Our D-Day Fallen: Captain Walter O. Schilling

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.

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.

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

Book Review: Omaha Beach & Beyond

Hello everyone!  Does anyone else have one of those stacks in their house of all the books they want to read?  Well, Omaha Beach & Beyond has been on that stack since I started at the Memorial in June of 2012.  Over the last week while traveling and sitting in five different airports, I finally had a little bit of time to read Bob Slaughter’s, the founder of the National D-Day Memorial, memoir of his experiences in the war.  Once I started reading, I was hooked and did not want to stop.  Given that he was born on this day in 1925, I thought it would be fitting to bring you a short review of this book. 

Slaughter takes us on his journey from growing up in Roanoke, VA to his decision to join the military, his training, and finally the battlefields of Europe. He is descriptive, allowing the reader to follow his movements through the war and showing a depth that can only come from reading the memoirs of a veteran.  Slaughter's training in D Company of the Virginia National Guard began before his sixteenth birthday.  He had to ask permission of his parents to sign the waiver allowing him to join underage.  On February 3, 1941, his sixteenth birthday, Slaughter and the other men of the Virginia National Guard were inducted into federal service for his one year of training.  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Slaughter found himself in the service for the duration of the war, and at just nineteen years old, he would be leading the way on the first wave to hit Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

In his accounts of the Normandy landings and movement into the hedgerows, Slaughter wrote:

“Before the invasion, the 29^th Division numbered about fourteen thousand, and replacements poured in as men were killed or wounded.  By the time we took Saint-Lo six weeks later, it was said that the 29^th was really three divisions: one in the field, another in the hospital, and yet a third in the cemetery.  We endured those unbelievable hardships so we could participate in D-Day, which we knew would be huge, deadly, and unforgettable.  Yet we couldn’t fathom the terrible odds of surviving just one day fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy.”

Throughout the book you get a sense of what our soldiers were facing as they fought their way across battle-torn Europe.  You can feel the emotion throughout the book: fear about what he was facing, but most importantly pride in what he and his fellow servicemen accomplished.  This book is an excellent read for anyone who is interested in a more personal history and account of what our servicemen accomplished seventy years ago. 

I will leave you with one last passage, Slaughter’s account of revisiting Omaha beach forty-five years after the invasion:

Slaughter's copy of Eisenhower's "Order of the Day" signed by men he was surrounded by prior to the invasion

"Memories of that fateful day long ago overwhelmed me.  Tears welled up and began to run down my face.  I knew most of the forty brave men of my D Company who died that day on the sand and in the water…I could only wonder, shaking my head, how in the world had we ever managed to cross that long, slightly graded expanse of beach, moving upward into the teeth of a determined enemy?...It was much different on this gray and breezy afternoon forty-five years later.  I tried to recall the low tide, 200 yards lower, and the nearly five thousand ships of all kinds and descriptions out in the English Channel, forming the largest armada in history.  I also recalled other images: a burning landing ship, tank (LST) with its ramp down, an amphibious tank on fire, men and equipment floating in the water and nobody moving on the beach.  And then there were the ugly antilanding obstacles, made of timber posts with mines tied to them, that hindered our landings during the flooding tide.  The obstacles themselves were bad enough, but the early waves were forced to land at extreme low tide to avoid the potent twenty-pound teller mines tied at their apex.  This meant the battalion was forced to run across a much deeper stretch of flat sand, advancing 400-450 yard under withering fire.  Forty-Five years had done nothing to erase the vividness of these memories.”

Sgt. Bob Slaughter

Help us honor and remember the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of all those brave servicemen who fought to gain ground on D-Day and began the push to Berlin to end the war.  Join us on June 6, 2014 for a special commemoration of the 70^th Anniversary of the historic landings.  To find out more about events going on surrounding the commemoration, visit our website at http://www.dday.org/70th-anniversary-events.  We hope to see you here in June!

Until next time,

Felicia

Remembering Our Founder: A Tribute to John Robert Slaughter

John Robert Slaughter Portrait Bust Campaign

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation’s campaign to honor
the legacy of the founding chairman, John Robert Slaughter.

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation has launched a campaign to honor our dear friend and founder John Robert Slaughter.  Bob Slaughter brought the same energy, tenacity, and drive to the creation of the D-Day Memorial that he displayed so many years ago on Omaha Beach, and throughout the war.  

Mr. Slaughter entered the service in 1940 at the tender age of 15 (after convincing his parents that he wanted to join the National Guard and earn extra money for household expenses).  By the age of 19, he found himself engaged in the largest amphibious assault in history on the beaches of Normandy, France.   Bob served with Company D, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division.  Company D was a heavy weapons company that supported rifle companies in combat.  Slaughter was wounded twice while in France and was discharged in July 1945 at which point he returned to his home in Roanoke, Virginia.  He married in 1947, and he and his wife Margaret had two children.  Over the years, however, memories of what took place on that stretch of sand in Normandy continued to haunt him.  

In 1987, Bob Slaughter declared “We have no gathering place, no meeting hall, no memorial, where our country can collect its memories and the lessons we learned from D-Day.”  Shortly thereafter, Slaughter, along with several other supporters, formed a committee to raise money and search for an appropriate location for a small memorial.  

Slaughter, far left, with President Clinton in Normandy

After visiting Normandy on several occasions, the vision for a memorial took shape and in 1989, Slaughter’s small committee introduced a seventeen-member board of directors.  The committee faced a series of challenges and a discouraged board was near disbandment when a resurgence of interest in D-Day, due to the 50th anniversary in 1994, led to increased publicity and new momentum.  

Shortly thereafter, Bedford City officials donated eleven acres of land to the D-Day Foundation for the site of the proposed memorial and an additional seventy-seven acres was purchased by the Foundation to protect the site from further development.  

Mr. Slaughter served as the Foundation’s Chairman from 1994-2001.  Congress also adopted legislation designating the site a national memorial in 1994.  The Foundation hired its first employee in 1996 and the Memorial was officially dedicated by President George W. Bush on 6 June 2001.  

Plaque outside the Youth Learning Center at the Memorial

In 2007, Bob authored Omaha Beach and Beyond, an auto-biography, chronicling his wartime experience and the creation of the Memorial.  In 2008, The John Robert Slaughter Youth Learning Center (an authentic military hands-on history tent) was dedicated at the Memorial.  That area has always been and continues to be the hub of the Foundation’s education initiatives.

Bob Slaughter was a very special man and one who was respected and admired.  In his book in 2007, Bob noted “Now that I am in my eighties, I am well aware that the long march that began so many years ago is about to come to a halt.  I am proud to say my generation helped save the world from tyranny, prevent the extinction of an entire group of people, and preserve the democratic freedoms of our wonderful American way of life.  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.”

Slaughter with President Bush at the Memorial Dedication

While Bob is deeply missed, his legacy is preserved in perpetuity at the National D-Day Memorial.  We look forward to raising funds for the bust and accompanying plaque that will tell his story.

 

How You Can Help?  
Spread the Word!  
Make a donation or encourage others to donate.  

Click here to make a donation to support the portrait bust of John Robert Slaughter.

Click here to download a brochure to mail in your contribution.

Lastly, I would like to say thank you to everyone who came out yesterday to honor our nation's veterans.  It was a beautiful day and a wonderful ceremony as we came together to honor the servicemen and women who defend and protect our country.

Until next time, 

Felicia