Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 3, 1994 TAG: 9406030107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ST. LO, FRANCE LENGTH: Long
Hobbs was fighting the Germans about a mile outside this vital crossroads town, located at the entrance to the Cherbourg peninsula, when he was seriously wounded by an artillery shell and sent to the hospital for a 40-day stay.
That was after Hobbs, a squad leader, had seen many of his friends killed in fierce hedge-row warfare. Among them was little James Kozmo, a blond-haired kid from Connecticut who died in Hobbs' arms after accidentally pulling the pin on his own hand grenade.
"I just told him what a good boy he was," Hobbs said.
Although he didn't make it to St. Lo in 1944, Hobbs is here now, occupying the town with 500 of the former 29th Division soldiers and their family and friends, who have returned to France for the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
The 29th Division, a National Guard group from Virginia and Maryland before World War II, led the assault on the western half of "Bloody" Omaha Beach during the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France. The division's survivors left many of their friends and comrades buried here in the rolling Normandy countryside.
The old soldiers joined the local mayor and other dignitaries in remembering some of the fallen Thursday at a cemetery at Saint James, a beautiful medieval town near the border of Normandy and Brittany. On the cemetery's 28 acres, maintained by the United States, are the graves of 4,400 Allied soldiers.
Flanked by an honor guard of World War II French veterans - some who fought with Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army - St. James Mayor Michel Thoury thanked the dead for the peace and freedom they had helped bring to his town. After Thoury, Francis Cavel, the lieutenant governor of Normandy, explained how a few days earlier 4,400 French schoolchildren had placed the small French and U.S. flags and the lone daisies that decorated each of the white stone crosses and Stars of David.
"I could've very well been under one of those,'' said Bob Slaughter, a former soldier from Roanoke, looking out over the sea of marble. "This is something I don't want to ever forget," he said of the sacrifices the dead had made.
After the visit to the cemetery, the 29th Division caravan made its only sightseeing stop of an 11-day trip that otherwise will be packed with ceremonies and parades, highlighted by an international ceremony at the U.S. cemetery at Omaha Beach on Monday, the anniversary of the invasion.
Thursday afternoon, the group stopped to tour Mont-St.-Michel, a monumental stone abbey built between the 11th and 16th centuries that sits on a 293-foot-high granite outcrop tidal flat along the coast.
Former Col. Carroll B. Smith, of Charlottesville and the 116th Infantry Regiment, was standing on the cobblestones of the narrow walk leading up to the abbey. He was continually interrupted in front of the many tourist shops by well-wishers.
Two Brazilian women, one a journalist, congratulated him and asked to have their picture taken with him. Then, two Frenchmen who were about the colonel's age stopped to thank him - in words he was having trouble understanding - for their freedom. They explained they had been prisoners of war of the Germans in Poland for five years.
Normandy has opened its arms and hearts to D-Day veterans from Britain, Canada, the United States and other Allied countries.
The buildings in most towns, even the tiny ones, are decorated with French, British and U.S. flags. Large billboards everywhere welcome "our liberators."
Of course, there's a commercial aspect to this, too, and some welcome signs advertise wine and cheese. There even was one billboard touting a D-Day golf tournament.
Most of the 29th Division flew into Paris on Wednesday, adding their ranks to the hundreds of veterans flooding into France for the 50th, and probably last, large commemoration of D-Day. There were a few snafus, of course, if only to remind the vets that it was the Army they were in, after all.
At the airport, one of the buses was late in arriving and held up an entire group for about two hours. The vets said they knew the routine: "Hurry up and wait."
Aside from some mostly good-natured grumbling, however, the veterans seem happy to be back in the companionship of their old buddies and back in France to say goodbye one more time to those they left behind 50 years ago.
Today, the 29th Division group will be at the American Cemetery at St. Laurent above Omaha Beach. There, where many of the D-Day dead are buried, they will have a chance to visit quietly before President Clinton, French Prime Minister Francois Mitterrand and other international dignitaries pay their respects Monday.
Many of the men who from the Roanoke region who survived D-Day have returned to France to mark the 50th anniversary of their remarkable victory. Staff writer Greg Edwards will provide daily reports of their trip.
by CNB