FROM THE ARCHIVES: Veteran carried a Normandy souvenir for 40 years

This story originally appeared in the Tribune on Nov. 11, 1991. Robert and Carolyn Weeks have both died since this story appeared. The Tribune will have more coverage of Veterans Day later this week.

KOOSKIA -- Robert H. Weeks was in the shower one day in 1984 when he felt a lump in his left side.

Fearful that it was a tumor, he went to his doctor.

His wife, Carolyn Weeks, remembers sitting in the waiting room, expecting the worst. Finally, he came out and threw a wadded-up piece of paper into her lap.

''I said, 'oh, it's just a bullet,''' she said. ''The people in the office looked at me like I was crazy. They didn't know the relief that it wasn't tumor.''

Nor did they know that the bullet was one that Bob Weeks had carried for 40 years, ever since being struck in the right side by a German machine gun round as Allied troops stormed Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944.

The bullet more than an inch long lay alongside his spine, too close to operate in those days. But it wouldn't move, doctors assured him.

On Feb. 21, 1984, it was removed from just below the skin, the width of his body from where it had entered.

It was ''corroded and icky, like a pennywinkle you find in the bottom of a creek,'' Bob said.

Now, dented and creased but polished to a soft sheen, the bullet is mounted on a dollar-sized silver disc on a bolo tie tipped with deer horn.

''People say, 'why don't you wear it?' I say I had it in me long enough.''

Carolyn said she asked the doctors how it could have migrated the width of his body and half its depth without hitting a vital organ.

They tell her, ''Just lucky,'' she said.

Bob was a 21-year-old Idaho County lumberjack when Uncle Sam called. His boss offered to get him a deferral because he was needed on the job.

''I said 'no, I'll take my medicine and go.' I probably could have got out of it. I wish I would have now. But I didn't.''

Three brothers also went: Gale, Lyle and Kenneth.

He trained for six months at Camp Swift, Texas. The Army taught him to handle explosives and to climb cliffs, hand over hand. It sent him to Massachusetts, then to England, and finally put him on a ship bound for Normandy and D-Day.

''They told us we was going over there, but we didn't believe them. Hell, we was just young kids. We said, 'we'll believe it when we get there.'''

He was a private in Co. A, 146th Engineer Battalion.

Historians tell us the beach was chosen because it was an unlikely spot for attack. The weather was poor and the seas were heavy.

''It was rough. We lost a lot of men there.''

His demolition squad was in the first wave. They were to blow up any obstacles along the beach wood, concrete and barbed wire barriers, and land mines hidden in the sand.

Then they were supposed to scale the cliffs and keep going, ''shoot them Germans, I guess.''

''But I didn't get there.''

He was maybe 30 feet from shore when the machine gun bullet caught him. It was probably an 88-caliber fired from some distance or it would have killed him right there, he said.

Instead, he fell into the water. The tide was trying to pull him out when his buddy, Al Ray J. Boodwell of Texas, found him and pulled him into shore.

The rest of the platoon had to go on, he said. ''It was pretty hot over there.''

They covered him up and left him. He remembers the tide coming in around him and trying to hold his head out of the water. Finally, he was picked up and taken to a hospital ship.

Somewhere, he picked up a bunch more shrapnel. Doctors wanted to amputate a leg, but he refused, and they finally agreed to wait, saying it could always be done later.

He spent two years in hospitals, almost a year of that bedridden. He was paralyzed from the waist down, and had to learn to walk again, using braces that help control his feet.

V-J Day was just like any other day in the hospital, he said.

When he came home, the war was over, the celebrations had ended.

He went back to work on the green chain, one of the most physically demanding jobs in a sawmill, but one that didn't require that he be able to walk around quickly. He worked there for 22 years.

He's had three hip replacements and walks with the aid of a crutch as well as the braces now. It's ''100 percent service connected,'' but he still has trouble getting care at VA hospitals, he said.

The last hip surgery was done privately at Lewiston because it involved a critical bone graft that could have left him in a wheelchair.

''We just didn't dare take a chance on someone not knowing what they're doing,'' Carolyn said.

In their experience, the good doctors don't stay with the VA, and people handling the red tape ''just don't care,'' Bob said.

***

A large glass-covered frame contains about all his mementoes: the Purple Heart, Distinguished Unit Citation, and his service medal. There are some pennies that were in his pocket when he was taken to the hospital ship. One has a shrapnel hole in it.

There's a photo from Camp Swift, another of him in uniform, a dog tag, a newspaper clipping about him and another about his son, Larry, who served in Vietnam.

And a small, gold clip. ''A nurse give me that. A pretty nurse,'' when he was hospitalized and wheelchair-bound in New York, he said, smiling. And in response to questioning looks, ''I'm not going to tell you all my personal stuff.''

The eagle feather the Nez Perce gave him also is there.

''It's the equivalent of their Purple Heart,'' because Bob is a friend, Carolyn said proudly.

He was called out of the audience several years ago when the tribe was honoring its own and enclosed in a dance circle because he couldn't dance with them.

''I thought it was a real honor,'' she said.

Boodwell sent him a photograph from the 1984 reunion of his mates. ''I'm going to that reunion one of these days because there aren't many of them left,'' Bob said.