U.S.

It's D-Day for WWII Museum

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 6, 2000 / 9:49 AM EDT / CBS

New Orleans, a city familiar with giving parades, hosted a special one Tuesday to honor the World War II veterans who took part in the D-Day landing in Normandy.

The parade, with 63 units and a flyover of 40 military aircraft, was part of a day-long ceremony marking the opening of the National D-Day Museum.

"I never got a parade when I came home," said Jack Hoffler of Hertford, N.C., who at 14 was the youngest Navy combat sailor in the June 6, 1944, American invasion at Normandy. "I came home on a bus, late at night."

More than a half century later, the events leading up to the opening of the National D-Day Museum have put the limelight back on Hoffler and fellow World War II veterans. About 10,000 of them, including eight who wear the Congressional Medal of Honor, took part in the opening ceremonies in the city long known for its Mardi Gras parades and celebrations.

In New Orleans, CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger says they're calling it the largest American gathering of D-Day veterans ever.

Among them was Bob Williamson of New York, who fought with the 4th Infantry Division and was part of the invasion forces. Memories of the war still haunt him.

"How would you like to go to bed at night and dream about the war every night? I see my dead buddies, I see all those guns going off and everything. It's not good," said Williamson.

He said he still has nightmares about it. "You fight the war every night."

More than 6,000 Americans were killed in the invasion which marked the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.

Bob Dole On D-Day
And A World War II Memorial

Former Senator Bob Dole told Congress his group has raised $92 million so far for a World War II memorial, reports CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss. The Kansas Republican said with veterans now in their late 70s and 80s, time is of the essence.

"There is some urgency about this," Dole testified. "We're losing a thousand World War II veterans a day. We've lost over a million since March of '97. And that is going to compound as they get into their late 70s and late 80s."

However, District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and other critics say the grassy expanse between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument is the wrong place.

"This memorial continues to have major flaws of design and placement," he said at the hearing. "A monument of the unique significance of the World War II memorial should grace, not invade, its space."

Dole defended the location, reports Fuss, and said he hopes to have the monument built by 2002.

Gordon "Nick" Mueller, chairman of the museum foundation, said tickets to the celebration were deliberately held back for veterans so all those who wanted would be able to attend.

Tuesday's parade capped four days of celebration for the veterans who have been posing for pictures and listening to celebrities sing their praises.

Those whose stories have been recounted in popular books such as historian Stephen Ambrose's D-Day found themselves engulfed in admirers seeking autographs. Still more signed commemorative posters.

"It's real thoughtful of the people of this country to do this for us, although it's a little late," said Hoffler, 70. "A lot of friends from the war have passed away and I wish they were around to see this."

The opening of the museum is the culmination of a project Ambrose started 15 years ago, when he found the number of artifacts given him by veterans he had interviewed growing too large for a private collection.

It has since evolved into a $25 million, 70,500 square-foot showcase of artifacts combined with oral histories, posters, props, video and animation powerful enough to bring to tears numerous veterans who have taken preview tours in recent days.

Mueller says it takes several hours to view all the videos and listen to all the oral histories alone, with more time needed to view the exhibits.

The project attracted the likes of Saving Private Ryan director Stephen Spielberg and lead actor Tom Hanks, along with NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, author of the World War II book The Greatest Generation.

It also was partly financed by the veterans and their families who bought some 9,000 bricks at $100 each to honor those who served in the landing. Another 3,000 bricks are being sold at the museum Tuesday.

Spielberg, Hanks and Brokaw were in New Orleans Tuesday, along with Defense Secretary William Cohen and other top military brass, for a schedule that included opening ceremonies at a the New Orleans Arena, for which all 13,500 tickets had been given out.

"We know we could have filled the Dome," Mueller said of New Orleans' largest venue, a football stadium with seating for 87,500. "But we couldn't get the Dome. It was booked, even two years ago."

The museum provides a comprehensive history of the war, featuring invasions in both Europe and the Pacific. Although D-Day is generally thought of as the invasion of Normandy, it is a military term that applied to all invasions.

One of the main exhibits is a rebuilt landing craft like those used in every beach invasion. They were all built in New Orleans at a shipyard owned by the late Andrew ackson Higgins, whose role in the war is among those paid tribute by the museum.