Synopsis
Before D-Day, regular army soldiers called the National Guardsmen of Virginia’s 116th Infantry Regiment “Home Nannies,” “Weekend Warriors,” and worse. At Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, however, these proud Virginians who carried the legacy of the famed Stonewall Brigade showed the regular army and the world what true valor really was.
This moving World War II memoir captures the day-to-day comings and goings of G.I. Joe from pre–World War II National Guard days through induction, training, deployment overseas, and more training. It all leads to Normandy, when Sergeant Bob Slaughter came across Omaha Beach with Company D of the 116th Infantry 29th Division. But even that was only the beginning of a march that would take him and his fellow soldiers of Company D, at least those who survived, to Holland, the Bulge, and on into Germany itself—the long march to final victory in Europe.
Desperate for a decent paying job, John Robert Slaughter decided to join the National Guard in early 1941. At the young age of sixteen, he needed his parents’ permission, which they grudgingly gave when they realized how set he was on the idea. The possibility of actual combat duty seemed remote, not even a part of the decision. Then came Pearl Harbor.
Slaughter and the rest of the 116th Infantry went from stateside training to Tidworth Barracks on the Salisbury Plains of England. Late in 1942, Slaughter volunteered for special training as part of a new provisional ranger battalion. Much of the intense training was conducted in the Scottish highlands. The new rangers never saw combat before the men were disbanded back to their original units. Amphibious training followed as the Allies geared up for D-Day.
On June 6, 1944, Slaughter landed on Omaha Beach, “Bloody Omaha”: the 116th Infantry lost up to a thousand men, and Slaughter’s D Company lost over seventy, twenty from his hometown. And that was only the beginning of combat for the men of the 116th Infantry, as they fought the Germans across France. Slaughter survived a gunshot and mortar wound and continued the fight. His gripping memoir captures the honest feelings of a young man facing up to the challenges of war, and being one of the lucky ones who made it home.
John Robert Slaughter enlisted in the Virginia National Guard in 1941 well before Pearl Harbor. Just twenty at the end of the war, he married and settled in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1947. Upon his retirement from the Roanoke Times in 1987, Slaughter, who had become active in veterans affairs over the years, started to work on the creation of a memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of the American soldiers at Normandy. On June 6, 2001, the National D-Day Memorial was dedicated. Bob Slaughter lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
