WWII Veteran's Dying Wish Comes True When Bagpiper Marches Up Driveway
Harry Snyder was born in 1921. The Philadelphia native was just in his early 20s when he answered the call and went abroad to fight during World War II.
“I was in, not the very first wave, but the Army considered the first five days as essential for the invasion to succeed,” Snyder later said.
He was there on that infamous beach in Normandy and somehow managed to survive.
“If the Germans had pushed us back into the ocean, then it would’ve been a different story,” he said. “So I landed on D + 5, which was considered part of the initial invasion, and fortunately for me, I wasn’t the first wave.”
“I didn’t talk about it, because I think the ones that you should’ve talked about are the guys that got killed on the first day,” he said. “That was murderous, and I was lucky.”
“I was lucky. I never got wounded, but I came close many, many times.”
He doesn’t talk about his involvement much anymore, but it left a deep mark on his soul. It was a trip back to that beach in 2014 that triggered a new wave of recollections and some new realizations.
“We knew he was in the war,” his daughter Karen Potter said, “but he never really talked much about it … until he went back.”
It was for the documentary “Normandy: A World Apart” that Snyder made the trek back to Normandy.
“When I went back to make this documentary, everything was different,” he said. “I didn’t recognize anything there: the trees were all 70 years older, everything was older.”
And Snyder’s gotten older, too. Now at the very respectable age of 96, he’s battling cancer and facing his mortality. He mentioned that he would like bagpipes to play at his funeral, but his daughter decided to bring them to him even sooner.
“I said, ‘I’d really like to do it now, while he’s still alive’ — not that I don’t think he’ll be able to hear it from where he’s going,” she said.
Thursday morning, Snyder opened his door to the find members of the military, local policemen, friends, and family all out on his yard, and there, in the middle of them, was a bagpipe player.
Through the emotions, he didn’t have many words to say other than “I don’t believe this. This is wonderful.”
He said that he “never will” forget this moment. “I can’t believe it — I hope I deserve it.” He has a great group of friends and family who clearly think he does.
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