By Alan Burke
MARBLEHEAD — William Haley missed Paris in 1944. Another unit of his 102nd Calvary Reconnaissance Squadron marched down the Champs-Ãâlysées and got the flowers and kisses.
Meanwhile, Dr. Haley crossed the Seine south of the City of Light and saw his men stumble into a German ambush. He mounted a half-track and — standing to see deep into foxholes — toured the still-active battlefield looking for wounded.
His search was successful. "We fixed up the ones we could."
The Army gave Haley the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery.
If the French failed to offer sufficient thanks then, they made up for it yesterday. In a ceremony at the Statehouse, French Consul General Francois Gauthier awarded him and three other American veterans (John Boyce of Rhode Island, George Hauser of Auburndale, Settimeo Tiberio of Natick) his country's Legion of Honor.
"The French will never forget," Gauthier promised.
A Tufts Medical School graduate, Haley left his future wife, Elizabeth, to enlist in 1943. "We were very willing — everyone was — to go and fight against Hitler," he told the gathering. "It was because of the attempts (by the Nazis) to kill many Jews."
Haley would see the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of the war. Along with the Jews and others sent to its gas chamber, he learned, were hundreds of American and British fliers killed in revenge for bombing raids.
The Salem-born Haley joined his unit as a doctor. He would act mostly as a medic, fighting for 11 months from France to Belgium to Germany, even taking command briefly.
As cavalrymen, they wore riding breeches and boots.
"The commanding officer wanted it that way," Haley said with a laugh. Yet, they had no horses, landing on Omaha Beach after D-Day in tanks, half-tracks and jeeps.
Haley, 28 at the time, downplays the dangers. His squadron's job was to locate the enemy, probe and withdraw. Casualties, he says, were minimal. Yet, he concedes, close to 200 men were killed.
Unlike some veterans, Haley seems eager to tell his stories, his voice clear and almost theatrical as he spins them out in an interview.
In Normandy, he watched from a distance as an American general monitored an Allied bombing run. The first plane dropped a marker that gave off smoke. Those following were to drop their bombs on that. Haley, a sailor at home, knew the wind and grew alarmed as it carried the smoke slowly but inexorably toward the general.
The doctor couldn't stop it, couldn't reach the general or his staff to warn them. Eventually the bombers dropped their payloads on the American officers and killed the general.
In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, Haley's men wanted to hear midnight Mass at Christmas. Their chaplain negotiated with a German pastor for the use of his church. Neither spoke the enemy's language, so they worked out the details in Latin.
Near the end of the war, a weary Capt. Haley returned to England to be treated for jaundice. On a civilian train, out of habit he wore his helmet and battle fatigues, sitting across from an English gentleman quietly reading a newspaper.
Haley learned the value of a helmet in Normandy when he ordered a soldier to sleep with his on. A mortar attack wounded the doctor "lightly" in the arm. "That's my Purple Heart." But the soldier, disobeying doctor's orders, had a piece of shrapnel driven through his temple, causing a crippling injury.
Into Germany, on a quiet night came a massive American artillery barrage. Light flashed on all sides. The earth shook. The noise was earsplitting. Haley loved it. But the veteran sergeant beside him suddenly "broke down and wept."
After the war, Haley married, continued his medical career and raised two children. They gave him five grandchildren.
Yesterday's ceremony was conducted in a hearing room crammed with family, friends, veterans, active-duty military, historical re-enactors, the four-person U.S. Air Force Band of Liberty, French officials and state legislators. May 20 was chosen as the anniversary of the death of the Marquis de Lafayette, in Massachusetts Lafayette Day.
