THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994 TAG: 9406070335
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY GERMANOTTA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940607 LENGTH: COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, FRANCE
Buses of veterans were stacked up along narrow country roads, where French police officiously screened the traffic, barring all but approved vehicles from the area near the ceremony where President Clinton would speak.
{REST} Some veterans decided it wasn't worth the struggle to reach the site, a cemetery where 9,386 Americans are buried. But the majority were like William ``Buck'' Williamson, who hit the beach June 6, 1944, as a member of the Norfolk-based 111th Field Artillery Battery.
He admitted there were moments, as he waited in the lines of veterans and their families to get through the handful of metal detectors, when he considered leaving.
But he stuck with it.
``I figured I had to be here,'' he said after the ceremonies. ``I was determined to see it through, and now I'm glad I did.''
Before the event, there had been some grumbling among Virginia's D-Day vets about President Clinton, a commander-in-chief who had avoided war himself during the Vietnam conflict.
But Clinton's speech won at least grudging respect from these war heroes. ``He's got a good speech writer,'' Williamson said later.
Clinton described the first few chaotic hours of D-Day and how the battle was finally won by a few men who refused to give in.
``One by one, they got up,'' Clinton said of the GIs who had made the initial assault. ``They inched forward. They banded together . . .
``At that exact moment, on these beaches, the forces of freedom turned the tide of the 20th century.''
When the president described those men mustering the courage to go over the bluffs, Hal Baumgarten of Jacksonville, Fla., began to weep.
Baumgarten was one of those GIs, a member of Virginia's 116th Infantry Regiment, and many of his friends were buried in the orderly rows of graves that served as a backdrop to this American remembrance.
``He hit a nerve,'' Baumgarten said later. ``It made me think of my buddies.''
In fact, Clinton paid special homage to those friends.
Baumgarten had trained with Bedford, Va.'s A-Company and hit the beach just moments after they did, in time to see most of his friends die.
When Clinton described the cemetery, he noted that there were 33 pairs of brothers buried there, one father-and-son tandem, and men from tiny Bedford, Va.
The town actually lost 19 men on D-Day. Eight of them are not buried in the cemetery; the bodies either washed out to sea or were brought home to rest at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
After the ceremony, Baumgarten, who was up front, shook Clinton's hand. The president came back into the crowd a few minutes later, searched out Baumgarten and grabbed the retired physician's hand once more.
``He said, `Thanks again,' '' Baumgarten said. ``I was surprised that he remembered.''
It was a day for memories, and in the crowd of some 8,000 World War II veterans were a handful of men who recalled when the military was segregated and black units either fought alone or performed only support functions.
Seldon Murchison, 70, of Fayetteville, N.C., served with the 1330 General Service Engineers, building roads and fixing bridges across France and Germany. He arrived in Normandy weeks after D-Day, served throughout Europe and, after the war had been won there, was sent to fight in the Pacific.
When he left the service after the war, he wanted to forget all about it, he said. The military had not welcomed black men like him. ``It doesn't bother me now,'' Murchison said. ``It bothered the hell out of me then, but I learned to live with it.''
He became a teacher and then a school administrator in North Carolina. An old Army buddy had been bugging him for months to return for the 50th anniversary celebration. Murchison tried to persuade his wife to go instead.
Monday, as the clouds parted and bright sunshine seemed to arrive on cue for President Clinton's address, Murchison said he was happy she had persuaded him to go. Every experience had been memorable.
``I think I'm going to come again one of these days,'' he said, ``and bring her back.''
{KEYWORDS} D-DAY WORLD WAR II NORMANDY
by CNB