My name is Will Harris and I am an intern at the National
D-Day Memorial. My main focus as an intern this summer is my research project
which focuses on Roanoke, Virginia’s National Guard company. D Company of the
116th Regiment, 29th Division was in the same battalion as the famous “Bedford
Boys” of Company A. Company D landed just behind A Company on Omaha Beach and
suffered a similarly large number of dead and wounded. One of the dead was
their Company Commander Captain Walter O. Schilling.
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| Captain Walter O. Schilling |
Walt Schilling is representative of the concept of a
citizen soldier. As a member of the National Guard, he was willing to put his
civilian career on hold to defend his nation. Unlike most Army officers in
World War Two, Capt. Schilling did not attend the United States Military
Academy or any other military college, but instead rose through the ranks. Well
respected by his men for his leadership during the 29th’s preparation for the
Normandy assault, Capt. Schilling made it his mission to lead from the front.
Capt. Schilling’s leadership style and service as a
citizen soldier is similar to that of the character of Capt. Miller in Steven
Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan. Captain Miller left his job as a high
school English teacher to join the Army and eventually serve as the Company
Commander of C Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion. Miller, like Schilling,
understood the importance of leading his men through his own example, even if
the orders they received seemed suspect or unusual.
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| Snapshot from the movie, "Saving Private Ryan" |
While the character of Captain Miller is fictional, he
and Walt Schilling represent the hundreds of Captains and Lieutenants who went
ashore on D-Day with the mission of leading their men onto the beaches. This
proved to be an enormous task with communications almost non-existent and
German defenses preventing any type of coherent advance. The surviving officers
rallied what men they could, and lead them in the destruction of German
emplacements and the eventual exit from Omaha Beach.
The 4,413 names on the D-Day Memorial’s necrology wall
are of officers and enlisted men who gave their lives so that France could be
liberated and the Nazi regime overthrown. Each name has a story of sacrifice
attached to it that cannot be forgotten.
-Will
Sources:
Slaughter, John R. Omaha Beach And Beyond: The Long March
of Sergeant Bob Slaughter.
St.
Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2007.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0334796/quotes
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