Pictured above, Leroy sits in his home surrounded by displays of several photographs, medals and other items (also pictured above right) he acquired during his service in World War II. (Photos by Amber Raeder)

World War II veteran Leroy Olinger, age 92, who lives near the Sixspan Bridge, has been a member of American Legion Post 143 in Bristol for over 20 years. Until May 2010 he had helped with maintenance at the Legion’s building on Maple Street, mowing the lawn, removing trash, and doing minor repairs.

Leroy was drafted into the U.S. Army on October 10, 1941 (before Pearl Harbor) at the age of 21. He served as a cook at several stateside army bases before being shipped to England in 1943. His unit took part in the June 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy, landing on Omaha Beach after it had been secured, and the U.S. forces were several miles inland. As he describes it, “our LST pulled right up to the beach, and we walked off without encountering any opposition.”

In July 1944 his unit was attached to General George Patton’s Third Army, which soon saw intense combat at the Battle of the Bulge. Leroy’s duties did not place him at the front lines, so his primary danger came from long-range German artillery fire.

Since the Third Army was on the move and engaged in combat operations, food for its soldiers took the form of K-Rations and C-Rations. Therefore, there was no need for Leroy’s service as a cook. Instead, he was assigned to handling powder bags for the army’s 155 mm “Long Tom” guns.

Leroy was in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on V-E Day (May 8, 1945), when Germany surrendered to the Allied forces in Europe. He finally returned to the United States in November 1945.

In recent years, Leroy has visited the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2009 he made a trip to Normandy to relive the D-Day landings on the coast of France on June 6, 1944. On that trip he also saw the cemetery at Bastogne, Belgium, the graveyard for the 19,000 Americans killed at the Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest Allied encounter of World War II.

When told of the current World War II exhibit at the Elkhart County Historical Museum in Bristol, Leroy said he has not yet seen it. Entitled The Home Front: Life in Elkhart County during World War II, the display will run into summer 2012. Leroy noted that he would not remember anything about the events portrayed, since he was gone from Elkhart for the entire duration of World War II.