To say that Norman Webb has led an interesting life would be an understatement.

Webb is familiar to many due to his military exploits in World War II, but his life also has encompassed much of the key history in this region during the past 75 years.

In addition to participating in the D-Day invasion on the French coast which helped the Allies defeat Nazi Germany, Webb has put his mark on other important developments closer to home.

During the Great Depression, for example, Webb, a Mount Airy resident who turned 88 on Sept. 5, served at age 16 in a Civilian Conservation Corps unit that helped build Fairy Stone State Park in Patrick County, Va. It is one of the six original state parks in Virginia.

“I credit the CCC with giving me the training that helped me survive World War II,” Webb told an interviewer while discussing the program in which young men lived in barracks and wore military-style uniforms while working on public projects.

Then, after serving the maximum time that he could with the CCC, Webb headed back to his parents’ farm in Fancy Gap, Va., where construction on the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway just happened to be in full swing. The year was 1938, and Webb recalls that one of his main tasks on the historic highway was serving on a crew that built the bridge crossing U.S. 52 at Fancy Gap, which is still standing today.

After that, the busy young man helped construct a gun powder plant in Radford, Va., and — with war clouds on the horizon — later found himself working at a shipyard in Norfolk which was facing an increasing demand for military vessels.

“When I came home one weekend, my mother told me I had some important mail from the U.S. government,” Webb recalled. “It was my draft notice to the U.S. Army.”

After returning from the war, Webb became a fixture in the area’s growing transportation industry by launching a trucking company, an offshoot of which is still being run today by one of his sons.

But it was his service during D-Day that Webb considers the biggest adventure of his life, a massive campaign that dislodged the Germans from western France — costing thousands of American lives along the way.

In anticipation of the invasion, Webb added last week, “I had no doubt in my mind that I would not come back home.

“There were plenty of days that I thought, ‘this was going to be it.’”

But Webb did make it through the war, and now is one of the few surviving vets from the invasion in this part of the country. To his knowledge, “I’m the only living D-Day veteran in about eight to 10 counties.”

Hardworking Teen

Norman Webb was born in Wilco, W.Va., on Sept. 5, 1921, one of seven children of Lawrence and Amanda Webb. “I’ve got one sister (Myrtle Utt) still living,” he said.

After his father lost his job with the railroad in West Virginia in 1925, the family moved to Fancy Gap to a 42-acre farm which contained a meager, two-room log house. The Webbs became “subsistence farmers,” according to the veteran, who said that he didn’t really know the difference because “I thought everybody was as poor as we were.”

The family gradually expanded its agricultural operations, but by age 16, Webb had grown tired of tilling the soil and milking cows. He’d attended Turner School, a one-room schoolhouse, but dropped out after the seventh grade.

After learning of an opportunity to work with the Civilian Conservation Corps, Webb’s father told him he couldn’t join the organization because he was needed on the farm. But the youth left anyway, serving at first as a cook for CCC crews before asking to be switched to the carpentry unit so he could work outside.

The young men were paid $30 a month for their services, $25 of which was sent back to their homes. Webb said that in his case, the money helped his parents buy doors and windows for a new house they were constructing on the farm in Fancy Gap.

After his time with the CCC was up, which was around 1938, Webb found himself laboring for 25 cents an hour, six hours a day on the Blue Ridge Parkway project that had begun a couple of years before. Then came the job at the Radford gun powder plant, where Webb was a machinist for soil compactors for about five months as the facility was being constructed.

A friend, Roy Quesinberry, came by his house one day and offered Webb a job at the Norfolk shipyard, where he encountered a busy environment as “the war was really brewing in Europe.” Webb worked at the shipyard for about two years.

The Invasion

In 1942, the young man from Fancy Gap entered the Army, with which he would serve for more than three years. Two of his brothers also were called to the war, one who became a Marine and the other a member of the Army. Webb trained at various locations around the country, including with a ski division in Wisconsin where the troops went on daily 25-mile cross-country ski trips.

The local man admitted that he grew tired of all the training. And after expressing a desire to join “a real fighting outfit,” he found himself with the Fourth Infantry Division that was preparing for the D-Day invasion by practicing on beaches in locations including Florida. Such landing maneuvers would continue in England, after Webb had experienced his first-ever ride on a ship aboard the George Washington.

Before the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, Webb and his fellow soldiers had practiced landing more than 25 times in both darkness and daylight. The massive operation actually was supposed to be launched earlier, but was postponed because of a storm. In the meantime, the youthful soldier found himself in a landing craft in the ocean for 36 hours.

“I was scared to death because I can’t swim and I was loaded down,” said Webb, who was 23-years-old at the time.

Finally, the men boarded “Higgins boats,” a type of craft that played an important role on D-Day. The front of those boats would drop down once the troops neared the shore, enabling the soldiers to disembark. The boats were designed to carry about 30 men, but Webb recalled that his boat contained 58 soldiers along with all their equipment.

“To me, I thought we was a bunch of crazy people,” he said. “The only boats I had ever been on was in the shipyard.”

His unit went in at Utah Beach on the coast of Normandy around dawn. “They let us off into the water where the water was chest-deep,” Webb remembered. “Some people just drowned because the packs were heavy.”

