Wiregrass vets recall war experiences

David Rice spent World War II with Gen. Patton’s 3rd Army and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, where he lost two close friends.

When the Wiregrass Honor Flight veterans arrived at the World War II Memorial, they were greeted by former Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas.

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Dole posed with veterans and shared stories. He spends at least an hour every Saturday greeting veterans at the memorial, and often comes during the week when his health allows. Rice knows how he feels. He originally signed up to fly on an Honor Flight from Prattville last year, but the flight filled up and he was unable to go.

“I’m healthy enough to go now,” Rice said. “I don’t know about later on.”

Rice and the rest of the Honor Flight vets made their way to the piece of the memorial honoring Alabama’s service. A special wreath-laying ceremony was held and veterans had their pictures made there. Rice signed up for military duty on May 31, 1941.

He remembers being sworn in at Fort McClellan in Anniston in December of 1941, days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He landed on Omaha Beach in June of 1944, and fought campaigns in Northern France and Luxembourg, as well as other places.

“We had about 12 months of steady fighting over there. A lot of it was in blizzards, lots of snow,” Rice said. “It was rough. You just do what you have to do.” After the war, Rice reenlisted with the Air Force. When he got out, he enjoyed a career in telephone maintenance. He lives in Ozark.

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There are 4,000 shining gold stars at the World War II Memorial, each one representing 100 Americans who died in World War II.

When Dan Walding stepped inside the arched structure, he was thinking about Joe Mercer. Dan and Joe were high school buddies from Dale County.

They joined the military together and took basic training together. Before they deployed overseas to prepare for D-Day, Walding remembers the last words he ever spoke to his friend.

“See ya in France, Joe.” Walding was among the first to step on Utah Beach at Normandy, France, on D-Day. He was so vulnerable to the onslaught of German gunfire, his superiors thought he would be a certain KIA. And from the moment he stepped into the waters and made his way toward the beach, Walding almost died several times.

Sniper fire whizzed by. At one point, Walding turned his head when he thought he saw the taillight on his jeep. It caused his head to move just enough to miss a bullet that would certainly have killed him. As he moved up onto the beach, things didn’t get any better.

“They shelled the living daylights out of us,” Walding said. He stayed on the beach for two days before finally moving forward. Later on, he was asked to be the front man for a group that was screening for the 3rd Armored Division, engaged in a race with the German Army through France to Belgium. If the 3rd Armored Division could beat the Germans to a strategic point, it would effectively cut off the country and give the Americans a huge strategic advantage.

Walding led the group on his jeep, along with another soldier. They were extremely vulnerable at the front. At one point, Walding asked his superior if they could get a tank to lead the way.

“I was told it was cheaper to lose two men on a jeep than five men on a tank,” Walding said.

But Walding led the group through France and into Belgium, often driving his jeep in the dark of night. He had the best eyesight in the group. Three weeks after D-Day, Walding learned his friend was killed during the initial invasion. Walding left Europe in April of 1945. When Germany surrendered May 8, Walding was waiting for a bus to go from Atlanta to Montgomery.

He processed out the next year, but rejoined in 1957 and retired again in 1970, then went into banking.

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Tom Stovall has been behind the Iron Curtain. He’s seen Paris on fire. He has seen more of the Stalag Luft III prison camp than he would like. He saw Berlin before the wall fell.

On Saturday, Stovall walked underneath the Pacific arch of the World War II Memorial. The memorial is filled with inscriptions, quotes and tributes to practically every aspect of the war. It can’t help but bring back memories.

Stovall had been a part of more than 70 near-flawless bombing missions with “The Crusaders” in World War II. He had just returned from a bombing mission in France when he was asked to fill in for a bombardier in another bombing group. Stovall, a self-described positive thinker who always exuded confidence, agreed. But this time, for some reason, he had a strange feeling about the bombing run.

“I had this feeling like I was going to the electric chair,” Stovall recalled. As soon as his plane dropped its bombs, it took heavy fire. “We got hit. There was an explosion. We had to get out,” Stovall said.

He and the plane’s copilot were the only ones to survive. He parachuted into the English Channel and landed about 100 yards from shore, right in the middle of a bunch of German soldiers. It was six days before the D-Day invasion. He spent part of the next year in Stalag Luft III, one of the more infamous prisoner of war camps and the one used as the model for the movie “The Great Escape.”

He remembers marching almost 50 miles with other POWs as the cold winter hit and the food got scarce. During one stretch, Stovall remembers fishing out some powdered milk from his meager supplies and scrubbing some snow off the top of a tombstone to make ice cream.

When he was liberated almost a year later, he weighed 95 pounds. Stovall, whose grandfather fought in the Civil War, retired from the military 31 years ago and went on to a successful career with TG&Y and Sears.