The Villages Chapter of Sons of the American Revolution will host 100-year-old World War II U.S. Army veteran Irving Locker as guest speaker at their meeting set for 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 11 at Captiva Recreation Center. Visitors are welcome to attend.
Locker is famous here in The Villages, and was also recognized by President Donald Trump in his State of the Union message in 2019. Irving believes it is important to tell his story: “People need to know that freedom is not free. That is what older veterans should do, talk about it!”
Irving joined the Army following his graduation from high school in 1943 – the only one out of seven children in the family to graduate. He was one of the 156,000 soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy, landing at Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. His immediate goal was to get off of the beach.
“On the beach you are a victim (of enemy fire), but off the beach you’re a warrior.” Irving remembers in vivid detail the brutally cold winter of 1944-45 at the Battle of the Bulge when he was a 19-year-old staff sergeant.
Locker’s unit was among the Allied soldiers who liberated Nazi death camps. The Jewish veteran gets emotional about what he saw: “Anybody who says the Holocaust never happened better talk to me… ‘cause I know what happened.”
