On D-Day anniversary, veterans recall the Longest Day

There was blood in the water, tinting the roiling surf a pinkish hue. Bullets were whizzing past his head and blasting up spurts of sand from the beach. Bodies of American soldiers were “everywhere you looked.”

Yet a still seasick Cpl. Robert M. Spooner stooped to comfort a wounded comrade, and held the man until he died.

Decades later, that memory was vivid. “We had gone back to Omaha Beach, just where my dad had come ashore,” says his son, Ken Spooner, 56, of Buckhead. “We had gone to the Normandy American Cemetery, and then he went to the beach and was just standing there, staring.”

Because of his dad’s age, and the emotions washing over him like English Channel waves, Ken Spooner became concerned.

“I said, ‘Dad, you all right?’ He said, ‘I held a man right here on this very spot. He’d been shot in front of me and asked me not to leave him.’ ”

Robert Spooner, 90, of Tucker, was in the 116th Infantry Regiment, part of the storied 29th Division that spearheaded the first wave on June 6, 1944 -- D-Day. He remembers it clearly.

“We got off the big ship 16 miles out in the channel and got on the landing craft,” he says. “We were bobbing around like a cork. A lot of us vomited. The bullets were coming from every direction, but we had to go on.”

Spooner still drives, walks two miles a day and has a sharp memory.

But he doesn’t talk much about D-Day, though “I think about some aspect of it every day.”

Recently, he was among a group of veterans awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest citation that country bestows on men who helped liberate it.

The number of D-Day veterans is dwindling fast, but younger relatives like David Boggess, 45, of Smyrna, grew up hearing stories about the Longest Day and are keeping its memory alive. Two of his mother’s brothers, Raymond and Bedford Hoback, both were killed on the beaches. They were among 21 men from tiny Bedford, Va., where Boggess grew up, to die that day. The burg of about 6,000 people lost more men per capita than any other town, village or city.

“There were always events, dinners, honoring the ‘Bedford Boys,’” Boggess says. “My mom, Lucille Boggess, pushed for the National D-Day Memorial, with Bob Slaughter of the 116th, who just died last week and was buried June 2.”

Congress designated the sprawling site a national memorial in 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-Day. President George W. Bush officially dedicated it 11 years ago today.

Lucille Boggess, 83, recalls that telegrams about her brothers were delivered to the family on consecutive days, inspiring her involvement in the $24 million memorial to honor the 2,500 Americans who died on D-Day.

“Somebody found Raymond’s Bible on the beach and sent it home,” she says. “I have it now. His body was never found. Bedford is buried in France.”

A handful of D-Day veterans live in the Atlanta area, including Frank Naughton, 94, of Norcross, who parachuted into Normandy as a first lieutenant hours before troops hit the beaches.

Naughton, who also served in Korea and Vietnam and retired from the Army as a colonel, says that “probably one of the dumbest questions I’m asked is, ‘Were you scared.’ I probably was, but I had other things on my mind. I can tell you it didn’t feel good to get shot at.”