Soldiers’ Stories to Live On at Upcoming National D-Day Museum in New Orleans

During a lull in the thundering D-Day bombardment of Normandy’s coast on June 6, 1944, Edward Lamont saw the flag tear free from a mast on the cruiser Augusta.

Before it could flutter to the sea, the young gunner bolted from his turret and grabbed it. He was stuffing it his pocket when he bumped into Omar Bradley, the three-star general in charge of the American invasions of Omaha and Utah beaches.

“I think you better get back to your post, son,” Bradley told an awed Lamont.

Scared of being court-martialed for leaving his station, Lamont hid the flag until the war ended. And he waited decades to tell his old shipmates what had happened.

Lamont died five years ago, but his D-Day story will live on at the National D-Day Museum when it opens next year in New Orleans. The flag is among hundreds of World War II mementos donated by veterans for exhibits.

“What we are getting is artifacts that have stories with them,” said Stephen Ambrose, the best-selling historian and founder of the museum. “A brand new helmet is just brand new. A mint M-1 [rifle] is just an M-1. But a battered M-1 with damage to the stock, and the guy’s story of how it happened, is much better.”

Items going on display include the helmet and dog tags one soldier wore while piloting a “Higgins boat” landing craft toward one of the invasion beaches.

There’s a surgeon’s medical logbook detailing the injuries of each soldier he treated as Allied forces fought their way through France.

And there are the pants of a B-17 bomber pilot. He never washed them after any of his 58 missions over enemy territory in 1944--including two on D-Day--fearing it would break his string of good luck.

The most popular souvenirs veterans brought back from Europe were German helmets, pistols and flags. One even stuffed a German mortar cannon into his duffel bag.

“He’s thinking about donating it,” said C.J. Roberts, deputy director of the museum, which is affiliated with the Eisenhower Center for American Studies. “It’s just been sitting in his den.”

But museum officials are more interested in donations that tell stories about the veterans who collected them or used them.

Ambrose said the frayed red, white and blue commission flag from the Augusta, the Navy cruiser where Bradley had his headquarters, is a valuable find. It was donated by Lamont’s widow.

Lamont ran away from his home in Tuscaloosa, Ala., when he was 17 and went to New Orleans, where he lied about his age to join the Navy. He was 18 on D-Day.

When the bombardment ended, the crew of the Augusta mounted a search for the commission flag. Lamont hid it, fearing he would be punished if anyone learned what had happened.

“Ed realized, of course, that he had left his post during battle,” his widow, Joyce, said.

First, Lamont tied the flag around his waist and didn’t shower for a week. Later, he stuffed it in a pair of Navy dress shoes. It stayed hidden until he returned home to Alabama after the war. More than 30 years went by before Lamont told the flag story to his Augusta shipmates at a reunion.

Joyce Lamont said she made the donation because her husband did a good deed during an important moment in history.

“We need to keep the remembrances of our past,” she said.

The shells that ships like Lamont’s fired at the German defenses in France were heard by Arthur “Dutch” Shultz, a paratrooper who saw combat for the first time after being dropped behind enemy lines before dawn on D-Day.

As his plane flew toward the French countryside, the 21-year-old Shultz was carrying a $20 knife with a handle in the form of brass knuckles. He had already spent hours sharpening and polishing its blade, imagining how it would come in handy when he met his first German soldier.

“I had been an amateur boxer in Detroit, and had visions of using my left jab and then slicing the guy’s throat with the left hook,” Shultz recalled. “I would practice and practice and practice how I would do this when I was confronted with the enemy.”

The plane was hit by flak and lost altitude, forcing the paratroopers to jump when they were about 400 feet below their normal parachuting elevation. Shultz landed hard on his back, tangled in his parachute and separated from his buddies.

He used the knife to cut himself free as small-arms fire from a German machine pistol crackled nearby in the darkness.

“I turned my M-1 in that direction and pulled the trigger,” Shultz said. “But nothing happened because I had forgotten to load it.”

He was alone for about seven hours, lost and wandering, hearing the rumbling of shells being lobbed over him toward inland targets by the battleships off the coast.

“I went around and around and around, crawling from one hedgerow to another trying not to breathe hard,” Shultz said.

Around 8 a.m., he ran into his lieutenant and a small band of paratroopers with whom he would fight for 10 days before being hospitalized for injuries he suffered in the hard landing. He was sent back to the front for the Battle of the Bulge.

And his knife? “I never got a chance to use it, but it was my favorite,” said Shultz, who donated the knife to the museum.

Leo Scheer’s job as a medic on D-Day was to save lives, not take them. His donation to the museum --the belt he wore on Omaha Beach--starkly represents the sacrifices of those who fought there. Attached to the belt are pouches containing sterile bandages that Scheer took from dead soldiers so he could bind the wounds of others who had been injured.

“Those bandages aren’t mine,” Scheer said. “Those belong to guys who were killed at Omaha.”

Scheer, who was 20 on D-Day, also had never been in combat. At dawn, he boarded a landing craft with 150 men and headed toward the beach. But the boat struck a mine and was hit by German artillery fire.

Soldiers at the front of the boat were carrying flamethrowers that burst into a raging fire, immolating many on the spot.

Scheer jumped off the boat and swam to shore as bursts of machine gun fire sprayed the water nearby. He left his two backpacks of medical supplies on the boat.

On the beach, he crouched with other soldiers as mortar rounds exploded nearby. A one-star general arrived, swore at the infantrymen and ordered an attack.

“Right away there’s casualties, and right away we realized we didn’t have any bandages,” Scheer said. “We just started taking bandages off the dead guys. Most of them had carried one or two with them. We put 14 on one guy, so we used a lot.”

In all, Scheer figures he treated 20 to 30 soldiers in Omaha Beach. As he went down the beach, he looked for more wounded to treat and for more dead soldiers with bandages on their belts.

“As you age . . . you want people to remember those guys who died,” Scheer said. “I don’t give a damn about myself, but those guys made the ultimate sacrifice and deserve to be remembered.”