Zahn: Memorial Day is a good time to reflect

SANDPOINT — Don Zahn had a good life.

Nine beautiful children, a lovely wife and a well-paying job as a salesman with an unlimited expense account was a worthy and reputable resume by any standard.

He worked more than 40 years for lumber companies, at first in Minnesota, than Idaho.

“Treated wood products,” Zahn, 89, said. “Poles, piling, ties, that sort of thing.”

He escorted clients and customers on hunting and fishing excursions, to shows, concerts and elaborate dinners.

“It was hard to beat,” the resident of Luther Park, a local senior living community, said.

Throughout his time as a salesman, even after that, there was something in Zahn’s past that his employers and customers did not know about Don because he did not talk about it.

Even, now, 66 years later, he prefers to let it lie.

Next month, when the battle of D-Day is commemorated, it will have been 66 years since Zahn, then a young paratrooper, without hesitation and with little regard for himself reconnoitered enemy positions in a place the name of which hardly slides off the tongue and is best known by young cadets in an Army unit whose unit patch bears a screaming eagle.

Zahn is among an elite few combat veterans who earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in France at the time of the Normandy invasions.

It was not until much later that the medal was pinned to his chest, and even then, it did not stick.

“When the general pinned it on me, it broke,” Zahn said.

He has the medal in a box.

There are two others: a Bronze Star Medal, for heroic service and Purple Heart, awarded for wounds suffered in battle.

He misplaced the one he is most fond of: A Good Conduct Medal.

“The one I’m most proud of, I can’t find,” he said.

In June 1944, after a year of training in England, Zahn, a young man from Minnesota who quit the university to become part of the war effort, parachuted into France with the 101st Airborne Division ahead of the Allies beach attacks that would eventually culminate in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

In a place called Brevands in northwest France the troop’s mission was to seize two bridges over the Douve River and gain a foothold on the opposite bank.

Private First Class Zahn crossed the bridge with a Tommy gun, spending a half hour alone on the opposite shore, finding German troops and gun emplacements in the nearby woods.

When he returned, he met his sergeant, George Montilio, crossing the bridge. After a while the two men were joined by others and began a plan of attack, but the enemy struck first. The resulting fight resulted in several German dead and one wounded American.

The account is outlined in a book titled “Vanguard of the Crusade,” by Mark Bando, and another version is documented in S.L.A. Marshall’s “Night Drop.”

Montilio received the Distinguished Service Cross for his part at Brevands because the battalion adjutant felt it was more appropriate for a sergeant than a private to receive the military’s second highest decoration.

“He thought a private couldn’t be a hero,” Zahn said.

Montilio died in action less than a year after receiving the medal, accidentally killed by one of his own soldiers.

In mid-1945 and after much deliberation by commanding officers, Zahn finally received his medal.

“They fought for years that I should receive it, said Zahn, who started the war as a private and left as a first lieutenant.

When the general pinned the medal to Zahn’s chest, the hasp broke.

He still has the original.

“They said they were going to send me another one, and I’m still waiting on it,” he said.

After the war, Zahn was a reservist, retiring with the rank of major.

Almost 70 years ago, Zahn joined the paratroopers because, “it paid an extra 50 bucks and I wanted to be with the young guys,”

He figured it was better to be in combat for short periods than long drawn-out slogs.

“That’s what paratroopers were,” he said. “In and out real quick.”

He did not anticipate the European ground war that lasted another year after D-Day.

When he contemplates Memorial Day now, after all the years that passed since the Big One, he considers it a good day to remember those who served in the military.

He is still reluctant to talk about his experience, though, as most combat veterans.

“The barhops,” he said, “they talk all the time.”

The men and women who have put their lives in the line of fire, though, the ones who have taken lives remain silent.

“Most combat men don’t talk,” he said, “until they learn to cry.”