QUIET HERO

On Flag Day honors await a decorated veteran
 By Dawn House The Salt Lake Tribune

   Among the 11 veterans honored during halftime at a University of Utah football game in November stood Louis A Slama.
   Slama, 77, is better known among friends as a pretty good golfer whose scores are often lower than his age and for his expertise as an engineering executive.
  "I was astounded when they read his name over the loudspeakers" said longtime friend Mike Korologos “He’s never talked about his combat exploits”
   Today on Flag Day friends will gather at the Old Town Square, 9000 S State to dedicate a 100-foot flag pole in his honor.  Etched on a nearby granite marker are images of Slama’s Purple Heart and Bronze Star/
   “I still have flashbacks of the war” said Slama of Holladay. “Once this dedication is over I’m not talking about it anymore”
   Slama was 18 years old and a Czechoslovakian immigrant when he joined the Red Devils regiment, 82nd Airborne earning $50 extra monthly pay as a US Army paratrooper.
   In September 1944 he was in the belly of a C-46 ready to parachute behind enemy lines in Holland during a massive allied effort to secure river bridges for invading ground troops. It wasn’t until 1999 that he first recounted his experiences with the 508th Parachute Infantry for the book Freedom Is For Those Willing to Defend It by Helene Ensign Maw.
   As thousands of planes and descending parachutes covered the sky Slama landed in a turnip field alongside his buddy Lambert Siniari. The next day a sniper shot Siniari in the neck.
  “Lambert, my closest friend was dead," he wrote “Devastated that my hometown buddy was gone. I felt painfully alone and my anger and sorrow churned within me until my emotions erupted and I wept,”
   Outside the city of Nijmegen Slama’s company captured the southern end of a complex of bridges while US troops crossed the Wall River to fight from the north. “Three bloody hours later we held both side's of the bridges and tanks began crossing them," he said. “The casualties were catastrophic."
   At a nearby town of Beek Slama told of blasting out enemy machine gun nests “street by street, house by house in hand to hand combat"
   The' Americans took the town only to be pushed back by the Germans in a seesaw battle that raged on for days.
   Slama remembered waiting for a tank to roll past directly below him. He tossed down a Gammon grenade which blew off the gun turret, exploded the tank and killed its crew.
   On Vox Hill, a shell killed Sgt Rex Spivey wounded another buddy and sent Slama cart wheeling through the air. Slama temporarily went blind and deaf but “otherwise I didn’t have a scratch" he said.
  After three weeks of fighting, the Germans retreated.
   “It was over" Slama recalled, “Half our men had been killed There was not a tree left standing from the deadly battles fought between the enemy in the woods and our foxholes.”
   By Christmas of 19-14 Slama was 19 and a platoon squad leader. His regiment rested briefly before It was ordered to the Ardennes Forest on the German Belgium border In what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
   “I peered out of my foxhole at about 1 or 2 In the morning just as the moon came up,” Slama wrote. “I saw what looked to me like thousands of ants out on the snow all dressed In white marching toward us.... I took the tripod off my .30 caliber machine gun to give It maneuverability and began feeding ammo while my buddy manned the machine gun. We sprayed the fields in a wide arc cutting down the Germans as they approached us in a massive attack. Our right flank was exposed and a tank clamored toward us. We ducked down as it went over our foxhole. We peered up and watched it go over us.”
   The gunner in the foxhole with Slama was hit. He wrote:
   “I grabbed him and heard gurgling in his lungs and felt warm blood in my hands. 'Medic!" I yelled. The men of the 504th Regiment were also being hit hard and all I heard were guys yelling ’Medic!’ He died in my arms before a medic got there. I laid him down and started moving with that .30 caliber machine gun shooting so fast that the barrel got hot and glowed red in the night”
   From the corner of his eye about 15 feet away, Slama spotted the figure of a German soldier.
   “The German jumped up and pointed a one-man bazooka at me" Slama wrote/  “I moved the .30 caliber around and cut him through the middle before he could fire the bazooka, then ducked down just as another tank crossed by my foxhole" The next morning 150 Germans lay dead In the snow.  “l turned some of them over," he said. “They were just kids maybe 15 or 16 years old.
   The Germans suffered l100,000 casualties. The Americans 81,000.
   By February Slama’s company was at the Ruhr River pushing toward the German city of Cologne. He was wounded when an 88 mm shell exploded 20 feet away just as he had sprinted across a bridge.
   His left arm shoulder and left leg were broken and his lung was punctured “What’d you do forget to duck?" a doctor asked at a field hospital.
   Not really but look - if you cut my arm off,forget it let me die." he replied “I’m a baseball player and I can’t play baseball with only one arm."
   Slama spent three months undergoing reconstructive surgery before returning to his unit. Two years after the war ended be was playing catcher in minor league for the New York Giants.  His career was cut short after three years because of injuries from the war. He became an American citizen when be was 21,allended college and was named president of the Utah division of the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis. Inc. He retired in 1990 to spend more time golfing

[The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, UT, 14 Jun 2003, Sat,Page 24]