World War II veterans remember: Bill Parker helped lead first invasion wave on D-Day. By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer

World War II veterans remember: Bill Parker helped lead first invasion wave on D-Day. By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer.

Whether Bill Parker was indeed the first D-Day invader to set foot on Normandy’s Omaha Beach is impossible to know for sure. 

But there’s one fact that he believes makes a good case for it. “I didn’t see any bodies in front of me yet,” Parker said.

 With German resistance at peak intensity, the stretch of French coastline would be littered with the dead and dying within minutes of the invasion’s launch. 

Many of the bodies would belong to Parker’s 116th Infantry Regiment.

The leaders of the first wave on June 6, 1944, the unit sustained 96 percent casualties. Parker, somehow, made it through unscathed. 

And he learned something, he said, that would serve him in the dangerous months to come. “I made up my mind if you were first and the quicker you got across there, the better chance you had,” he said. “So, all through the war, when we attacked, I tried to be first.”

One of Tulsa’s dwindling number of D-Day veterans, Parker, 91, represents an even rarer subset of that group: the soldiers of the first wave.

 Although the distinction means a lot to him, he said, there’s another title that he wears even more proudly. “I was born a cowboy, and I’ll die a cowboy,” Parker said. Hailing from McCurtain in rural Haskell County, Parker — who is part Choctaw — grew up around horses.

All of his life, while employed in different jobs including home construction, he continued to work with them, he said, training roping horses as a sideline. He still rides when he can.

 Probably the best roping job Parker ever did, though, was of his wife, Colleen. The couple, who have lived in the same house in north Tulsa since 1954, have been married 71 years. 

Just four months apart in age, the two were both students at McCurtain High when they met. Things got serious, Parker said, after he attended a pie supper fundraiser that Colleen had entered. “Dad give me a quarter,” he said, “and when her pie came up, I bought it.” Afterward, as she was walking home, Parker rode after her on horseback. “When I caught up,” he said, “I got down off the horse and I took her hand. 

And she didn’t pull away. And I’ve had her hand ever since.”

The two waited to marry, however. First, Parker had to go to fight the war.

Drafted in 1943, he was called to report the summer after his senior year in high school. 

He was short a few credits, and the school withheld his diploma, but it was too late then to do anything about it. Parker remembers saying goodbye to Colleen as he boarded the troop train in McAlester. “That was the loneliest day of my life,” he said. 

“They kept telling us the war would be over before we had to invade France,” Parker recalled. “But of course it wasn’t.”

Arriving in England in January 1944, Parker was assigned as a replacement troop to the 116th Infantry’s 2nd Battalion — part of the larger 29th Infantry Division. 

The only real question about the invasion, he said, was when. The inevitable finally arrived on June 6, 1944. Helping to kick off D-Day, Parker’s 116th was tasked with leading the first assault wave at 6:30 a.m., landing on Omaha Beach — the code name for a five-mile stretch of shoreline, and one of five Allied invasion points.

In the choppy waters of the English Channel, he said, it was trouble enough just climbing from his ship onto the landing craft that would take him to shore. 

As leader of a six-man wire team, Parker had to be the first out, so he sat in the front of the vessel. In all of his training experiences on water, he had become ill. 

But for some reason, this time, he didn’t get sick, he said.

Once on the beach, his team’s first job was to blow up a barbed-wire obstacle the Germans had erected, clearing the way for the rest of the 30-something soldiers from their craft.

 Fire from German guns was already heavy as Parker and his team waded in from the drop-off point. Due to extensive training, they were able to detonate the obstacle successfully.

From there, armed with rifles and grenades, they made their way to a ridge of sand, where they took cover and returned fire. 

Focused on what was going on ahead, Parker didn’t realize until later what had happened behind them — that no one else had made it off their landing craft. Apparently, he said, it had been hit by a shell just seconds after his team’s departure. 

On their own, Parker and his companions stuck to the plan — to reach the top of a hill overlooking the beach. He remembers the machine gun fire coming from a German pillbox and the “sand kicking up about three feet in front of me” from the bullets. 

Eventually, they were joined by a group of about 20 other soldiers who had landed farther down the beach.

 Together, shooting as they went, they were able to get up the hill, where they spent the night.

In the chaos of the day, all of the men had been separated from their larger units, Parker said. “We decided to stay put till daylight. 

It was dark that night. We could hear shooting on both sides of us but nothing out front.” Parker didn’t grasp the full scope of what had happened at Omaha Beach until the next morning.

 Running out of ammunition and knowing there would be plenty to retrieve off of dead soldiers he decided to go back to the beach.

“You can’t imagine what that was like,” he said of the nightmarish scene that awaited him. “Dead people everywhere. In the water. Washed up on the sand.

 The water was plumb bloody. “Down the beach they had gathered the wounded. They were being doctored. ... One boy that was in my company, he had a big bandage on his head. 

I tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t able to talk.” All told, the 116th took 1,000 casualties on D-Day.

