A D-Day Veteran and His Great-Grandson Fight Unimaginable Battles
On June 6, 1944, 17-year-old Frank Webb Krueger landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France as one of 156,000 young men from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Their mission was simple – infiltrate Nazi-held France, and to liberate our allies from the invasion of enemy forces who threatened our freedom and way of life. The execution, however, was anything but. The weather was awful. The invasion had to be delayed. The Germans had a chance to mount defenses in preparation for our arrival. When they arrived on the shores of Normandy, they were met with heavy gunfire, barbed wire, and mines. It was an onslaught from every angle. And, on Omaha Beach, a literal uphill battle to climb the cliffs to claim the territory, and the eventual victory.
On February 17, 2022, Webb Murray Waddell arrived at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia in Augusta as the only child of Laura and Scott. We also had a simple mission – get an MRI to help uncover the reason for Webb’s recent development of nystagmus in his right eye – a condition that caused a side-to-side shaking of his pupil. The execution, like that of the D-Day invasion, was anything but simple. A scan that was scheduled to take 30 minutes took over an hour and a half. The discovery of a plum-sized tumor in Webb’s brain changed the course of action not just for the day, but for the rest of their lives. Webb and his family were suddenly met with their own uphill battle. This one wasn’t on a foreign battlefield, but right in their very home.
As a teacher, Laura knew she would struggle to name her children. She had her fair share of names she knew she would never use. Her husband, Scott, and she decided the best course of action was to use family names so that they had a positive and meaningful connection with whatever they decided. So, that’s exactly what they did.
Frank Webb Krueger, Laura’s maternal grandfather, the D-Day hero from the middle-of-nowhere Alabama, shares his name with his great-grandson, who is a hero in his own right. Little did Laura and Scott know by giving Webb his name that these two incredible people would share so much more than that.
Webb was diagnosed before he could crawl, before he could sit up, and before he could speak. He has battled his whole life. What started as difficulty and eventual inability to eat led to difficulty gaining weight, and the inability to meet developmental milestones. Finally, at seven months old, Laura and Scott knew the reason why.
When the MRI revealed Webb’s brain tumor, a plan was made to schedule surgery for the following Monday. The team wanted the most optimal conditions, to get the right personnel in place, and to plan it out perfectly. But, just like D-Day, that didn’t happen. Twenty-four hours after Webb’s MRI, he woke from a sound sleep with a guttural scream. He was having a stroke. Laura pressed the emergency call button as fast as she could find it, picked Webb up, and watched as half of his face and his body drooped. Nurses rushed into the room; Webb was intubated and rushed to the ICU in the wee hours of the morning.
Just like the D-Day invasion, a decision was made to move forward immediately. The conditions were no longer optimal, but the luxury of waiting no longer existed. This mission was a rescue one. A few hours later, just after daybreak, Webb was rushed into emergency brain surgery. Six very long hours passed, and the neurosurgeon emerged to speak with Laura and Scott.
“I got what I could, but it was very messy,” he said, referring to the surgical field. “There’s a chance he’s lost his eyesight. I just want you to prepare,” he said.
It took six days for the beach fronts of Normandy to connect, allowing a United Allied front to move inland through France. It took six weeks for Webb to be stable enough to move from the ICU up to the oncology floor. It also took six weeks for the pathology to come back with a diagnosis – a pilomyxoid astrocytoma. Grade 1. Treatable. There was now a course of action. That course included fourteen months of weekly chemotherapy infusions. As fate would have it, that last infusion was administered on June 6, 2023 – the 79th Anniversary of D-Day.
In spite of his constant adversity, Webb never lost his smile, or his hair! His contagious and infectious positivity quickly won over the hearts of every nurse and doctor who treated him. It is impossible not to love Webb. Unless you are intimately familiar with his journey, you would never know from just looking at him that he was in the fight of his life. This is just another trait he shares with his great-grandfather. The same man who fought and killed for his country was a humble, gentle, and unassuming father of five children.
This June, Webb turned four. He continues to get better every single day, and continues to amaze his family, teachers, doctors, and therapists with his strength and perseverance. Laura and Scott would have never chosen this path for him, or themselves, but feel so immensely blessed. Sometimes life is beautifully poetic, even in the worst of circumstances.
Written by Webb’s mother, Laura Waddell
