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Dave McCarthy: France treats veteran like the hero he is

SOUTH KINGSTOWN -- Freedom fries might be the fad these days, but don't put down the French in front of Walter "Chris" Heisler. "If anybody says anything bad about the French, I call them an 'ugly American.' And that goes for my friends, too."

As he spoke, the 89-year-old Heisler rapped his kitchen table several times with a closed fist. The table-pounding emphasis was made because he knows up close and personal just how good the French can be.

In 1999, Heisler returned to France for the first time since he parachuted into Normandy the night before the D-Day invasion 55 years earlier.

The good citizens of the small town of Negreville had invited him to be the keynote speaker at the dedication of a monument.

This was not a monument to anyone from Negreville, but rather to four American servicemen who died near Negreville the night of June 5, 1944.

They were paratroopers who served under Heisler, then a young lieutenant with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the famed 82nd Airborne Division.

Heisler was among the first to jump from the open door of his C-47, and didn't find out until many years later that the plane had been hit by enemy fire soon after he parachuted.

The last four paratroopers to jump were unaware that the damaged plane had been losing altitude. When they jumped, they weren't high enough for their chutes to deploy.

The people of Negreville recovered the bodies, wrapped the dead paratroopers in their chutes, and gave them as good a burial as could be done with the battle raging around them.

The monument in Negreville wasn't the only one to be dedicated in the small towns that dot Normandy. In the neighboring town of Grainville, Heisler was present when American veterans unveiled a monument to the war-time mayor, the village priest, the priest's secretary and four villagers -- all murdered by Nazi storm troopers for giving aid and comfort to American paratroopers in the days immediately following D-Day.

Heisler has returned to Normandy every June since 1999 for the huge celebrations the French throw to mark the anniversary of the D-Day invasion -- the beginning of their liberation from four years of German tyranny.

"They make our Fourth of July look like a little Sunday school picnic," Heisler said.

Heisler and his old comrades are treated by the French like the heroes they are, and he is often called upon to speak to high school students in Normandy about his experiences and those of his men.

"I think it's the most gratifying thing I've ever done in my life, and I do it every year now," Heisler said. "The kids give me all kinds of messages, from 'we love you' to 'you saved our liberty.' These are teenagers, but even they know that they would have had a dictatorship for God knows how many years if we hadn't gone over there."

This year, Heisler will be making two trips to Normandy: his traditional D-Day trip, plus he leaves tomorrow with four other Rhode Island D-Day veterans to film a TV documentary titled D-Day+ 62 Years: Rhode Island Veterans Return to Normandy.

Tim Gray, a former Channel 10 TV sports reporter who now owns Tim Gray Media, is doing the documentary for airing on Channel 10 on June 6, and again on June 18, Fathers Day.

Also scheduled to make the trip are Leo Heroux, a combat engineer from Central Falls; Richard Fazzio, of Woonsocket, a Higgins boat driver who saw the majority of his soldiers killed while unloading them on Omaha Beach in the first wave; Frank Chomka, a Navy radioman from Cumberland, and Wilson Delasanta, also from Cumberland, an Army truck driver who landed on Omaha Beach.

Heisler grew up in Michigan where he graduated from Western Michigan University. He was working at Fisher Body in Lansing, Mich., when he was drafted in 1941 -- well before Pearl Harbor -- and assigned to a military police company in New York City.

"Soldiers were not looked at in a good light. It was felt most soldiers went into the military because they couldn't get jobs. This was during the Depression," Heisler said. "The people of New York paid no attention to us." Until Pearl Harbor.

"After Pearl Harbor, I couldn't go into a bar without at least four people wanting to buy me a drink."

With the war's outbreak, the Army sent Heisler to Officer Candidate School because he was a college graduate. He became a "90-day wonder" and was assigned to the paratroopers.

American and British troops began landing on the shores of Normandy at 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, but the invasion had actually begun the night before when paratroop units -- like Heisler's -- were dropped behind enemy lines.

Their job was to disrupt German troop movements by blowing up bridges and striking at rail and motor-vehicle intersections.

Things didn't go right, however. The paratroopers ended up scattered all over Normandy. When Heisler's platoon was given the go-ahead to jump, it was 12 miles from its jump zone, as it turned out. Many, many paratroopers -- like Heisler became separated from their units. Many were captured, as was Heisler -- twice.

"I looked all night for my men and couldn't find anyone," Heisler said.

He hid in brush and the tall, thick hedgerows that criss-cross Normandy. At one point, a German soldier happened upon him. Heisler was quicker on the trigger. "I stitched him from his belly up with my tommy gun," Heisler said. He made the comment with emotion. He felt no satisfaction in killing. "That's why I never talked about these things. It's hard to live with that every day."

Until making his visits back to Normandy, Heisler never discussed his World War II exploits.

"It was hard to talk about. You killed somebody face to face. But I'm lucky. I don't have the nightmares and the other things veterans have to put up with."

On June 8, 1944, Heisler was captured by Germans who happened to go into the hedgerow in which he was hiding. They were gathering branches to camouflage their trucks from U.S. fighter planes.

He was sent to a POW camp in Poland. As Russian troops advanced on the camp on Jan. 20, 1945, he and the 1,200 other POWs in the camp were marched in frigid temperatures and wind-driven snow 375 miles to a camp in Hammelburg, Germany. Only 423 made it, along with Heisler. Some escaped and were taken in by Russian troops; others dropped out and were taken to German hospitals; some of the less sick were put in boxcars and taken to other German camps.

A couple of weeks later, Gen. George Patton sent a task force of tanks and half-tracks to liberate the prison camp. Although the camp was some 40 miles out of the way, Patton's son-in-law, Col. John A. Waters, was a prisoner there.

The camp was swelled by captives of the Battle of the Bulge. The task force got the 1,000 prisoners out, but didn't have enough room for all the prisoners. Some of those who chose to give up their places on the tanks and in the half-tracks went back into the camp; others, like Heisler and a prisoner friend, struck out on their own. He and his friend were recaptured three days later and taken to a camp in Moosburg, Germany, where they were liberated that April at the war's end -- by Patton's troops.

"Patton liberated me twice," Heisler laughed.

After the war, Heisler went back to school. "Because of the G.I. Bill I was able to get my master's degree and my doctorate.

The degrees were in education. He became a school superintendent in Michigan, and later in Westerly.

In 1962, he joined the faculty at the University of Rhode Island where, for the next 25 years, he taught in the Education Department and oversaw student teachers. "The greatest job in the world," he said.

He was also famous for the non-credit course he taught on clambakes.

Heisler lives with Gloria, his wife of 42 years, in Matunuck. Both have been active over the years in the National Education Association and the Democratic party. They have a son and daughter, Walter Jr. and Jill.

As the interview wrapped up, Heisler said he wanted to show his visitors a special keepsake.

"I kept this all the way through," he said, pulling out a faded, business-sized card from his wallet. He handled the card gently, like a prized object. "I managed to hide my Social Security card. I managed to save that."

Dave McCarthy is the Journal's South County regional editor.