GRAY – A patriotic group of turnpike pavers took time Wednesday night on the eve of Flag Day to honor the American flag and the soldiers who put their lives on the line to defend it.

“I give them the utmost respect,” said Adrienne Detlefsen of Norway, who spearheaded the idea to place flags on the Pike Industries equipment she and her crew of eight from Norway, Waterford and Lewiston are using to repave the Maine Turnpike between Gray and Auburn exits.

Detlefsen purchased dozens of flags at her own expense to honor soldiers like her father, Grant Leonard of Norway, who was severely wounded during the landing at Normandy in France in World War II.

“We fly flags at the house all the time. We’re very patriotic,” Detlefsen said.

The American flag means a lot to her father, who describes himself as a “pretty well shot up soldier from World War II” about 89 or 90 years old.

“Out of the clear blue sky, our daughter mentioned it to her mother,” said Leonard of his daughter’s effort to recognize Flag Day. “It was a complete surprise to me. I am so honored. I had never talked to anyone in the family about the war. I was taken prisoner and wounded many times. I suffered as many American soldiers did. I went in on D-Day and was taken prisoner in Germany.”

Leonard’s story is a compelling one that he usually keeps close to himself.

“I was climbing that sea wall, and a fellow reached down and grabbed me by my field jacket and pack and hauled me up to the top,” said Leonard after he was shot while trying to get off the beach at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was wrapped in an old army blanket and quickly rolled into a ditch. “I saw all those ships. Hundreds and hundreds of them.”

He was one of 160,000 allied troops who landed on a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches. More than 9,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded as the force began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.

“We were the front line infantry. We were the first to see the Germans,” said Leonard, who lay for three or four days in the ditch behind the sea wall at Normandy watching medical corpsman risk their lives trying to help the wounded on the beach before they could reach him.

“I was one of few alive at top of the headwall,” recalled Leonard. “I tended to myself medically and was able to move. I got into France and got wounded again,” he said. “A medic was close by and took me to a tent hospital a couple of miles from the front line. After a while, a guy said I would be bundled up and sent back to England.

“‘Oh no,’ I said. I came over here with a motive to get rid of the Germans, and I’m not finished yet. You’re going to get my rifle and backpack and I’m going back to my unit. I’m not going to leave them,'” he said.

He was shot again and taken prisoner by the Germans then shipped to a stalag on the border of Germany and Belgium.

In 1947, he returned to the States on the Queen Elizabeth. He was later cared for in the Togus veterans hospital in Augusta.

Although disabled, he spent the next 50 years working in jobs as a tour bus operator with his wife, town manager for Norway, a bank director, bridge commissioner, even a mayor of a city in New Jersey. Eight years ago he and his wife moved to a farm in North Norway.

“I’ve enjoyed my life,” he said. “I feel so great. I’m so alive. The best friends I ever had were from Lovell and East Stoneham. They’re dead and gone, but I’m alive able to keep going. I’m 89 or 90.”

Leonard said he has an American flag on a strange looking pole from an old weathervane. The flag is suspended from an upper arm.

“I can sit here and tell when the wind blows from the east,” he said quietly.

“Here’s our daughter, without mentioning to me she has done this all on her own, reached in her pocket paid for many, many American flags of many sizes,” said Leonard proudly.

“We thank everyone for keeping us safe,” Detlefsen said.