WINCHESTER — Eighty years ago today, Leon Foster Pope stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
Pope, who turns 100 years old in November, is the last known living soldier in the Winchester area who took part in the European D-Day invasion. He was part of the U.S. Army's 29th Infantry Division, 115th Infantry Regiment's 1st Battalion. He arrived in a landing craft on Omaha Beach at about 10:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944.
He remembers seeing an armada behind him. Above him, the sky was filled with planes.
"When we started moving forward, all hell broke loose," Pope, a Purple Heart recipient, recalled in a previous interview. "We had shells and bullets going both ways. When I saw that coming behind me, there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to succeed.”
D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in history, a meticulously planned assault that altered the course of World War II. More than 150,000 Allied troops landed in Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944, including 73,000 Americans. Around 4,500 Allies died, including some 2,500 Americans, in their bid to loosen Nazi Germany's grip over mainland Europe.
Pope survived D-Day, but he was wounded in July 1944 by shrapnel in the head and shot in the left leg a month later. He was set to cross the Rhine River into Germany in March 1945, but a broken ankle he suffered in a touch football game mandated by the Army ultimately got him sent home about two months before Victory in Europe (VE) Day.
Pope fully recovered from his wounds.
But five of his childhood friends from back home in Winchester — Pope says he was a “member of the Valley Avenue Boys,” a reference to where they grew up — didn't return from World War II.
“Remember the boys on Valley Avenue,” he reflected back in 2019 on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. “They’re more on my mind than what happened to me personally.”
Five years ago, Pope traveled to France to help mark D-Day's 75th anniversary as part of a specially organized trip.
For the 80th anniversary, he will be staying close to home.
It's not known how many D-Day veterans are still living, but the youngest are in their 90s. For many this will be the last major D-Day commemoration they witness. About 150 Americans who took part in the monthslong Battle of Normandy, including two dozen D-Day veterans, are expected to travel to France for today's remembrances
Pope is reluctant to speak about his wartime experiences, Phil Fravel, owner of the American Military Heritage Museum near Stephens City, previously noted. “He says, ‘I’m no hero.' He’s just so humble.”
Pope, who lives in Frederick County, grew up in Winchester near John Handley High School, graduating in 1943. The school, which opened in 1923, is wrapping up its yearlong 100th anniversary celebration. As part of the centennial observance, Pope shared some of his memories about the school and his remarkable life last year. What follows are excerpts of an interview with him.
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“The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
— Ascribed to the Duke of Wellington after he and his allies conquered Bonaparte Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in 1815, ending the Napoleonic Wars. He is said to have made the statement while visiting Eton, a British boarding school for boys.
Much the same could be said about 99-year-old Leon Foster Pope, a D-Day survivor, Purple Heart recipient and a member of the Judges Athletic Association's Hunter Maddex Hall of Fame.
Pope's "Eton" was John Handley High School, from which he graduated in 1943.
It may have prepared him for World War II.
Pope is one of several Handley alums nearing their 100th birthdays, the same age as the Winchester school which opened in 1923.
These days he lives in Frederick County with his son, Gregg Pope, 67. He calls his dad “Mr. Handley,” and there’s a good reason why.
The elder Pope was not only a standout student-athlete at the school, he spent many of his daylight hours on the front campus, too.
Born on Nov. 18, 1924, in a house at the foot of the campus where Jefferson Street meets Valley Avenue, Pope called the Handley grounds “his” from an early age.
“I did everything over there,” he said with a laugh.
“When I lived there, Jefferson Street was a dirt road. A fellow named Lamp — Mr. Lamp — had chicken houses up and down it," he reminisced.
To Pope, the most important aspect of Handley — outside of the school itself — is the expansive campus.
"It’s always been like it is now. It meant everything to me....I spent a whole lot of my life over there. We did everything over there on that field. But, like I say, that’s why Handley meant so much to me."
'The Equity'
In 1890, Judge John Handley, the school’s namesake and benefactor, founded the Equity Improvement Co. of Winchester, which purchased a tract of land bounded by Valley Avenue to the east, Jefferson Street to the south, Tennyson Avenue to the west and Handley Boulevard to the north.
That land is where Handley was eventually built.
“That was my playground. They used to call it the ‘eck-eh-tee’,” said Pope, a reference to the Equity Improvement Co.
“We had a little ball diamond over there, played football over there. You could go over on the Handley campus at that time and do most anything over there."
“We flew our homemade kites at the time — it was a great place to fly your kite.”
A neighbor had a pair of skis and invited Pope to go under the school’s esplanade and slide down an embankment toward the Handley Bowl.
One summer Pope took it upon himself to clean out the brush that had accumulated in a string of shrubs that ran parallel to Valley Avenue across the lower campus from Jefferson to Handley Boulevard.
"Like I say, I lived in front of it. And right along the street (Valley) there was a hedge fence. One summer I cleaned out all that and somebody would come along and pick it up," Pope said.
