Omaha Beach and Beyond: The Long March of Sergeant Bob Slaughter - Softcover

“The long march of Sergeant Bob Slaughter as told in Omaha Beach and Beyond gives the reader the memories that Bob has lived with every day for the past sixty-three years. After reading this, his memories will live with you too, forever!

Major Richard D. Winters, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne (“Band of Brothers”), and author of Beyond Band of Brothers

Stephen Ambrose, the distinguished historian/writer of D-Day and my father, once looked me in the eye and said, “I want to introduce you to my hero: Bob Slaughter.”

Hugh Ambrose, The National World War II Museum

A true epic, this book should be required reading in every American school . . . I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Alex Kershaw, author of The Bedford Boys

Slaughter vividly conveys the reality of combat during World War II in his book with sweeping passages that literally place his reader on the battlefield beside him.

Roanoke Times

A riveting story of unsurpassed gallantry and sacrifice that all Americans need to hear.

David “Mudcat” Saunders, co-author of Foxes in the Henhouse

Desperate for a decent paying job, John Robert Slaughter joined the National Guard in early 1941. The possibility of combat duty seemed remote, not even a part of the decision. Then came Pearl Harbor. On June 6, 1944, Slaughter landed on Omaha Beach with the 116th Infantry, which lost nearly a thousand men. But “Bloody Omaha” was only the beginning of a march that would take him to Holland, the Bulge, and Germany itself. Slaughter would survive a mortar wound and continue the fight toward final victory in Europe. His gripping memoir captures the feelings of a young man facing the challenges of war and being one of the lucky ones who made it home. After the war Slaughter became a career newspaper journalist. He was a leader in the creation of the National D-Day Memorial. Slaughter lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

Desperate for a decent paying job, John Robert Slaughter decided to join the National Guard in early 1941. At the young age of sixteen, he needed his parents’ permission, which they grudgingly gave when they realized how set he was on the idea. The possibility of actual combat duty seemed remote, not even a part of the decision. Then came Pearl Harbor.

Slaughter and the rest of the 116th Infantry went from stateside training to Tidworth Barracks on the Salisbury Plains of England. Late in 1942, Slaughter volunteered for special training as part of a new provisional ranger battalion. Much of the intense training was conducted in the Scottish highlands. The new rangers never saw combat before the men were disbanded back to their original units. Amphibious training followed as the Allies geared up for D-Day.

On June 6, 1944, Slaughter landed on Omaha Beach, “Bloody Omaha”: the 116th Infantry lost up to a thousand men, and Slaughter’s D Company lost over seventy, twenty from his hometown. And that was only the beginning of combat for the men of the 116th Infantry, as they fought the Germans across France. Slaughter would survive a mortar wound and continue the fight. His gripping memoir captures the honest feelings of a young man facing up to the challenges of war, and being one of the lucky ones who made it home.

John Robert Slaughter enlisted in the Virginia National Guard in 1941 well before Pearl Harbor. Just twenty at the end of the war, he married and settled in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1947. Upon his retirement from the Roanoke Times in 1987, Slaughter, who had become active in veterans affairs over the years, started to work on the creation of a memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of the American soldiers at Normandy. On June 6, 2001, the National D-Day Memorial was dedicated. Bob Slaughter lives in Roanoke, Virginia.