The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 18

on the beach after losing his leg. It is a message
Slaughter carried with him through the combat
days and treasured all his life. It begins:
"You are about to embark on the Great
Crusade..."

40 Years Later
Bob and Margaret
Slaughter, shown here
55 years into their
marriage, liked to joke
that their union might be
a lasting one.

"I didn't really get serious about a D-Day
Memorial until after I retired in 1987, "he said in
2002, 20 years after the City of Roanoke had
turned down his first choice for a Memorial site:
Mill Mountain. But two years later, in 1994, he
was featured on the cover of The Washington
Post's Style Section. Writer Ken Ringle chose
Slaughter at the suggestion of Don McKee,
national commander of the 29th Division
Association.
Suddenly, the quiet Roanoker was a media
darling.
Other publications and news outlets sought
him for interviews. And he was everywhere, his
lanky image captured on television and in the
pages of national publications including
Newsweek and People. Even the White House

sat up and took notice, inviting Slaughter to be
one of three men to escort President Bill
Clinton to Omaha Beach on D-Day's 50th
anniversary.
It was the turning point for Slaughter's
dream.
"The 50th anniversary changed my life forever," said the man who was the subject of stories in The New York Times, The London Times,
The Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Pittsburgh
Gazette, The Philadelphia Enquirer, The Norfolk
Ledger-Star, The France West News, and of
interviews with Dan Rather on CBS, Frank Sesno
on CNN, The History Channel, and others.
The tide had turned. All things were
possible.
On Nov. 11, the City of Bedford, which had
endured the highest per capita fatality rate of
any community in America on D-Day, offered
the foundation 20 acres for the memorial, a site
Slaughter by then considered the perfect
location.
By September 1996, Congress warranted
Bedford as home of the memorial and the foun-

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The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019

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