Pope and his buddies from the neighborhood walked downtown to the then-John Kerr School through the third grade and then headed up to the hill to Handley for grades 4-12.
His late sister, Lucille, graduated from Handley in 1947.
Pope, who was president of the Boys Monogram Club as a senior, started four years of basketball under the venerable Coach Hunter Maddex. He also threw the javelin (which he still has in his basem*nt) and was named in 1992 to the Hunter Maddex Hall of Fame.
Dropping band for sports
“I was in the drum and bugle corps," Pope said. "Of course, they don’t have that anymore. It was the band. I think they had uniforms from Virginia Tech (corps of cadets), including the crossing white belts and shiny buckle.”
He learned to play the bugle.
“In the eighth grade we were told if you wanted to play in the band, you couldn’t play sports," Pope recalled.
“Professor (bandmaster William H.) McIlwee ran the band. It more or less came from him. Back then, teachers were strict and we didn’t doubt their word,” Pope said.
Did Pope have to think long about dropping out of the band in order to play sports?
“No,” he said.
Did he ask permission from his parents?
“No."
"I got out of the band in the eighth grade, and from the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades I played sports,” basketball in particular, Pope said.
“I became one of the starters because we didn’t have too many boys that played basketball at that time."
Another starter was Hector “Dumpsey” Ritter Jr., who passed away at 98 on Jan. 6. Ritter was a World War II veteran, too. He was inducted in the Hunter Maddex Hall of Fame in 1993.
Pope captained the team as a senior.
“We didn’t have a really good basketball team at that time,” he said. “I made the team, and I lettered my first year.”
In the 1943 Handlian yearbook under Pope's picture it says: “Basketball and Leon are synonymous to all Handley students. Although athletics is his outstanding attribute, his ability to make friends runs it a close second. It was mainly due to these distinguishing qualities that he was chosen ‘Best All-Around’.”
He also was elected vice president of the senior class.
One sport Pope didn't conquer was varsity football, and there was a good reason for that.
“I didn’t play football for Handley,” he said. “I used to go over there as a kid to the Handley field to play football. The reason I didn’t play on the team was because, back in those days, they didn’t have insurance on everybody."
“If you got hurt or something that led to the parents having to pay it, because the school didn’t provide it [insurance]. That’s why they [my parents, Stuart and Lelia Pope] didn’t want me to play football."
“Then I ended up in the Army breaking my ankle playing football,” he said, chuckling.
Pearl Harbor
Though Pope said some of the young men with whom he attended Handley were drawn out of high school to prepare for combat, he was permitted to graduate with his class before he was sent to Camp Croft in South Carolina for basic training.
Nevertheless, when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he knew his time was coming.
“They were taking boys out of class my senior year," he said.
Pope’s father had built a new brick home farther south on Valley Avenue, across the street from Montague Avenue. That's where Leon was when he heard about the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack.
He and his father were listening to a radio broadcast of the Washington Redskins playing the Philadelphia Eagles. About the time the broadcast ended, the news came on about the attack.
“When Pearl Harbor broke loose — when I heard it — I knew it was going to be a big thing,” he said.
Pope was a junior in high school at the time.
After earning his diploma in 1943, he was drafted.
“But then, as soon as I graduated, I was gone into the military. I had my physical and everything,” Pope said. “That was the draft that was going on and if they wanted you, they put you in the service.”
After finishing basic training, he arrived in Europe about six months before D-Day and the invasion of Western Europe by Allied forces in World War II.
Gregg Pope explained that some young men were chosen for military service earlier because they were already in the National Guard.
One such example was Mifflin Clowe, Handley, Class of ’37, who would go on to become a full colonel and mayor of Winchester.
Clowe enlisted in the Virginia National Guard in 1935 and was captain of Co. I, 116th when it landed on Omaha Beach in the Normandy invasion on D-Day.
Clowe later would receive a Bronze Star and Oak Leaf Cluster for his four years of service in Europe.
It was Clowe who led a group of soldiers onto Omaha Beach, just ahead of what would be Pope’s group, which landed at approximately 10:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944.
“I was over in Europe about six months before D-Day," Pope said.
Phillip M. Fravel, owner of the American Heritage Museum near Stephens City and a World War II historian, wrote in an email that Pope was "a private first class in the Army, ETO, Hq Co., 1st Battalion in the 115th Infantry Regiment of the famed 29th Division.”
Fravel continued: “Many of the pre-World War II Winchester men were in the 116th Infantry Regiment via the National Guard. But both units landed on Omaha Beach.
“Mr. Pope’s 115th 1st Battalion HQ Company landed around ten-thirty a.m., so you can imagine the carnage he saw as a result of the first wave that landed around six-thirty-seven a.m."
Gregg Pope said: "The 116th was the Winchester (and other Virginia environs) group. Hagerstown (and other Maryland troops) was in the 115th, but as soon as they needed replacements … You’ve heard of the 116th Winchester; well, they had to keep moving up. And the 115th was Maryland and that’s where he [my father] went.
