“D-Day was the longest day of our lives.”
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RETIRED LT. COL. SOLOMON HARRIS, 81, was recently hospitalized for post-traumatic stress disorder after watching Steven Spielberg’s film
“Saving Private Ryan.” His company lost 96 percent of its 205 men on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
War rages on in veteran’s memory
Film opens
old wounds
from combat
nightmare
By Adam Klinker
Staff writer
It was the longest day, the beginning of the
end, the last beachhead.
D-Day, June 6,1944, was a lot of things to
a lot of people. To Solomon Harris, “it was
living hell.”
Harris, 81, makes no mistake about his
. involvement in the battle that would prove to
‘ be the beginning of the end to the bloodiest
war in human history.
“I was there,” Harris tells those who
inquire about his black Army beret and his
bag of history books.
Harris was passing through Lincoln on his
way home to Illinois and said he had seen the
movie “Saving Private Ryan” while vacation
ing in Portland, Ore.
Bruce Koehler, an assistant at the
Cornerstone UMHE Church hostel program,
640 N. 16th St., said Harris showed up on
Monday morning, looking for a quiet place to
rest before continuing to his home in Decatur,
111., via Amtrak.
“He’s real talkative,” Koehler said. “And
he’s picked up some survival skills some
where.”
Koehler said Harris has traveled through
Lincoln and stayed at the Cornerstone hostel
before.
“He’d mentioned he was a veteran, but I
really haven’t pushed him about his experi
ences,” Koehler said.
Indeed, viewing “Saving Private Ryan”
opened up many old wounds, Harris said. He
said he was hospitalized with post-traumatic
stress disorder immediately after seeing
Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic.
“I cried,” Harris said. “I’m not ashamed of
it. I didn’t see the actors; I saw the faces of my
men.”
And, similar to the movie's character, Pvt.
James Ryan, Harris also lost his brothers in
the war - all four.
He spent two weeks recovering and con
sulting with psychiatrists at Portland’s
Veterans Center Hospital.
Harris, who served as a lieutenant colonel
in the 116th Regiment, 29th Division of the
U.S. Army, was
among the first to go %%
ashore at Omaha
Beach in Normandy,
France.
His company was
nearly wiped out in
. just 10 minutes, with
197 men killed or
wounded - 96 percent
of his force.
“We were sup
posed to be the
expendables,” Harris said. “We were sup
posed to be annihilated.”
After the initial landing, just 20 of Harris’
company members survived and made it to
their destination - the 100-foot-high cliffs of
Pointe du Hoc, a heavily fortified German
stronghold overlooking the English Channel.
Though there was no heavy artillery at the
point, as reported by military intelligence,
Harris and his company helped clear several
German machine gun bunkers.
“We must have missed one though, some
how,” Harris said.
As Harris stood overlooking the bloody
affair on the beach below, a machine gun
opened fire, killing the man standing in front
of him. One bullet passed through that man
and lodged in the base of Harris’s spine, he
said.
“The war was over for me,” he said.
He spent the next two years in a hospital
recovering from his injury. He was given a
medical discharge in 1946 and retired as a
nine-year army veteran.
In watching “Saving Private Ryan,” Harris
said he saw a lot of truth in Spielberg’s
artistry. He was especially moved by scenes in
the first 45 minutes, a vivid rendition of the
D-Day landing.
In one scene, a soldier drops his gun and
picks up his severed arm, calmly surveying
the carnage around him. In another scene,
young troops search for cover behind steel
beach obstacles, screaming and crying.
“Stuff like that happened,” Harris said. “It
changed us. You saw guys drop, you saw guys
blown to pieces. The water was blood-red that
morning.”
Following the movie, Harris said, there
was a large group of reporters and cameras
waiting for him and other veterans at the
showing in Portland.
At that point, Harris said, he broke down.
“I was in no shape to talk,” he said. “It lit
erally put me down to my knees.”
A team of medical corpsmen from the
Veterans Center Hospital was there to help
distraught veterans. Harris said they*helped
ward off the press.
Harris was taken away td the Veterans
Center, where he underwent counseling and
therapy.
“It couldn’t have hit him any harder^ said
Deborah Richter, a team leader from Hie
Veterans Center. “But he’s very genuine - he’s
a very amazing man.”
Unlike the fictional Pvt. Ryan character
played by Matt Damon in the movie, Harris
lost four brothers, not three.
Harris said two of his brothers in the Navy
perished in the attack on Pearl Harbor when
the battleship USS Arizona was torpedoed by
Japanese airplanes.
Another brother in the Marine Corps died
at Guadalcanal, part of the Solomon Islands,
in the Pacific war theater, Harris said.
Still another was killed in action at the
Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “We just
lost a lot of good, good guys.”
Before his experiences at Omaha Beach,
Harris had seen action in the invasions of
Sicily and Italy in 1943. But he said nothing
could prepare him for what he saw in France.
“D-Day was the longest day of our lives. It
seemed like the day went on and on and on -
and never stopped,” he said.
Since D-Day, Harris said, he has gained a
better understanding of
the ugly side of humanity
- the same side featured
in “Saving Private
Ryan.”
Despite his difficulty
in viewing the movie,
Harris said the film was
necessary and should be
significant in the lives of
people today.
“We need things like
that to wake people up,”
Harris said. “When they see something like
this, they’ll see a lot more about what life can
be; the horror of it all.”
As opposed to early World War II films
made largely to bolster morale in the United
States, “Saving Private Ryan” has a brutal
reality that brings out more of a sense of the
tribulations faced by the soldiers who fought,
Harris said.
He said it should be required viewing for
political leaders who may one day be faced
with a decision to engage America in another
war of momentous proportions.
Today, Harris said, he shies away from
guns and conflict altogether.
“I don’t even hunt anymore,” he said.
But he remains proud in his feeling that
the United States did the right thing in World
Warll. .
He said he hopes the brutality as well as
the history in the movie will touch future gen
erations.
“One thing I’d say about the men who
fought in that war - they fought with honor,
and people should remember.”
You saw guys drop, you saw guys blown
to pieces. The water was blood-red
that morning.”
Solomon Harris
World War II veteran