The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 29

Chuck Neighbor is 94 now and living at a retirement facility in Roanoke where he trudges around
on a walker.
"I'm pretty good at maneuvering this thing,"
he says, trying-with difficulty-to smile.
He lives with memories of the war, of being
wounded twice, of landing "knee deep in water"
with the famous 116th regiment of the 29th
Division at Omaha Beach, of carrying tanks and a
nozzle for his flamethrower. A few years ago, he
sat down in retirement and recounted his war
experiences in 381 pages, just nine of them dealing with June 6, 1944. But they were nine important pages.
"The night was more spectacular than the
Fourth of July. The artillery fire ahead, along
with flares and rounds of tracers from machine
guns, kept the sky aglow. All night long, troops,
trucks and guns moved past us going toward the
ever-advancing front. It certainly was apparent
that the beachhead had been established and
was growing steadily. Now, we appeared to be in
the rear in comparative safety. It had been a
long and harrowing day."

Neighbor was a teen-aged college freshman at
Emporia State in his native Kansas, washing
dishes to pay tuition, when he was drafted. "One
night I was listening to the radio and [President
Franklin] Roosevelt said he was going to have to
draft 18-year-olds." The call came shortly after
that. In January 1945, a large boat carrying troops,
the Isle de France, landed in Scotland and
Neighbor moved on to a base near the city of
Devonshire in Southwest England.
"It was so strange at first," he says. "I had 17
cents in my pocket when we landed."
The troops trained and waited and played cards
and went into town for "a few brews." They went
dancing. Neighbor had not been a drinker or
much of a dancer before Devonshire, but he
learned. He "got along well" with the British
townspeople and the period was relatively placid
as the 116th-now based in an old English fort-
trained for its inevitable mission.
The invasion day-actually black-dark 2
a.m.-came and "I felt as ready as I'd ever be,"
Neighbor says, matter-of-factly. He and his team
boarded their landing craft in choppy seas. He

Chuck Neighbor, while
training in Scotland, was
asked by a photographer
to dress up in Scottish
garb.

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

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