Ex-Flatwoods man honored by French

Tim Preston/The Independent

May 04, 2008 11:39 pm

— Former Flatwoods pharmacist Walter Smith was recently honored by the French government for the role he played in the invasion of Normandy during World War II.
“It was quite an experience,” said Smith, 83, who now lives in Lexington. He recalled his service aboard an LST craft designed to deliver tanks and troops to the beach. Once the equipment and troops were bound for battle, Smith and others scrubbed their ship and transformed it into a floating hospital to take care of and transport wounded soldiers to safety.
“They had to lift them (wounded soldiers) over the side and we would rack them three high on the walls. We had two doctors on board,” he said, explaining the mobile hospital was in motion the entire time. “This was in a ship on the water. We made three or four trips like that until they got a MASH unit set up on a hill above Omaha Beach.”
Smith remembered the ship was in the water at Utah Beach for the first pass, and had the distinct pleasure of transporting some of the first paratroopers away from the carnage.
“You talk about a happy crowd,” he said with a giggle, then added, “They all got seasick. It was just great to see them get out in one piece. We later found out that most of the men we took survived. We were lucky.”
Smith said his crew expected to be finished with the Normandy mission within 24 hours, although it didn’t work out that way.
“We got some German prisoners and we had to put them in the back with our wounded. Those guys liked to went crazy. They wanted to shoot them,” he said, adding the Germans aboard feared they would be dumped into the open ocean. “We got them all back to England safely.”
Although he trained extensively to use a sidearm and a rifle, Smith said those weapons were taken away from him once he and his fellow corpsmen arrived overseas.
“I never carried a sidearm or a rifle the entire time,” he said. “We had to train with them and we knew how to use them, but we got to England and they took them away from us.”
As part of a variety of missions, Smith said he made at least 90 trips across the English Channel.
“There were some rough trips. We made one crossing without any U.S. destroyers, but it was a big convoy and we had some Canadian ships with us,” he said, explaining one of the Canadian ships sank a German U-boat during the trip.
When the German military machine was defeated, Smith made his way back to Olive Hill, where he was born and raised and then enrolled in pharmacy school in Louisville. In the early 1950s he opened his first pharmacy in Olive Hill as a sole proprietor, then moved on to Scott Drugs in Flatwoods, Frailie’s Drug in Russell and then to Staley’s in Ironton before taking a job at Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital, where he retired in 1987.
The French government honor was presented during a recent ceremony in Lexington, Smith said, explaining he was humbled and surprised to see the crowd rise to its feet and applaud after a translator converted his words from English to French.
“Everybody just stood up — some of the women were crying,” he said. “I was very grateful for the honor.”
TIM PRESTON can be reached at tpreston@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2651.