“I think there were four divisions of the 29th Infantry and you’ve got to fill each position. The 116th was already filled up in Winchester and I think it covered all the way down to the Bedford group,” said Gregg Pope.
Bedford, then a town of 7,000 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lost 23 men on D-Day including three sets of brothers.
“He might have got lucky to be in the 115th to fill that infantry up or he might not have been here, today. The 116th took it hard because on D-Day they were the first men in,” Gregg Pope said.
The D-Day operation brought together the land, air and sea forces of the Allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history.
The operation, given the name “Overlord,” delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches in Normandy, France. The invasion included 7,000 ships and landing craft manned by over 190,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries
Almost 133,0000 troops from the U.S., the British Commonwealth and other allies landed on D-Day, according to the Eisenhower Presidential Library website.
“See, when the door of the troop transports went down, the boys went in. They (the German forces) had them zeroed in,” said Pope.
“It was the morning,” Pope continued. “Early in the morning, but by that evening we had gotten off the beach. And we had roll call. And we had lost our colonel on D-Day.
“He trained us a lot. He was a big, tall, good-looking fellow. He always wore paratrooper boots, and he lost his life on D-Day.”
Did the soldiers pray on their way to the beaches?
“Well, we didn’t know what was coming when we went in. The sky behind us was just full of airplanes. Big ships were firing and it was just full of airplanes. Big ships were firing and it was just hard to believe.
“We were young, and we had trained for it and everything. Everybody I’m sure was concerned but we took it in stride because we had no alternative,” Pope said.
‘Escape’ to Germany
Following D-Day, Pope and his group eventually reconnoitered in Germany.
Pope survived D-Day but was hit in the head by shrapnel in France on June 19, 1944. He was awarded the Purple Heart after being shot in the leg on Aug. 10, 1944.
After that, Pope broke his right ankle, which would keep him out of the war before the European Theater’s days ended on May 8, 1945.
Pope credits the broken ankle, which he got during an Army-designated touch football game on March 16, 1945, with maybe saving his life. It allowed him to be shipped home.
“We were in a city called Munchen Gladbach (now Monchengladbach).
“It was a big city right on the Rhine River. We had stopped there to get everything together again and get ready for crossing the Rhine. Where we were was a great, big place,” he said.
“Of course, the service, they kept you busy because we knew we were going to be there for a while. So, I played touch football. Somehow or another, I got tangled up with somebody and broke my ankle. They brought a stretcher out. Everybody wanted to trade places with me,” said Pope.
Both he and his son laugh at this memory.
“Of course, as you may know, another four or five weeks the European Theater was over. Russia took Berlin and that was the end of it,” said the younger Pope.
Pope was flown to England from Germany, then to Washington, D.C., where he was picked up and brought back home by classmate Bill Moore.
Back at home
After the war, Pope spent a year at Elon College in North Carolina, playing baseball and football on the GI Bill.
On June 6, 1948, fours year after D-Day, he married 1944 Handley grad Doris Ellen Wurterbaugh.
They had four children — Pamela, Michele, Gregg and Monte (deceased).
Pope ran the sporting goods department at Montgomery Ward, which then was in downtown Winchester.
He then worked for Potomac Edison, first as a meter reader and then as an appliance salesman. He became a lineman for Potomac Edison, climbing power poles up to 25 feet tall for some of his 20 years at the company.
“There were no bucket trucks when he started,” said Gregg Pope. “He climbed those poles himself. He’s still got his spikes.”
He then moved on to VDO North America for about eight years. VDO made instrumentation for vehicles manufacturers like Volkswagen.
He also was a referee for high school and college basketball and an umpire for high school and college baseball.
The Army sent Pope $29 checks monthly to cover medical costs associated with his bum ankle.
Finally, the Army sent a questionnaire to rate whether the ankle was healing. He ignored it and threw the form away.
“When I got out of the service, they sent me $29 a month due to my injury. Finally, they sent me a letter. They wanted me to go for a physical examination (to see whether to cut off the checks),” said Pope.
The Army cut off the benefits because “he just threw (the questionnaire) away," Gregg Pope said.
Pope and his wife bought a home in Frederick County in 1960. She passed away at the age of 91 after almost 69 years of marriage.
“I’ve got two daughters, Pam and Michele. Most of them are in their seventies. And here I am still … hard to figure that,” Pope said.
He has four grandchildren.
On being 99 years old: “Gregg looks after me pretty good. They tell me I’m 99. I never knew anybody in the family that was 99."
“I never drank whiskey, but I did drink some beer. I didn’t smoke at all.”
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This story contains excerpts from previous Winchester Star articles. The interview with Leon Pope about his Handley High School memories was conducted by Jim Laise in conjunction with the school's 100th anniversary. The Associated Press also contributed information to this article.
