By any measure, Don Parker was a decorated World War II hero, with a display case full of medals, memories of “accidentally” capturing a German outpost and even a run-in with celebrated Gen. George Patton.
But 80 years after the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, France, the former pastor who now lives in Abingdon will tell you he was a reluctant soldier — and not a particularly good one.
He was just 18 years old and living in the small borough of Millville, a suburb of Pittsburgh, when he was drafted. He had just graduated from high school.
But he had other plans. Parker was so anxious to start college that he couldn’t wait for fall, and he’d enrolled in the first of two six-week summer sessions at the University of Pittsburgh.
He had no interest in serving in the military; he wanted to be a psychologist.
Still, he knew he had no other choice.
“I wasn’t too happy about it, to be honest,” Parker said. “I did what I had to do and what I saw as necessary. But I wasn’t interested in the service. I did it because the government needed me and I felt like I had to go so I might as well do the best job I could, but I probably wasn’t all that dedicated to the service. My main desire was to get out so I could go back to school.”
The Army allowed him to finish the six weeks at the university. And because he was in college when he was drafted, he would be able to go back once his service was over, Parker said.
Within a few short weeks, he found himself in basic training at Camp Gruber, near Braggs, Oklahoma. He was a private in the 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Division.
Soon, he realized that he had one skill that would serve him well in the military. He was the youngest of three children, two boys and a girl, and his father made sure that his sons knew how to shoot a rifle.
Parker has vivid memories of his father handing him a box of bullets so they could practice on a makeshift shooting range in the basement of the family home. After dinner every night, they’d take turns shooting until the box was empty, he said.
Once basic training had ended, Parker took a train to Boston and sailed out of the harbor there, bound for Glasgow, Scotland. Once he arrived, he was immediately transferred to a truck and driven to southern England, where he and his fellow soldiers lived in tents on a golf course, according to Parker.
He remembers a few sleepless nights because the English people were very protective of the golf course, and they wouldn’t allow the Army to dig a drainage trench around it. The result was an uncomfortable, wet, straw-filled mattress, he said.
In June 1944, Parker crossed the English Channel on the way to German-occupied France. Six days after D-Day, June 6, 1944, he landed on Utah Beach — a misnomer, he said, because there was very little beach there.
Utah was the westernmost of the five landing beaches and is on the Cotentin Peninsula, west of the mouths of the Dove and Vire rivers.
Many of the details of that time, the names of villages, cities, dates and people, have gotten foggy in recent years for Parker, who celebrated his 100th birthday on April 28.
But he remembers many of his experiences, including when he plunged into the water at Utah Beach and then watched the soldier in front of him turn back toward the ocean rather than walk to shore. The man, who Parker doesn’t think was part of his squad or platoon, clearly had too much packed on his back, and he soon toppled over face first into the water.
Parker’s immediate instinct was to try to help the man, to turn him over and help him stand. But a captain he did not know told him to get away from the soldier or he would shoot him, Parker said. He was shocked and upset, and it was only later that he realized the reason.
“I couldn’t figure it out for a while, but there was a good reason because when I turned and went out toward the ocean to try to help him, the guy behind me followed me and the man behind him followed him, so they were all going out toward the ocean. … Some of us could swim, some could not, so more people would have drowned” like the soldier did, he explained.
Parker was part of Operation Overlord — the code name for the Battle of Normandy — and the mission was to free from German control the port in the city of Cherbourg, about 37 miles north of Utah Beach. That was achieved in about three weeks, the same length of time Parker was in France.
Between the coast and Cherbourg the troops encountered flooding and rough terrain. The soldiers had to walk through a number of villages, some already taken back by Allied forces.
In one of the villages, whose name now escapes Parker, a young woman ran off with his canteen, leading to anxiety because he knew he wouldn’t survive long without water.
But she returned a little while later and handed him a full canteen — though it was filled with cognac, not water. It led to a couple of interesting days for Parker, who wasn’t used to alcohol.
An intense experience that has stayed with Parker occurred one night when his company was called out. It was so dark they had to hold hands to stay together. Walking through thick weeds, Parker felt his skin pierced by a thistle. As he felt blood dripping down his leg, he let go for a minute, and he and six others became separated from the group.
Eventually, they stumbled upon a building surrounded by guards. When he asked the colonel walking behind him what to do, the officer was blunt: He’d gotten them into the dilemma, and he could get them out. After some thought and worry that he’d get everyone killed, Parker decided he’d go in by himself and act nonchalant — like he was “king of the hill.”
He made it past the guards and, to Parker’s surprise, the soldiers inside immediately put their hands in the air to signal their surrender. Although it was a German outpost, most of the men were Poles who had been conscripted by the Germans after their country was captured, according to Parker. One of the soldiers kept saying, “Go, America.”
He doesn’t remember how many men surrendered. They kept the men under control until Parker heard American rifle fire and realized his captain had found the building, which was likely why they had been called out that night. He told the captain to hold the rifle fire.
“I captured this place last night. It’s all yours,” he yelled.
The captain’s response was to curse at him because capturing the outpost was supposed to be his job.