It took about 15 minutes to reach land after the men entered the water, and they had to negotiate steep terrain upon doing so. Allied battleships and planes had been bombarding the shore to soften up the fortifications the enemy had set up there, but the landing force still found the going rough.

“When we got in, we ran into a lot of German fire we didn’t anticipate at all,” Webb said. Men were “dropping like flies,” added the local man, who still bears a scar from being hit in his right hand during the invasion. A medic also was wounded as he patched his hand, with Webb recalling that “if you weren’t dead, you kept on fighting.”

Webb, who was a platoon sergeant during the conflict, eventually would receive a Purple Heart for being wounded on D-Day, and his medal count additionally includes a Silver Star, four Bronze Stars and five Battle Stars. He also still carries scars on both legs from various war wounds, including injuries that occurred later when a Jeep he was in ran over a mine.

“My platoon had 21 men, including myself,” he said, who underwent heavy German resistance during the D-Day landing. “We lost six of that 29 in an hour’s time. Out of the 29 men, there was only eight of us (who) came back.”

Not only was Webb part of the beach assault, he also was ordered to take some of his men and infiltrate the heavily fortified German lines in order to destroy a bridge to stem the tide of Nazi tanks toward the front. After going behind enemy lines, the men blew up the bridge with a type of explosive known as tetratol.

Webb was wielding a bazooka along with an M-16 rifle at the time. “It was hard to carry around,” he said of the weaponry. He remembers maneuvering among the infamous hedgerows in the area, describing those features as large rock piles with trees growing out of them which served as boundaries for the fields.

At one point while among the hedgerows, the Americans heard several Germans on motorcycles, whom they wiped out, allowing them to take charge of the motorcycles as well as the uniforms the enemy wore. “I never had no experience on a motorcycle,” said Webb, who recalled that he rode on the back of one while another soldier drove.

During this time, the enemy also was hurling grenade-like devices called “pineapples” at the Americans. “They’d throw them at us and we’d throw them back and they’d explode,” Webb said.

The local veteran’s service during World War II continued after the lengthy D-Day engagement as Allied forces pushed the Germans out of France, eventually leading to their occupation of Berlin in the spring of 1945. Another highlight of his career occurred during the liberation of Paris when his platoon cleared explosives from the Eiffel Tower so the Germans could not destroy it as they fled the city in the face of the Allies’ rapid advance.

“So I guess you could say we saved a major landmark from destruction,” Webb said. “We did sample a few bottles of fine wine.”

Postwar Years

After his combat service ended, Webb came back on a ship to New York and spent time in a military hospital due to inner-ear problems suffered in the Jeep explosion. He got married in July 1945 to his sweetheart from back home, Opal Edwards, and was discharged from the Army in October of that year.

“She wanted to get married before I went (to war), but I said, ‘Honey, you’re not going to be a widow.’”

After they tied the knot, “I didn’t do anything for about two months but honeymoon,” the veteran added with a grin.

Webb’s wife died 14 years ago. They had four children, three of whom still live in this area, sons Roger and Tom and a daughter, Patt Butera. A third son, Jimmy Dale, died in a truck accident at age 21. Webb married Faye Bennett about 10 years ago.

Once out of the military, he had to find a way to make a living, which led to his buying a small truck to haul hay, an operation that included regular travels to Winchester, Va., and other locations.

Webb had gotten a taste of the trucking industry as a teen during the time he was serving with the CCC, after meeting Roy Stone — a transportation mogul in Martinsville, Va. He worked in Stone’s garage on weekends while also holding down the CCC job.

After operating his small truck for a time, Webb was ready for a change. “I decided I wanted to get bigger. I bought some bigger trucks and went into the produce business.” He hauled items to various produce stands in the area, including one of his own located near his home on Fancy Gap Road in Mount Airy.

Around 1960, Webb went into business with Bobby Harold and the two formed H&W Trucking Co. He eventually sold his interest in the trucking firm to Harold. A trailer portion of the enterprise remained, now known as Utility Trailer Sales, a business Roger Webb operates on Starlite Road.

The elder Webb, who retired at age 65, has since returned to the site of the D-Day battle, including attending a 50th-anniversary gathering honoring the world-changing event. Had the operation been unsuccessful, America would not exist in its present state today, he believes.

Despite eyesight problems that have kept him from driving in recent years, Webb has stayed active by participating in various D-Day reunions around the country and other commemorative events. He’s particularly proud of his many years of service with the Honor Guard of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars, a unit that conducts ceremonies during funerals of former military members.

He also recently was selected to be part of an upcoming Triad Flight of Honor in which area veterans will be flown to Washington, D.C., to see the new World War II memorial on the National Mall.

Webb, who also is a longtime member of Rocky Ford Christian Church in Carroll County, does not consider himself a hero, a sentiment that many people would contradict. He believes that he was simply doing his duty in World War II. And regardless of everything he endured in the military, Webb says he would gladly serve again — although he recognizes that war is not all glory, medals and flag-waving.

“War is hell,” he said of his D-Day experience. “If there’s ever been a natural-born hell, that was one of them.”

Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.