Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Sgt. Slaughter recounts D-Day experience in book

Bob Slaughter and President George W. Bush at the dedication of the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, in 2001.

Bob Slaughter was a teenager when he and the Virginia National Guard’s 116th Infantry Regiment stormed Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

“D-Day was huge for green National Guard Soldiers,” the 82-year old said with a chuckle during a telephone interview last week.

Slaughter writes of being jolted awake about 2 a.m. on June 6 by the clanging of his ship’s general alarm bell in his memoir, “Omaha Beach and Beyond: The Long March of Sergeant Bob Slaughter.” After forcing down a breakfast he really didn’t want, Slaughter said he and his fellow Soldiers “went to our sleeping quarters and strapped on our gear, readying to embark on the ëGreat Crusade,’ as General Eisenhower called it. It would be the largest air, land and sea battle ever fought in world history.”

Slaughter would come across Omaha Beach with Company D of the 116th - part of the same battalion commemorated in the best-selling “Bedford Boys,” by Alex Kershaw. The 116th lost nearly 1,000 men, and Slaughter’s D Company lost more than 70, 20 from his hometown of Bedford during the epic battle. Slaughter paused as he recalled Russell Ingram, George Johnson and Walter Schilling - who were among those killed on France’s beaches. 

“They gave their lives,” he said. “I don’t think people should forget that.”

Slaughter joined the National Guard at 15 and entered federal service on his 16th birthday in 1941, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Being called to war “was the last thing we were thinking about,” he said. “We had that great big ocean separating us from the belligerents.”

But, when the call to fight came, Slaughter said he and his fellow Soldiers “wanted to go, we wanted to do it. That was the reason we endured, to preserve democracy. And, once you’re in it, you don’t want to let your buddy down.”

Slaughter’s book vividly recounts his National Guard days through induction, training, deployment overseas and more training - all of which led up to D-Day.

“We went through more preparations for war than anybody,” he said. When the order to go to Europe and fight came in 1944, Slaughter said he was “glad to get into combat.”

Regular Army Soldiers called the Guardsmen “home nannies” and “weekend warriors,” the Roanoke resident said. But, the Guardsmen proved their mettle on the battlefield. Nine of the 116th’s officers were killed during the D-Day landing.

“It was a tough situation,” recalled Slaughter. “It was tough on the rest of us. We thought they [the officers] were invincible.”

Slaughter vividly conveys the reality of combat during World War II in his book with sweeping passages that literally place his reader on the battlefield beside him. In one passage, Slaughter describes hearing the 14-inch guns on the U.S.S. Texas “boom, boom, boom,” which was followed by “coveys of 2,000 pound missiles whining to their calculated destinations. We could actually see the projectiles spiraling as if thrown by a huge quarterback.”

Slaughter would be wounded twice as the 116th fought the Nazis across France, through Holland, and finally into Germany itself.

“We were right in the thick of it,” he added.

Slaughter was just 20 when the war ended in 1945. Two years later, he married and settled in Roanoke, where he worked for the Roanoke Times until he retired in 1987. Always active in veterans’ affairs, Slaughter was instrumental in creating the D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

“I am proud to say my generation helped to save the world from tyranny, prevent the extinction of a group of people, and preserve the democratic freedoms of our wonderful American way of life,” Slaughter concludes in his book. “I wouldn’t change a thing, except to wish that my dear Army buddies could be here to see and touch the magnificent National D-Day Memorial that was built for us all.”