The capture led to Parker being awarded the Bronze Star for heroic achievement in combat — though it was a long time coming. He finally received it 40 years later, in 1985. He said he doesn’t know who was responsible, but he believes his former captain may have had a hand in it.
He keeps the medal in a display case with his Purple Heart and other awards and mementos from his military service.
A surprise encounter with Patton
One of the first things Parker remembers doing after landing on the beach was for Patton, who wanted to bring his tanks across a field. The Germans knew the tanks were coming and had placed explosives in the ground, he said.
The soldiers used their bayonets to probe the grass for pressure bombs, which might have withstood a Jeep driving over them, but not a tank. Whenever they found a bomb, they’d pull it out of the ground and disable it.
Parker’s personal experience with Patton occurred after his “sassy” attitude landed him on guard duty.
“I thought I knew everything. Obviously, I knew a lot more than the captains and the colonels and those fellows that did the planning. I was a nuisance. So, they’d tell me I was a guard and to go way out. Way out. And the further I got away from them, the better they felt,” he said.
See our D-Day special report
Units from Emporia to Winchester were among the first ones to land in Normandy. Read the “after action” reports from those Virginia units where D-Day survivors described what they did that day.
- Hear Gov. Glenn Youngkin read an excerpt from the headquarters company.
- Hear Bedford County students read an excpert from A Company from Bedford.
- Hear Sen. Mark Warner read an excerpt from B Company from Lynchburg.
- Hear Sen. Tim Kaine read an excerpt from D company from Roanoke.
And read more about the National D-Day Memorial, and how it ended up in Bedford, in this story from Matt Busse.
He didn’t know how long he would be there, so he started digging a foxhole that could provide a little shelter should he need it.
He was lying flat, using a pickaxe to dig with one hand, when he felt a heavy boot come down on his other hand. His instinct was to go after the person who was causing him pain.
But before he could act on that thought, he looked around and saw his squad leader, “Whitey,” who Parker said had figured he’d be up to something. Whitey lunged after him, trying to take him down in a flying tackle. The pair came together in midair and then fell to the ground.
As the two men got up, Parker saw who’d stepped on his hand. It was Patton, who was standing with his arms crossed, “laughing his head off,” he said.
“Good show boys, good show,” Patton said, according to Parker, who added that he had a short temper in those days and Whitey was trying to keep him from going after the general.
What Parker didn’t know was that Patton had given an order that soldiers do no digging so they could save their energy to fight the Germans.
“Of course, he could have had me court-martialed — but there just wasn’t time to do anything like that,” he said.
Incoming fire
Later that day, the Germans were shooting a cannon at the American soldiers, and Parker was seriously wounded when he was hit in both feet by shrapnel from a shell. He couldn’t move.
While the troops were pulled out, two of Parker’s buddies picked him up and dropped him in a shell hole. Soon he was by himself, yelling for medics and getting no answer.
It would be many hours before he received medical treatment, he recalled.
Eventually, his captain — who Parker thought didn’t like him — came back for him. Parker said the only answer for them not getting shot was they had both been protected by God.
“He couldn’t have walked into that mess without getting hurt and probably killed,” he said.
His captain threw him up on his shoulder and carried him out, amid more incoming fire from the Germans.
When Parker finally got medical help, a surgeon told him he’d have to amputate one of his feet. Parker said he raised up and told the doctor he’d kill him before he let that happen.
He was taken to another tent, and his foot was spared. The next day, he was taken by a
“fighting boat” to a hospital in Portsmouth in England, where he remained for 10 months.
The shrapnel was never removed from his feet and it still causes him pain today.
“But I’m a tough character,” he said with a smile.
Back in America
Parker got out of the Army in February 1946. The next day, he registered for college classes back at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in three years and then a master’s degree in sociology in one year.
But he never became a psychologist. He’d been approached by three elders of his church about being a pastor when he was in high school, but he wasn’t interested back then. That changed when he said he felt a calling to become a pastor for the Presbyterian church.
He met his wife, Eulola, through a mutual friend, and the couple had three children. After he retired in 1988, they moved to Abingdon to help care for her elderly mother. His wife of 48 years died in 1996 after a battle with cancer.
After a couple of years alone, he met his second wife, who was in Arkansas, in a Christian chat room in the early days of the internet. He asked Bonnie to marry him by email, which was intercepted by her son, who was working on her computer when the proposal arrived. Although her son said they were both crazy, she said yes immediately, and they’ve been married for 26 years, Parker said. Together, they have a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He came out of retirement for a couple of years and served as pastor of Cleveland Presbyterian Church in Abingdon, which threw him a big birthday party in April.
One of the guests was state Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, who presented him with a certificate for his 100th birthday.
“Veterans like Don Parker are the heart and soul of our nation,” the senator said. “A Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient, Don is among the best of America’s greatest generation, having stormed Utah Beach in the aftermath of D-Day. It has been a privilege to honor him and recognize his service and sacrifices to preserve our freedom.”
Although Parker was a reluctant soldier, he doesn’t regret his service. He said it was a war that had to be fought.
“I think they did the right thing — they needed to fight that war,” he said. “And right after that war, there was an outbreak of Christianity. Many, many people turned to Christ, and I mean for real.”
