Saluting a Hero

           Last month I took my grandson Matthew for a haircut in Wilmington.  While I hung around waiting for him to be sheared, an old man walked in and sat down to wait his turn.  When I noticed that he was wearing a cap identifying him as a WWII veteran, I went over and sat next to him.

          I began a conversation by telling him about a good friend of mine who had been a bombardier flying missions from England.  The old man asked, “He wasn’t the one who bombed St. Lo, was he?”  St. Lo is a town in Normandy that was turned to rubble as part of the D-Day invasion.  “Were you there?” I asked.  He replied that he had landed on Utah Beach with the Army’s 5^th Infantry Division at 6:00 a.m. on D-Day, wading ashore with water up to his neck.  He pointed to a ribbon pinned to the back of his cap.  It had five stars on it and what looked like a grain of sand.  He said proudly, only those who landed on the beach that day have one of these.”
          For the next several minutes the old veteran kept me spellbound with tales of the liberation of France (and St. Lo) and the dash across Germany.  When he paused, I chimed in with a tale of my own.  I told him that I had been a student in Belgium in the early 60s and that one day an American friend of mine and I decided to take a break from our studies to visit the great cathedrals of northern France.  Our first stop was in Amiens, which is in the northwestern part of France and not all that far from Normandy.  After checking out the cathedral we stopped at a local bar for a late afternoon beer.  We were alone in the place except for four older men seated at a table across the way.  They kept staring at us.  Finally, one of them came over to our table and asked, “Are you boys American?”  When we told him that we were, he stuck out his hand and said, “I want to thank you for what you Americans did for us in the war.”  I remember how that sent shivers up my spine.
          When I finished my story, the old veteran looked at me in the eye and said, “Many people thank me, but very few take the time to talk to me.”  He was pleased that I had.  I told him I felt privileged for having had the opportunity to meet a real hero.
          By then my grandson had gotten his G.I. haircut and came over to us.  Matthew has always been interested in the military, and when I told him that the man sitting next to me had been part of the D-Day invasion, his jaw dropped and his eyes grew big as silver dollars.  He shook hands with the veteran and thanked him.
          We celebrated the 70^th anniversary of D-Day this year.  Veterans Day celebrated this week reminds us of the debt we owe to those heroes who risked their lives for us on that day.  We should never pass up a chance to say thank you. With so few WWII veterans remaining among us, we may soon not get another.