He walked slowly across his backyard to a group of roses. Bob Wilson takes pride in his Paradise Hills backyard garden.
“Yeah,” Wilson said with a grin, “I've always been active.”
Never mind his age: 104.
Wilson has lived long enough to remember D-Day 80 years later. He was there. It still haunts him.
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“I'm proud of it," Wilson said. "I'm proud of it. I wouldn’t want to do it over again, but I'm proud of it.”
June 6, 2024, was the 80th anniversary of the Invasion of Normandy and the beginning of the end of World War II.
Wilson enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, during which one of his friends died. Less than three years later, Wilson was on a boat headed to Normandy.
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“We finally got there at Omaha Beach,” Wilson remembered through tears. “We could see with our binoculars what was going on. I saw our troops were pinned down behind a sea wall.”
The memories are vivid. They still break his heart.
There’s pain and guilt in Wilson’s voice. He was able to return home, marry his young crush and raise four children in San Diego.
“We were the lucky ones," Wilson said. "The unlucky ones were the heroes.”
Wilson, who was born in 1919 and raised in Missouri, later reenlisted in the Navy to serve in the Korean and Vietnam wars. These days, he's still tending to the garden at the Paradise Hills home he moved to in 1963.
