‘We owe them all’: York veteran honors father wounded and friend who died after D-Day

The 75th anniversary of D-Day was not just some day for York’s Michael Harris. There was no doubt he would put on his Vietnam War combat uniform and go stand in front of the York County Veterans Memorial to talk about that day 75 years ago in 1944 in Normandy, France.

A day before he was born.

“My father was wounded soon after landing on D-Day in 1944,” Harris said. “His name was Luther Fred Harris. He went up on the beach and in two days was shot in the back. Somehow, he lived.”

Luther Harris of York County lived to be 77 years old with the wounds suffered helping to save the world from Nazis and fascism.

But another man named Harris from York County died soon after D-Day. James M. Harris of Fort Mill was killed in France days after landing in the same wave of American soldiers on the beach of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The two men named Harris were not related, said Michael Harris. But they were friends and brothers at arms in one of the most important military campaigns that ensured freedom in World War II, Harris said.

“My daddy cried for James Harris, all the rest of his life,’ Michael Harris said. “I am here to honor them both. I am here to honor every person that went and never came back or fought on. We owe them all.”

Michael Harris, now 73 years old, was wounded in Vietnam. He was shot - just like his father in World War II - and survived. He has a Purple Heart just like his dad. Like his father, Michael Harris had friends killed in war.

“There are things in this life you try to forget, you want to forget, but then you realize we have to remember them because those men gave their lives for the rest of us,” Michael Harris said.

York County soldiers Ernest “Sonny” Carroll Jr. and James Freddie Bechtler also died in the D-Day invasion in 1944, according to Herald archives and reports from 1944.

On Thursday, the anniversary of D-Day, word got around that Harris would be at the York monument. Some news crews showed up, and some veterans. One veteran was brought by York Police Department Lt. Dale Edwards. That veteran is Richard Damron, who survived World War II combat in the Pacific.

Damron is 93 years old. He walks with a cane.

He walked with his cane right up to Michael Harris.

“Your father was a hero,” Damron told Harris. “The other Harris who died was a hero. Every damn one of those men on D-Day were heroes.”

The two men did not just shake hands. They embraced. They hugged. They locked eyes with each other with a special bond that D-Day and war and freedom will always bring.

Michael Harris thanked Damron for coming to the monument that has the name of every York County military person who has died in wars since World War I.

“Guys like you, you are America,” Harris told Damron.

Damron said the names on the monument are America.

“Every one of them died for the rest of us,” Damron said.

Damron and Michael Harris did what military men do, on the anniversary of D-Day in front of a monument to the heroic dead, they saluted each other.

Then they saluted the monument with the names of the dead.

This story was originally published June 6, 2019 at 2:49 PM.