[HCARC] Fw: D-Day veteran not slowed by age - News - Bandera Bulletin

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D-Day veteran not slowed by age
By Chuck McCollough Bulletin Staff Writer10 months ago

On the 73rd anniversary of D-Day last month, Norman Riggsby’s memory took him back to war-torn Omaha Beach in France.

Riggsby would be wounded with thousands of others in the invasion.  But he survived the assault to become a member of the country’s “Greatest Generation” who saved the world while many were still in their teens.

Riggsby turned 19 three days after hitting the beach on June 6, 1944.

Today, Riggsby, a 40-year resident of Medina, leads a mostly quiet life but still has a sparkle in his eyes when welcoming visitors and talking about the storied events in his 92 years of life.

The Bandera Bulletin interviewed him in advance of the July 4 holiday to highlight one of the many veterans whose efforts have helped keep our country free.

Riggsby is not the oldest World War II veteran in this Hill Country area. His friend, Richard “Dick” Cole of Comfort, is the last surviving member of the famous, Doolittle Raid over Tokyo in 1942.

“Heck, Dick is 101, and that is really something,” Riggsby chuckled.

Bandera’s Stanley Johnson, a World War II Navy veteran, celebrated his 102 birthday last week.

Riggsby, during his interview at a Medina café, was greeted by almost everyone coming and going in the eatery.

“I know a lot of folks,” he grinned.

One of more amazing things about the Medina resident is his sense of adventure is still evident in the way he describes being a witness to a number of historical events.

Born in Chicago and raised in Michigan, he went into the U.S. Army at 17 and after boot camp, joined thousands of GIs in in the British Isles training for D-Day.

Riggsby, who has been interviewed several times about his war experiences, said he was in the third wave of Americans to hit Omaha Beach.

When he stepped off the landing craft, the water was over his head but he managed to make it to the beach, unlike some heavier soldiers around him who sank and drowned.

“I was wounded in both wrists by shrapnel that exploded before I reach the beachhead. I remember getting a chance to fire at the Germans while on the beach and being glad to survive that day,” he said.

His injuries were treated, and some months later, he was part of an infantry unit moving forward when a German tank shell exploded nearby, sending shrapnel into the midsection of his body.

“I woke up in a hospital in England later,” Riggsby recalled.

When he got out of the hospital, he was assigned to an Army military police unit that rode motorcycles.

“We rode our motorcycles at the front of columns for (Gen. George) Patton’s tanks as they moved forward through France,” he said.

Riggsby also was involved in the Battle of the Bulge and took part as a military police officer in the Nuremberg War Trials for senior, Nazi officials in 1946.

Several years after the war, he moved to Houston where his wife was from and worked for an engineering firm for 30 years.

He travelled a lot and said he really liked the Hill Country area.  Riggsby built his Medina home in the late 1970s as weekend place and moved there in 1980.

For a man just shy of a century old, he stays busy and amazes visitors.

“I am a ham radio operator and call other hams around the world. When I get visitors, they cannot believe I am 92,” he said.