D Day remembrance for cousin Waylon "Pete" Lamb
70 years ago on D - Day Waylon “Pete” Lamb jumped into Normandy with the 1-501st PIR.
They moved intoHolland and fought through Bastogne all the way to Bavaria.
He spent. 24 years as a paratrooper andanother 20 as a US Marshall in South Carolina.He left a legacy that other family members have always tried to live up to.
Normandy is about 5-6 hours ahead of us, at 6 pm EST,June 5th,it would have been about the time that Waylon Lamb and fellow paratroopers would have been jumping into France.
Waylon lived with my family for a time when he was a boy.
As I recall the story, his mother was having a hard time taking care of the children after she and Uncle Ambrose Lamb) divorced. (Long story there.)
Waylon told me how he helped dad build a log cabin for the family near Knobel, AR,, where grandfather and grandmother Grant and Sarah Lamb and many of the Lamb relatives lived. .
He told Sis and myself at Aunt Edith Thompson's funeral that he had driven out to the old place and sat there for a long time reflecting on those days. He thought the old cabin they built might still be there, but it wasn't.Looking back, I think he sensed that his own time was short.
Waylon was a young, handsome soldier in uniform when he visited our home at Star City, AR, in the mid fifties. Dad, and especially mom, had a special bond with Waylon