Ambushed by Heat, WWII Veterans Won't Be Turned Back at Memorial

"This is his memorial," his son, Mike Duddy, said.

Wayne Penny, 80, from Indiana sat in a triangle of shade in the heart of the memorial's plaza Wednesday afternoon, his green baseball hat soaked with sweat. Two tourists stopped by, and he told them about joining the Navy just as the war ended and completing a tour in the "still dangerous" Mediterranean.

His wife waited on a shady bench nearby.

"It's not something you can go to and stay all day," she said. "But he really likes it."

Sturgeon has wanted to see the memorial since it opened in 2004, but his wife, Cloe, was too sick. After she died in January, he decided to make the trip.

As the Army Air Forces veteran walked through the memorial, he touched the pocket of his button-down shirt, where he had tucked a black-and-white photo of Cloe.

"She would have liked this trip," he said.

The memorial's bronze reliefs depicting war scenes inspired Lowell Hines to recount his adventures as an Army X-ray technician "all over Europe and across France." Two younger generations of Hines men -- son Barry, 60, and grandson Brett, 35 -- listened intently.

"They were planning the D-Day invasion," Hines, 86, told them. "And they knew there would be a lot of casualties. They set up an aid station right behind the line. Then there was a station hospital that was constantly moving. Then if you were real bad, they would take you to the general hospital, then back to the States."

The three men -- and another grandson who planned to fly in from Chicago for the weekend -- have talked about visiting the memorial since it opened. But with Hines turning 87 this month and his WWII breakfast club dwindling from 100 members to 12, they decided to make the trip from Springfield, Ill.

They wanted to hear the stories.

"Dad doesn't talk about it a lot," Barry Hines said. "His generation seems to have just done their job and not expected anything in return. Back then, duty was more central to the human spirit."

With a final look at the bronze medics carrying a soldier on a stretcher, the three men continued toward the memorial plaza. Hines recalled the foggy day when Adolf Hitler made his last push into France.

"We knew something was going on," he said. "Just not sure what it was."