Roland St. Amour, U.S. Army, 1943-1945. (Submitted image)

PARIS — Maine Veterans’ Home in South Paris has selected Roland St. Amour for their Veteran of the Month for April.

St. Amour was drafted to the U.S. Army at the age of 19 in January 1943. He attended basic training at the Army Mobilization Training Camp in Texas. He later was sent to a training camp in North Carolina for commando training.

Following training, St. Amour was sent to Georgia to await departure on the ocean liner Queen Mary, heading to England for pre-invasion training. He was being prepared for the Normandy Invasion. St. Amour was trained as a gunner for the 3rd Armored “Spearhead” division which was attached to the 486th Armored Anti-Aircraft Battalion.

He recalls being on a boat heading to Omaha Beach and a sailor giving him a bunk and gun. He said, “You will need it when you get down there. Get a good night’s sleep.”

Roland St. Amour, center, with family members Michael St. Amour, Paul St. Amour, Leola St. Amour and Joline Colby, at the Remember Me ceremony April 9 in Augusta. (Submitted image)

The battalion landed on Omaha Beach in June 1944. St. Amour recollects lots of rifle fire and shooting down quite a few German airplanes. He recalls their anti-aircraft tanks came in and opened up the hedgerow. From here they moved on to Cologne where all night you could hear the planes dropping bombs. They were heading to relieve the infantry at the Siege of Bastogne in Belgium.

The main objective of the 3rd Armored “Spearhead” division was to always be in front of the infantry, which they did all the way to Berlin.

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In April 1945, the 3rd armored division discovered the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp and liberated 250 ill and starving prisoners. St. Amour can still picture the big ovens and visualizes the people being skin and bones, and the dead bodies strewn about.

By the time he was honorably discharged from the Army in December 1945, he had spent two years in active combat, having fought in five campaigns in Normandy, northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace and Central Europe. St. Amour feels very lucky to have made it through the war with only some loss of hearing in his right ear from where he use to fire his rifle. He feels he is one of the lucky ones. He lost a lot of friends and most of the guys he was with were killed.

St. Amour was able to return to Germany in 1995 to visit with some of the people they had liberated from the concentration camp. He is proud that he was still receiving mail from them, even though he can’t read them because they are written in German.

Following the military, St. Amour was employed at the Bates Mill in Lewiston as a dyer during the day, and in the evenings he worked as a door-to-door salesman for W.T. Rawleigh Company selling health products.  He enjoyed meeting people. At times, some had large families and he knew they couldn’t afford the medicine, so he wouldn’t ask them to pay. Usually in the spring, they would pick up nickels and dimes and pay him.

St. Amour retired at 65, but enjoyed being around people so much he went to work at Shaw’s supermarket. He worked there for 15 years until he needed to care for his wife, who was diagnosed with dementia. He took care of her at home for five years until it was no longer safe to.

He met his wife, Rena, at a dance. In July, they will have been married for 73 years. They have four children – three boys and one girl – in addition to five grandchildren.

St. Amour has worked all his life and never had time to play games or travel. He is now enjoying life at the Maine Veterans’ Home in South Paris playing bingo, going out to eat, and attending religious programs in addition to other social functions that he enjoys. His biggest enjoyment is socializing. St. Amour will tell you, “I like to talk.” He especially enjoys the time he spends with his wife, who now resides at MVH.

He came to the Maine Veterans’ Home in September 2019. St. Amour now resides on the C unit and was recently honored in Augusta at the “Remember Me” ceremony. The event has been hosted by the Maine Health Care Association for the last 17 years and is a photography tribute and recognition ceremony for residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities statewide.

Thank you for your service, Roland!


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