Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994 TAG: 9406170128
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
PARIS - Au revoir, it's over.
The triumphant return to France by World War II veterans of the 29th Division ends today as most of them board planes to return to the United States.
It's been a tiring 10 days for the veterans, their families and the considerable media contingent that traveled with them. It's also been a time of great emotion and satisfaction for the aging men, who have been warmly welcomed by people they helped free from Nazi tyranny a half-century ago.
Almost every day has been filled with parades, ceremonies, military music and speech-making from daylight until dark. And it doesn't get dark until 11 p.m.
Friday was more of the same, although the crowd in Paris was less attentive than those in the small towns of Normandy.
After the buses let the veterans off on the famous Champs Elysees between Burger King and McDonald's, former Staff Sgt. Bob Slaughter of Roanoke called out the marching orders to the ranks. About 200 veterans of the 29th Division followed a French color guard and three veterans with wheelchairs up the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe.
The traffic at the Place d'Etoile, one of the busiest traffic circles in the world, grudgingly ground to a halt as the veterans crossed over to the arch. There they were met by a French military band and officers who joined National Guard generals from around the United States in a wreath-laying ceremony. When the Star-Spangled Banner was played, the veterans and families sang along, as customary.
For eight days, loudspeakers on the arch have broadcast the sounds of the ocean lapping on the shore, and Friday the sounds provided a symbolic backdrop for the men who landed in June 1944 on the beaches of Normandy.
The 29th, a National Guard division from Virginia and Maryland before the war, landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, next to the 1st Division. It encountered the toughest German resistance on any of the five invasion beaches on D-Day.
U.S. soldiers marched through the arch for the first time in 1919 and again at the end of World War II. "I'm glad to see the good ol' boys from Virginia and Maryland get here," said Lynchburg veteran Bob Sales after the ceremony.
"Some [famous] people have come down here, including Hitler," he said. "You're really standing in history when you look at this building."
Slaughter, who had to cope with 15 generals - some French, some American - giving him orders for the parade, described the event as "chaos and bedlam." He reported that one of the veterans had suffered a bloody lip when struck by a policeman's motorcycle.
But the tall Roanoker, who has received as much media attention as any veteran - and maybe more - during this year's 50th anniversary of D-Day, said he was particularly gratified to have marched on the avenue in the opposite direction of the Nazis who entered the city.
Slaughter, who also was chosen to walk with President Clinton on Omaha Beach on Monday, has always been somewhat shy when asked why so many people come to him to hear about D-Day.
He speculated that maybe it's because he was one of the few vets on the trip who landed in the most dangerous part of the beach early on the morning of the invasion. He said, too, that Stephen Ambrose of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans and Don McKee, president of the 29th Division Association, had given his name to reporters.
Lucille Boggess of Bedford said after Friday's ceremony in Paris that she has enjoyed being with the veterans and French people. "I guess I'm ready to go home," she said. Boggess lost two brothers on D-Day.
Although a few of the men had the chance to shake Clinton's hand, the ceremonies on June 6 at the cemetery above Omaha Beach may have marked the veterans' least favorite day in France.
Thousands of people showed up for the ceremony, making the bus ride on Normandy's narrow coastal roads excruciatingly slow. And, as is the case when well-known politicians and celebrities are involved, the ceremony itself was tightly managed, leaving little room for free movement at the cemetery after the veterans arrived.
Planners of the event may have expected a lot more people to show up than actually did; but, if they had, the 29th Division veterans who arrived a little late anyway might never have made it to the beach.
After the ceremony, the young servicemen and women staffing a courtesy tent for veterans found themselves with boxes full of commemorative calendars and June 6 canceled World War II stamps still on their hands. Giving only a few away to each person at first, the soldiers began handing them out by the fistful when it became apparent the alternative might be burying them on the beach.
The media contingent following the veterans found itself lower on the pecking order after the arrival of the White House press corps. Stepping out the back of the press tent, reporters faced a bank of porta-potties with "White House Press Only" signs on some.
One thing that has impressed people making this trip is the U.S. idea of the citizen-soldier.
Although it started out as an outfit of Marylanders and Virginians, the draft turned the 29th into a cross-section of America. Among those on the trip were Italian-Americans from New York, Irish-Americans from Massachusetts and at least one Native American, a Chippewa from Wisconsin.
They were people like Alexander J. Pater, 78, a former Spam salesman from Lowell, Mass., and Father David Silva, who made a promise to enter the priesthood as he faced death on Omaha Beach.
Friday morning at the Arc de Triomphe a young French girl, Sophie Besson, approached Pater and handed him a letter.
"In 50 years," she wrote, "when I reach 65 years old, I could be proud to say to everybody that I had the privilege to talk to you.
"What you did was wonderful. I admire you to have fought for a country that wasn't yours, I mean to have defended us."
These are the everyday people who fight the wars that the politicians create and the generals get credit for winning.
by CNB