THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994 TAG: 9406110299
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM STAFF REPORTS
DATELINE: 940611 LENGTH: Medium
The medal was awarded to them by the governor of Normandy in a ceremony at the little town of Vire, but many were surprised to learn from a local newspaper that the medal was more than a trinket of gratitude.
{REST} The medal was made of gold - another reminder of how much the people of Normandy valued their liberators.
\ THE EXTRA MILE: A French couple who had helped a family find the spot where a GI was captured by the Germans drove an hour to meet the family at a war memorial in Caen.
They just wanted to give the GI's widow a flower clipped from a 100-year-old Normandy tree. The widow wondered how she would get it through U.S. Customs.
\ SANDS OF OMAHA: Robert Sales of Lynchburg was the only man in his landing craft to survive Omaha Beach.
When he returned for the 50th anniversary commemoration, Sales filled two plastic bags with about 50 pounds of sand. He was having problems packing his clothes into his luggage because of the bags, and a roommate asked if he was going to dump some of the sand.
``I'll throw my clothes away first,'' Sales replied. He said he was taking the sand home to be used to cover his casket when he is buried.
\ FACE IN THE CROWD: In one of the little towns that welcomed the veterans, a woman searched through the GIs looking for a medic who had treated her leg when she was hit by shrapnel.
He was in the group, and not only remembered working on the girl, but told her he had a picture of her at his home in America. He promised to send her a copy.
\ GHOSTS NO MORE: Perhaps the most surprising reunion in Normandy happened to Charles Manning, 70, of Boston. As he stood by the 29th Division monument off Omaha Beach, someone in the crowd shouted his name.
When Manning turned around, he confronted a ghost from 1944.
``It was my best buddy from Boston,'' Manning said. ``I thought he had been killed.''
Manning last saw the man crawling on his belly, probing for land mines a few days before the war in Europe ended.
``I heard a terrible explosion and he flew up into the air and landed on his back, full of blood,'' Manning said. ``I thought he was dead.''
Instead, Manning learned in Normandy, medics had saved his friend's life. The two had lived 50 years in the same city not knowing the other had survived the war.
And so they met, appropriately, at a monument dedicated to the division's dead - each mourning the loss of the other.
{KEYWORDS} D-DAY WORLD WAR II NORMANDY
by CNB