The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 25

WILLIAM DABNEY:
Last of a NobLe Group

Earnest Fulcher (holding meat) survived the kitchen
as well as the war. The cook to his right shot down
an aircraft during battle.
Above are scenes from D-Day.

It was an exhausting day, one of highs and
lows, but never one where he feared dying. "It
practically took my life," he says, "but it never
entered my mind that I was in any danger."
After the war, he spent time aimlessly
drinking, playing old-time music and wandering the coal mines. His travels took him as far
away as Washington State before he ended up
in a tiny Pentecostal Church in West Virginia
one night, where he "was saved" and began a
career preaching the Gospel. He has now
preached for 70 years, including 56 at the
church behind his house near Christiansburg,
and 14 in tents.
He "met a young lady who was in college"
named Marvareen Porter, fell in love and they
were married for 68 years until her death.
"My wife was my right hand for all those
years," he says.
He had finally found a home. ✪

hen William Dabney, a
member of the 320th AntiAircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion
(621 men, four batteries), died in
December of 2018, the last known
African American D-Day veteran
from Virginia was gone.
Dabney was one of the
focuses of Linda Hervieux's 2015
book "Forgotten: The Untold Story
of D-Day's Black Heroes." The title
bordered on irony, since the book
changed that dynamic.
Dabney enlisted at 17 in 1942,
as Hervieux explained: "Though
many of his friends dreaded army
service, Bill, who was too young to
be drafted, longed to join them. If
you weren't called up ... 'you were
all but eliminated with the ladies.'
They thought you were 4-F ..." (not
acceptable for military service.)
By D-Day Dabney was a
19-year-old corporal working with
the vital barrage balloons. In 2009,
Brian Knowlton of the New York
Times wrote: "The barrage
balloons were on long cables that
would be caught by the wings or
propellers of German airplanes,
and if the planes pulled the
balloons into contact, explosives
on the helium balloons would
destroy the aircraft. On D-Day,
three German fighters were
downed by barrage balloons as
they tried to strafe the American
soldiers on the beach."
Hervieux gave this description
of Dabney's landing on D-Day:
"Sometime after the medics
landed, Bill Dabney plunged from a
flat-bottom metal boat into the
waist-deep water, holding his rifle
above his head, and staggered
toward Omaha Beach. He
breathed in a bitter mix of cordite
and burning gasoline. Deafening
booms mingled with the incessant
brrrppp brrrppp chatter of the

William Dabney (left) , stands with
long-time friend Harry Curtis Jr.

machine guns and the sip sip sip
of the bullets splashing across the
fine golden sand. Hot metal hit
Dabney in the leg. He taped up the
wound and kept going. A barrage
balloon about the size of a
Volkswagen Beetle had been
clipped to his belt, but now it was
gone. The teenager from Roanoke,
the baby of his group once teased
for volunteering to serve, was now
Corporal Dabney, a balloon crew
chief. He was in charge of getting
himself, three other men and that
gasbag to shore. Where did that
damn balloon go? He couldn't
worry about it. Now it was time to
save himself."
After the war, Dabney earned
an electrical engineering degree
(meeting his wife Beulah in
college), but racism kept him from
getting a job. He opened a
Roanoke carpet-laying business,
which he ran for 40 years, often
sending white workers where he
knew he would not be welcome,
Hervieux wrote. In 1951, he
married Beulah; they had three
sons: Vincent, Michael and
Marlon.
He was one of the last known
survivors of the 320th in 2009
when he was awarded the French
Legion of Honor on the 65th
anniversary of D-Day. Dabney died
at 94, survived by his wife of 66
years and his sons (with three
grandchildren and seven great
grandchildren). -DS
75TH ANNIVERSARY

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

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