The Roanoker - March/April 2019 - DDay16

Far left: Bob Slaughter
was surrounded by
schoolchildren at the
50th anniversary D-Day
ceremonies in France.
Left: Bob Slaughter at
the Memorial he
founded.

"By the time they were retrieved, those healthy,
nearly always smiling faces had vanished
forever, replaced by the bloated, dark blue
ones of combat death which makes
individuals so unrecognizable."
Here, finally, the horror hit Slaughter
full-force:
"The incoming tide brought with it the bodies
of hundreds of our proud regiment. Scores of
our men with blood -stained shirts were rolling
in the surf amongst the helmets, assault jackets,
gas masks and M-1 rifles..."
And left him with one searing image of D-Day:
"It's simple faces. Faces of young men last
seen in the dark." Among them: lifelong friends
and others with whom he had ridden to the
Normandy shore, men who, within the first
three or four hours, were dead, their bodies
floating in with the tide. "By the time they were
retrieved, those healthy, nearly always smiling
faces had vanished forever, replaced by the
bloated, dark blue ones of combat death which
makes individuals so unrecognizable."
By nightfall, Slaughter and his exhausted
men fell into shallow foxholes and slept. When
dawn came, they saw they were only 25 yards
from German soldiers.
For 11 months, he and his companions fought
across France, liberating the small towns and
villages around them. Then, it was on to the
banks of the Elbe in Germany.

THE FINAL SALUTE

Twice, injuries threatened to end his life;
once, within minutes of being assigned to a
French hedgerow, where a sniper creased his
forehead when he looked up to survey his new
territory. That injury was so bloody he thought
he was dying. The next experience was worse.
Hit above his right kidney by shrapnel and paralyzed from the waist down, he managed to
crawl to a rocky streambed where his platoon
leader gave him first aid and two medics carried
him and a wounded staff sergeant to the hood of
a Red Cross Jeep and got him to safety by running through the streambed in reverse until
they could turn around. After each experience,
Slaughter was treated and returned to the front.
On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe was over.
Along the way, in the midst of war's surreal landscape, Slaughter observed all the ironic, humorous, terrifying, surprising and generous
emotions that make up the human condition.
There was the time he gave a Russian soldier
with bad teeth a few cigarettes and a bar of
scented soap, only to watch in disbelief as the
soldier ate the soap. The afternoon when a beautiful German girl invited him to dinner at her
family's home and insisted he bring his rifle, a
caveat that proved vital when 10 or so Russian
POWs banged on the door seeking food and
supplies.
Over the 337 days between D-Day and V-E
(Victory in Europe) Day, the 14,000 division
members suffered 20,111 battle casualties,
including 3,720 deaths, the second highest of
any division in the war.

The Roanoker - March/April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - March/April 2019