most poignant moment came toward the end of the two-hour ceremony as the veterans stood to face President Bush as the U.S. Navy Band played Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," followed by taps.
Bush, who is shortly to leave this country on a foreign mission to Europe, touched on strong American-European relations during his keynote address. "When there is conflict in Europe, America is affected, and cannot stand by," he said.
Bush also paid tribute to the older brothers of Lucille Boggess - Raymond and Bedford Hoback who died on D-Day. Boggess is the chairwoman of the Bedford County Board of Supervisors.
"She has recalled that Raymond was offered an early discharge for health reasons," Bush said, "but he turned it down. He didn't want to leave his brother, she remembers. He had come over with him, and he was going to stay with him."
Kansas sculptor Jim Brothers used Raymond Hoback as his inspiration for "Death on Shore," which depicts a wounded soldier with a Bible falling from his pack. That was Hoback's Bible, and it was the only trace of him ever found on Omaha Beach.
Bush was introduced by Gov. Jim Gilmore.
The ceremony began with music, invocations and welcoming. Then 20 D-Day veterans read other veterans' written accounts of the invasion.
What followed were more readings, many of them infused into history: Eisenhower's D-Day order, a prayer by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a passage from Anne Frank's diary, and Winston Churchill's D-Day announcement.
By the time people dispersed at the ceremony's end, Gordy Smith, the veteran who had seemed fiercely bitter earlier, seemed in a lighter mood. "It was worth it," he said. He particularly enjoyed the speeches by Gilmore and Bush. He even talked a little of his Army service during the war, and how he loaded planes for Berlin air lifts after World War II.
"They should have done something for the Bedford guys a long time ago," he said.
Frank Johnson, a 79-year-old D-Day vet, said, "It just brought back an awful lot of memories."
During t he cannon salute, "I almost climbed under my chair," Johnson said. He called the memorial "very realistic" and said it evokes what he experienced: "The sadness, the grimness, the pain."
As he emerged from the middle plaza with his fellow D-Day veterans, Tom Linneman talked about how he was proud to have served in the Army's 29th Division - the same division to which the slain soldiers of Bedford belonged.
On Wednesday, which happens to be Linneman's birthday, he turned 79. On the real D-Day, he turned 22, and his brother, Jack, was killed.
Linneman said he would always consider the memorial's dedication, not as a day to celebrate, but as a day of remembering sacrifices.
Staff Writer MATT CHITTUM contributed to this article.