It’s funny, Parker said, the things you remember from a war. Like a simple piece of gum.

 Chewing one as he stormed Omaha Beach, he still recalls how “the gum got so dry I couldn’t open my mouth.” Then there are the things you can’t remember, which can be frustrating. 

For example, Parker can still see the faces of the five other men in his wire crew. But he can’t for the life of him recall their names.

Although Parker was a private like the rest of them, he added, “everywhere we went, it seemed like I was expected to lead.” The other 20 or so who had joined them followed him, too, he said. “We were on our own for a while,” he said.

 Eventually, they were able to join the rest of the 116th Infantry at Saint-Lô.

From D-Day on, they were in and out of combat.

 Parker didn’t get to shower or shave, he said, for 43 days. By the time he got the chance, he had a thick red beard. 

The 116th participated in three more campaigns: Northern France, Rhineland and Central Europe, with Parker taking part in daytime operations and many night patrols. “My whole thought was to live,” he said. “ ‘Don’t do nothing foolish. 

Do what you got to do.’ ”

 Parker was awarded a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts among other decorations. 

He hasn’t seen them in a while, though, and is not sure now where he put them. But one memento from the war he’s never lost track of: his Colt .45 six-shooter. 

Formerly a tank commander’s, Parker traded him for it and then personalized it: 

On each side of the handle are small photos of Colleen, held fast by glass he repurposed from a German aircraft windshield. These days the gun mostly stays in its holster in a drawer. 

During the war, though, it sat on Parker’s hip, ready for action. “I shot Hitler with this,” Parker announced suddenly, as he showed the gun during his interview.

It happened one night in Germany, he began, eyes twinkling.

 He and some soldiers had entered a house where, in the partial darkness, Parker thought he saw a man. 

He drew his .45. And when the figure refused to respond to orders, he fired. 

To Parker’s surprise — and his companions’ amusement — it turned out to be “a chalk bust of Hitler,” he said. “I had shot the head right in two.” “My boys kidded me about that for months,” he added.

As for himself, despite dozens of near misses and brushes with the enemy Parker was never shot. 

But he didn’t escape harm entirely. Once in Normandy, he was hit in the foot by shrapnel from an exploding shell. He walked on it for several days but eventually had to seek treatment.

 By then, it had become gangrenous. Lying in the hospital, he was alarmed, he said, to overhear two medics say of his foot: “There’s nothing to do but take it off.” Luckily, a wiser captain intervened, Parker said.

 He told them not to amputate, rather “soak the foot in hot water with Epsom salt.” The method worked. “They would’ve had trouble from me,” Parker said, “if they’d tried to take my foot off.”

It was in March 1945, while stationed at Lippstadt, Germany, that Parker and his unit first met Eddie. 

An 8-year-old Lithuanian orphan, the boy had been living in a refugee camp. “We fed him. 

He began to learn English,” said Parker, adding that Eddie would wait behind for them when they went out on their missions.

 The soldiers grew attached to Eddie, whose parents had been killed by the Germans. “Some of the officers had an officer’s uniform made for him,” he said.

 The boy took a particular shine to Parker, and Parker to him. “I kind of felt like he was my own,” he said.

Parker even decided he wanted to adopt Eddie. “But I wasn’t married at the time, and I was told that it wasn’t going to happen.” Later another man in his unit, who was married, was able to adopt the boy. 

Parker, who has old photos of him, was happy for Eddie, who eventually settled in Virginia with his new family. “It was for the best,” he said.

For decades afterward, Parker didn’t bring up the subject of the war if he could help it. 

He was aware that his older brother, Jim, had been a tail gunner on a bomber over Europe. But it was only last year, at Jim’s funeral, Parker said, that he learned he’d flown more than 50 missions. 

“We just didn’t talk about it,” he said. “I wanted to forget it.” Even so, Parker had some unfinished business related to the war: that high school diploma he had missed out on.

 At the time, he said, “the superintendent told me if I came back to school that summer he’d see that I got my diploma. But I told him I couldn’t. I had already been called up to the Army.”

But a few years ago — almost 67 years exactly since he’d gone off to war — Parker found himself back at McCurtain High for graduation ceremonies.

Taking advantage of an initiative allowing WWII vets to obtain their honorary diplomas, Parker walked across the stage at last and was handed his. 

“The best thing that happened to me that day: This little girl came out of the audience, maybe 7 or 8. And she said, ‘I want to hug you,’ ” Parker recalled, his voice cracking.

 It was a meaningful gesture, even to a man who prefers to downplay his part in the war. “I was just an old foot soldier, trained to fight. We weren’t anything special. Just soldiers.”

Thinking back on the war — especially on blood-soaked Omaha Beach — Parker can’t help feeling that he’s been living on borrowed time ever since. “You get to feeling you weren’t supposed to get through it,” he said. 

But it had to be done, regardless of the cost. “If we hadn’t,” Parker added, “we’d be speaking German now. We had a maniac we was fighting.”