The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 34, August 5, 2005, Article 16

ONE LUCKY SILVER DOLLAR

The Tribune-Times of South Carolina published an interesting
human-interest story on July 25 involving a well-worn, but
sentimentally important silver dollar:

"For many of the men who lived through it, D-Day in World
War II stands as a memory unto itself: 156,000 Allied troops
invading Normandy in western France against heavy gunfire
to begin pushing German troops back toward Germany.

Many in the initial landings never reached the Normandy beach.
Others died from landmines and bullets and many others were
injured trying to establish a beachhead.

But for Simpsonville's Rollins Bayne, his memory of D-Day
takes a back seat to another personal memory that stayed
with him throughout the war and ever since: a 1922 family
silver dollar.

"I believe in luck," said Bayne, 81, who served as a corporal
in the U.S. Army 29th division. "And I believe that silver
dollar is lucky."

"I married my wife Katherine in August 1943 and went
overseas that November on the Queen Mary," Bayne said.

But just before he left home, Katherine handed him a special
coin and told him to always keep it with him.

"I just wanted him to have something from home to carry with
him, something lucky to hold onto," she said. "So I gave him
that silver dollar."

"For eight months it was nothing but a keepsake.
Then came D-Day June 6, 1944. "

"When asked how he escaped any injury or mishap at all,
Bayne simply shrugged and said, "I just wasn't at the right
place at the right time, I guess."

"I was on guard duty and long about midnight the Germans
launched the awfullest barrage you ever saw in your life," he said.
"They dropped a bomb in a hole I had just got out of and it
filled up with dirt just like a swimming pool. My bedroll was
tore up, but I never did have a scratch."

Bayne got to safety but on inspection, he realized that the
silver dollar was missing.

Against all odds of finding it again, he returned to the same
foxhole, which now had been turned into an earthwork.

"I went back the next morning and there it lay," he said.

Pocketing it, he survived the rest of the war and arrived
back home in January 1946, still awaiting his official discharge
and still carrying his keepsake.

Katherine then put it away but unlike other family memorabilia,
this one refused to stay in the memory drawer.

Three other family members carried it into the service; one
survived the Korean War, another survived Vietnam.

By then, the family silver dollar had taken on a life of its own.
If it could bring home three men from three wars, why couldn't
it work its magic in other critical moments?

"It's gotten to be a big family thing," Katherine Bayne said.

Family members faced with an upcoming job interview, a
long trip, a wedding, a doctor's appointment, a driver's exam
practically anything deemed important took the coin with
them and they always returned it."

"I think it's lucky," he said. "And you probably won't find
another silver dollar like it that is that old and has been as many
places as it has and is still here."

To read the full article, see: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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