He Never Thought He Was a Hero

I never get off the phone with a local World War II vet without feeling the tingling sense that I've been in the presence of a true hero.

I've never even met the fellow in person. I've only talked to him three, maybe four times, all for various stories I've been working on for use at the radio station. Today, it was because a French filmmaker had made a documentary about him.

Mister D-Day, as he's affectionately known in our area, doesn't think he did anything especially remarkable or special. He landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and against the odds, made it off again, to come back to a "normal" life here in southwestern Virginia. But always he had the nagging sense that people had lost the sense of sacrifice, had forgotten the importance of that day in Normandy when so many lost their lives. He couldn't get anyone else to take up the call, so he started a new battle himself - the battle to get a national D-Day memorial.

That was a battle he won. The memorial now stands at Bedford, a small community whose losses on D-Day itself per capita were the highest in the nation - the town's National Guard unit was among the first to hit the beaches.

But Mister D-Day doesn't think he's a hero. He tells me the heroes are the ones who made the ultimate sacrifice that day in 1944.

But I have to disagree. Mister D-Day is a hero. My dad, referring to his own father after his death, once said, "He didn't think he was a hero. Heroes never do." The same can be said for Bob Slaughter.