Iowa veteran, serviceman meet on Normandy beaches for D-Day anniversary

He could almost see it.

Uniformed men, heads barely above the frigid water, dragging themselves toward the English Channel shore and an onslaught invasion on the banks of Normandy — where a 103-year-old Fred Taylor stood last week, 80 years after the D-Day operation of June 6, 1944 turned the tide of World War II.

Flanked on either side by younger American soldiers — including 2023 Prairie High School graduate, Cadet Third Class Sawyer Slezak, 19 — Taylor, an Iowa native and Cornell College graduate, peered out into the eerily peaceful waters that decades ago teemed with bloodshed and bravery.

“I honestly think if Fred could have went as far as he wanted to, he might have taken a swim,” Slezek said of his experience escorting Taylor down the sandy beach in northern France during the veteran’s nine-day Honor Flight trip commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The moment was captured in a photo by the Associated Press and disseminated widely, including on the front page of The Gazette last Thursday.

The men, connected by their Iowa roots, came together organically on Utah Beach that day — after Slezak, now a U.S. Air Force Academy student, earned himself a trip abroad for the anniversary with the Air Force Academy Choir.

“He wanted to walk down to the beach,” Slezak said about Taylor’s impromptu request of the younger officers. “And we were like, absolutely. We have to do this. How could someone ever say no? So that’s exactly what we did.”

As a fighter pilot in 1944 with the U.S. Army Air Corps — commanding a P51 Mustang — a 22-year-old Taylor was in Italy during D-Day and hadn’t been to the iconic beach in France until that day on Slezak’s arm last week.

“It’s very impressive what occurred there,” Taylor told The Gazette after returning to his home in San Diego over the weekend. “I'm surprised they could even get a foothold to invade. Germany had the advantage of being in place ahead of time.”

As they turned to walk back up the beach, Taylor’s guardian for the trip — Susan McWilliams, daughter of his best friend growing up — thanked Slezak and his colleague for escorting Taylor to the water.

“She just pulled us both aside, and she was crying, and she said, ‘Thank you so much for giving him the time of day. Just to stand here’,” Slezak said of the moment and what it meant for him personally. “What those men did, and just how incredibly humble and God-fearing they are, they will not call themselves a hero. They won't accept it.”

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Taylor is included among the self-deprecating lot, conceding others have earned that label.

“For many of the veterans there, yes,” he said of the term “hero.” “Not for me.”

Taylor redirected the conversation to his older brother, who served in Patton’s Army in France in 1944 and “went on into Germany during the invasion — not on D-Day, but shortly thereafter.” He also spoke of Marvin “Bud” Groves — who was in his graduating class of 1939 in Springville, Iowa.

“He was killed in the rehearsal for D-Day,” Taylor said of the April 1944 “Operation Tiger” in England that was supposed to serve as practice for Normandy but went sideways when Germans attacked in an effort to disrupt the rehearsal — killing hundreds.

“They were caught by surprise,” Taylor said. “The German E-boats started firing on them, and killed many of our troops.”

‘How awful war is’

Taylor has always shied away from sharing about his own experience during the war, according to this daughter Linda Taylor. He only recently started opening up after his first honor flight in October 2021 through Old Glory Honor Flight, which celebrates veterans through one- to two-day trips to military-relevant and commemorative sites.

Because Taylor had to submit bios for his various trips, his daughter said he began opening up more in her effort to help him answer questions for the bio.

“They were just these big questions that we had never talked about before in any detail,” she said. “Like, how did you feel about the A-bomb.”

To that question — of how Taylor felt about the U.S. dropping atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 — his daughter said he felt awful. That he still does today.

“He talked about how the flight crew, the bomber crew, had to do this thing to end the war,” she said. “And it's just the ultimate of how awful war is, and why it should be avoided.”

Countless are the lives that decision saved and also the lives it cost — including those of surviving veterans.

“It's just that there are decisions that you have to make that are life changing and world changing,” she said. “This generation saved the world. But what it took was such a toll on them and everyone else.”

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For her father, she said, it changed everything.

“He talked about how he changed the way he drank coffee because of the war,” she said, highlighting even the minor details. “My grandparents always had dairy cows, so he always had cream in his coffee. But he had to give that up during the war.”

‘People were gracious’

Given her father’s age, Linda Taylor went to great lengths to get him on the honor flight and D-Day trip — which included 70 World War II veterans, Rosie the Riveters, a Holocaust survivor, and other dignitaries totaling 280 passengers.

“He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” she said, explaining that her father’s sister — who lived to be 104 — had to certify she was there when he was born. “A lot of people his age in Iowa were born at home.”

The group, through their tour of Paris up to northern France, shook the hands of actors Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise, director Steven Spielberg, President Joe Biden, and French President Emmanuel Macron. But some of the most memorable encounters were with the French people, Fred Taylor said.

“Everywhere we went, people were lined up on both sides — cheering and wanting to shake hands,” he said, echoed by McWilliams, who said, “Everywhere we went, the people were gracious.”

“They come up to you walking down the sidewalk to shake your hand and take a picture with the veterans,” McWilliams said. “I think it was out of appreciation, because they feel that we saved their country, saved their future.”

Linda Taylor shared the story of one of the veterans’ buses breaking down in Paris.

“People just came out of their houses — like they would in an Iowa farm town,” she said. “Helped them take all the wheelchairs out — all the veterans, moved them in wheelchairs over the cobblestones, and back into a replacement bus.”

The day after the anniversary, Linda Taylor reported receiving a single text message from her exhausted dad and his guardian McWilliams — who were still overseas.

“On board our flight. I’ll be sleeping for sure.”

Fred Taylor reported bringing back several cherished mementos — like sand from the beaches — and some not-so-welcome souvenirs, like COVID.

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But, with the veteran reportedly feeling better, he and McWilliams told The Gazette the trip was worth it. More than that.

“I consider it a trip of a lifetime.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com