Thursday, October 24, 2002
Roanoke's Bob Slaughter, 2 Bedford-area residents receive award
France presents 3 with Legion of Honor

"The Lady of Trevieres," a statue that is a gift from France, was also unveiled Wednesday at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

By JAY CONLEY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   BEDFORD - Bob Slaughter doesn't give up easily, and he can now officially add the French to a long list of those who admire his stalwartness. On Wednesday, he and two Bedford-area residents were awarded the Legion of Honor.

    As a lanky 19-year-old Army sergeant in World War II, Slaughter and his buddies from Roanoke fought through a German barrage of gunfire on a sandy beach in France on June 6, 1944.

    Historians have called the D-Day invasion the largest land, air and sea invasion ever completed.

    Slaughter has described it as hell. Nearly 40 percent of his battalion didn't survive the day.

    Back home in Roanoke decades later, he fought for 14 years to see his dream, the National D-Day Memorial, get built. It is on a hilltop overlooking Bedford, a small city that many believe lost more soldiers in the invasion per capita than any other American community. The memorial opened last year on the 57th anniversary of the invasion.

    On Wednesday, Slaughter was recognized for those efforts by receiving France's highest nonmilitary award, the Legion of Honor. That puts him in pretty esteemed company. Former Presidents Reagan, Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have all received the honor.

    It is the latest recognition for a man who is one of the most prominent D-Day veterans in the world.

    "I could not think of a more worthy recipient," said Guy Wildenstein, president of the American Society of the French Legion of Honor.

    French officials were so impressed by the D-Day memorial that Gen. Jean-Philippe Douin, the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor and a top official in the French government, came to Bedford to pin the medal on Slaughter personally. According to French officials, Douin normally presides only over ceremonies involving heads of state.

    "I accept this honor on behalf of all veterans of D-Day," Slaughter said to a crowd of about 200 people.

    To express his gratitude to donors who have financially supported the memorial's creation, he said, "to all of you, merci beaucoup."

    Also receiving the award were Bedford Mayor Mike Shelton and Smith Mountain Lake resident Evelyn Kowalchuk.

    Shelton spearheaded efforts for the National D-Day Memorial Foundation to acquire land in Bedford and has worked to create relationships between Bedford and French towns near where the invasion occurred in Normandy.

    He urged continued support for the memorial, whose nonprofit foundation has seen donations fall off since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a federal investigation of fraud charges against the foundation's former president, Richard Burrow, that began last October.

    "The history of the memorial must be preserved and built upon," Shelton said.

    Kowalchuk was a flight nurse who helped evacuate wounded soldiers by plane to England in the days after the invasion. One of only a few American women to receive the Legion of Honor, she accepted the award on behalf of the two dozen nurses who were in her Army outfit.

    "All were ready, willing, able and eager to do their duty," Kowalchuk said.

    A statue from France also unveiled Wednesday at the memorial offers a European perspective on the horrors of war, Wildenstein said.

    "The Lady of Trevieres" depicts a woman wearing a flowing dress and a French battle helmet. It is a reproduction of a World War I statue across from the town hall in Trevieres, France. In the days after the D-Day invasion, Allied forces liberated the French countryside village by village. Part of the statue's face was blown off as American forces battled the Germans in Trevieres. The reproduction unveiled at the memorial includes the disfigurement.

    Wildenstein said the disfigured statue "bore witness to the horror, the violence, the pain" of the invasion forces and of the French citizens caught up in the fighting.

    But the statue, only the second presented to the United States by France since the Statue of Liberty was given in 1886, also represents the friendship between the two countries and what Wildenstein said was France's eternal thanks for an invasion force nearly six decades ago that "halted the extermination of a people."

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