LEGION OF HONOR: France confers highest distinction on D-Day vet
Jan. 20—TRAVERSE CITY — France's top honor will go to a World War II veteran who landed at Normandy for D-Day nearly 80 years ago.
But don't ask Dick Grout what it feels like to be a hero.
The 103-year-old said he felt almost embarrassed, for want of another word, to be singled out as a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. France's Consul General for the Midwest U.S. will present the award to Grout at an invitation-only ceremony on Jan. 30, a ceremony he'd just as soon not have.
"Not that I wouldn't quite feel honored and so forth, but I keep saying this, there's so many other people or guys who are equally entitled to it," he said.
Grout was one of nearly 133,000 troops to land on Normandy that day, according to the Eisenhower Presidential Library. He was a platoon commander in Company B, 112th Engineer Combat Battalion with the 29th U.S. Infantry Division, and landed on Omaha Beach.
After years of staying silent about what he saw that day, Grout has told his story many times of how his platoon had to duck behind whatever cover they could find before completing their objective: blowing up a stone wall blocking a path off the beach.
Only occasionally does he talk about one detail: As he and other U.S. troops crawled across the sand looking for shelter from heavy German fire, he came across a comrade who had been wounded and couldn't move.
"And he said — this is the thing that really got to me — 'I want my mommy.' That was an experience that really got to me," he said.
Karen Puschel Segal knows Grout since both are involved in the International Affairs Forum — Grout a founding member and Puschel Segal its former board co-chair, she said. She's helping organize the ceremony that'll include his family, who reached out to her to be their "person on the ground."
She was more than happy to do so, noting how Grout always has helped others, including through his involvement in numerous civic organizations besides International Affairs Forums.
"Dick is just the sort of person you want to help that way," Puschel Segal said.
She also praised Grout for the impact he's had on younger people in telling his story, including a class from Northwestern Michigan College who spoke with him in 2022 before visiting Normandy. There, the class was shown the grave of Mjr. William Richards, also of the 112th Engineers Combat Battalion and someone Grout remembered from training in England ahead of D-Day.
Grout said he's been back to the beach at Normandy as well, and while he didn't like to think back on the fighting, that feeling goes both ways. "I like to remember the guys that I was with, that was something, and it was a historic thing, of course, when you look back at it," he said.
It's for those men that Grout wants to accept the French Legion of Honor, he said.
That's understandable to Puschel Segal's husband, Jack Segal. He fought in Vietnam and he shares the sentiment, albeit to a smaller extent. He gets uncomfortable when people bring up his awards or what he did in the war because, for one, he seldom talked about it.
For another, Jack Segal said he can always think of others who did more, or gave more — their lives. His roommate for six months during infantry platoon leader training, Larry Stephan, was killed weeks after arriving in Vietnam. Segal didn't find out until he arrived after finishing his airborne brigade training.
"How can I ever look at my Vietnam service and say, 'Oh, I did all these things,' when he did the ultimate thing, and I think that's what's in Dick's mind," Jack Segal said. "If you've ever seen the pictures of the first wave going into D-Day, what you would notice is guys taking two steps onto the beach, then dropping. Eighty percent of the first wave were killed or wounded — 80 percent."
French consuls general have recognized numerous World War II veterans for their part in liberating the country from Germany over the years, including D-Day veteran Gerald Hammond of Beulah in 2013, four years before he died.
More recently, France added the honor in 2017 to the many that Morton Harris received from his World War II service, according to his obituary. He was born in Detroit, flew a B-17 bomber over Germany in the war and lived in Sterling Heights until his death in 2021.
Normandy's beaches look nothing like they did when Grout first arrived there, and now they've become a popular tourist spot. He said he hopes those who visit try to think back on the men who fought there. He agreed that the individuals who were there, and those who didn't make it, tend to get lost in the overall story of one of the war's major events.
"I think if it were possible for them to think back about the men that were there on D-Day, and how they were handling it and so forth, if they could think back on that, I think that would be useful," he said.
