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An American hero

An American hero of World War II won eloquent thanks and a champagne salute at a celebratory dinner the other night from America's oldest ally.

Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France pinned the Chevalier insignia of the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious award, on the lapel of James Sheeran of West Orange, N.J. With it came a graceful tribute and an accounting of a hero's deeds.

"I want to pay tribute on behalf of France to a great American patriot," the ambassador said, "and to a son of France." Mr. Sheeran, now a frail 84, is the father of Josette Sheeran, the new director of the U.N. World Food Program and former undersecretary of state, and onetime managing editor of The Washington Times.

Surrounded by his son, four daughters and several grandchildren, Mr. Sheeran, once the mayor of West Orange and then an official of the state of New Jersey, heard the ambassador describe his exploits as a paratrooper as "an extraordinary story that is much better than a Steven Spielberg movie."

Indeed. As a 21-year-old trooper of the 101st Airborne Division, Mr. Sheeran jumped into Sainte-Mere-Eglise early on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and was captured a few hours later in the fighting among the hedgerows. He was sent on a prisoner train bound for Germany. He jumped off the moving train and headed for what he thought was the Swiss border. He joined a patrol of the French Resistance and, with his buddy Bernie Rainwater, fought with the Resistance and was hidden for a month by a French family in the village of Domremy, where his father, an American soldier in World War I, had met the French girl who became Jim Sheeran's mother.

He rejoined his regiment and, disdaining a return to the United States, fought again at the Remagen bridge and in the Battle of the Bulge during Christmas 1944, where he was severely wounded.

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