Quiet memories of D-Day
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
World War II D-Day veteran and Penobscot Elder from Maine, Charles Norman Shay poses on the dune overlooking Omaha Beach prior to a ceremony at his memorial in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, Friday, June 5, 2020. Saturday's anniversary of D-Day will be one of the loneliest remembrances ever, as the coronavirus pandemic is keeping almost everyone away, from government leaders to frail veterans who might not get another chance for a final farewell to their unlucky comrades. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
The Associated Press
Few are there to mourn World War II warriors in Normandy this year
Raf Casert
Associated Press
SAINT-LAURENT-SUR-MER, France (AP) — At least the dead will always be there.
All too many have been, for 76 years since that fateful June 6 on France's Normandy beaches, when allied troops in 1944 turned the course of World War II and went on to defeat fascism in Europe in one of the most remarkable feats in military history.
Forgotten they will never be. Revered, yes. But Saturday's anniversary will be one of the loneliest remembrances ever, as the coronavirus pandemic is keeping almost everyone away — from government leaders to frail veterans who might not get another chance for a final farewell to their unlucky comrades.
Rain and wind are also forecast, after weeks of warm, sunny weather.
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Charles Norman Shay, a 95-year-old Penobscot tribal elder from Indian Island: "Every soldier on this beach was a hero." (File photo)
"I miss the others," said Charles Shay, Penobscot, who as a U.S. Army medic was in the first wave of soldiers to wade ashore at Omaha Beach under relentless fire on D-Day.
Shay, 95, lives in France close to the beach where he and so many others landed in 1944. He knows of no U.S. veterans making the trip overseas to observe D-Day this year.
"I guess I will be alone here this year," Shay said before he performed a ritual to honor his comrades by spreading the smoke of burning white sage into the winds lashing the Normandy coast Friday.
The eerie atmosphere touches the French as well as Americans.
"The sadness is almost too much, because there is no one," said local guide Adeline James. "Plus you have their stories. The history is sad and it's even more overwhelming now between the weather, the (virus) situation and, and, and."
The locals in this northwestern part of France have come out year after year to show their gratitude for the soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries who liberated them from Adolf Hitler's Nazi forces.
Despite the lack of international crowds, David Pottier still went out to raise American flags in the Calvados village of Mosles, population 356, which was liberated by allied troops the day after the landing on five Normandy beachheads.
In a forlorn scene, a gardener tended to the parched grass around the small monument for the war dead, while Pottier, the local mayor, was getting the French tricolor to flutter next to the Stars and Stripes.
"We have to recognize that they came to die in a foreign land," Pottier said. "We miss the GIs," he said of the U.S. soldiers.
The pandemic has wreaked havoc across the world, infecting 6.6 million people, killing over 391,000 and devastating economies. It poses a particular threat to the elderly — like the surviving D-Day veterans who are in their late nineties or older.
It has also affected the younger generations who turn out every year to mark the occasion. Most have been barred from traveling to the windswept coasts of Normandy.
Some 160,000 soldiers made the perilous crossing from England that day in atrocious conditions, storming dunes which they knew were heavily defended by German troops determined to hold their positions.
Somehow, they succeeded. Yet they left a trail of thousands of casualties who have been mourned for generations since.
Last year stood out, with U.S. President Donald Trump joining French President Emmanuel Macron at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. A smattering of veterans were honored with the highest accolades. All across the beaches of Normandy tens of thousands came from across the globe to pay their respects to the dead and laud the surviving soldiers.
The acrid smell of wartime-era jeep exhaust fumes and the rumble of old tanks filled the air as parades of vintages vehicles went from village to village. The tiny roads between the dunes, hedges and apple orchards were clogged for hours, if not days.
Heading into the D-Day remembrance weekend this year, only the salty brine coming off the ocean on Omaha Beach hits the nostrils, the shrieks of seagulls pierce the ears and a sense of desolation hangs across the region's country roads.
"Last yea,r this place was full with jeeps, trucks, people dressed up as soldiers," said Eric Angely, who sat on a seawall wearing a World War II uniform after taking his restored U.S. Army jeep out for a ride.
"This year, there is nothing. It's just me now, my dog and my jeep," the local Frenchman said.
Three-quarters of a century and the horrific wartime slaughter of D-Day help put things in perspective. Someday, the COVID-19 pandemic, too, will pass, and people will turn out to remember both events that shook the world.
"We don't have a short memory around here," Pottier said with a wistful smile.
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Sadly most of the ''Greatest Generation'' have walked on.
All of my family that was part of the generation and fought in WWII have walked on, some never made it off the battlefield.
A salute to my uncle, Peter T. who landed on Normandy with the combat engineers and my cousin Monroe G. a member of the 101st and was KIA at Bastogne.
To my dad a Marine that hit the beach at Tarawa, Saipan and Okinawa. And to all my other uncles and cousins that fought throughout the Pacific and Europe.
A salute to the Greatest Generation.
SALUTE !
Thanks, Kav, for keeping the history alive.
2 of my maternal uncles and 2 of their cousins all survived D-Day, found each other on the beach and took pictures of each other and their foxholes. They carried and shared those little brown pictures til they all passed. They were all trained to be "engineers"; they operated cranes in Cherbourg, bulldozed their way through the hedgerows and built bridges and learned how too make emergency roads and airfields.
When they at last made it state side, they formed an excavating and paving company that still exists today as a construction contractor.
I watched "Fury" the other evening. It was based loosely on what my paternal Uncle John wrote in 1948 to explain to a Judge why he was so violent and quick tempered. He was a Sherman M4 tank commander in north Africa, he survived D-Day and unlike the character in the movie, he and his M4A3 (Easy Eight) made it all the way to Berlin as he used to say "in spite of Patton, or to spite Patton".
He had PTSD, he found that delivering gasoline safely for a Philadelphia refinery was dangerous enough to satisfy him and lonely enough to keep him out of trouble most of his life.
My father missed most of the fighting, he was a quartermaster, then a medic, then a quartermaster, then an MP by the time he finally got to Germany. He ended up on the wrong ship in their transatlantic convoy. The other ship was torpedoed and his whole unit was lost. When the war was over the fighting did not stop. He survived a few stabbing attempts and a few food riots and could surprisingly kick ass and disarm anybody well into his 60's despite his diminutive size and demeanor. That was his flashes of PTSD, he momentarily turned into that MP, invariably to disappear to his room with a few beers and a pack of filter less cigarettes.
Another brother worked repairing jeeps and trucks on the battlefield largely with the mobile "mechanic on wheels" vehicles that my Grandfather produced/finished in their Chrysler dealership in Philadelphia under the Defense Production Act.
Uncle Joe's hand's shook so much he could not make a living as a mechanic after the war but ran an automotive paint store for the rest of his life, occasionally reliving the German 88 near misses that gave him the shakes and robbed him of most of his hearing.
I miss them and loved them all.
Amazing story SP.
Lest We Forget....
Big Salute to my Uncle Dave and Uncle Alex, and to my hubby's Uncle Jay, who has walked on. All served in WWII. My Uncle Dave is still a member of the Coast Guard and also went on to fight in Korea as did my Uncle Alex and my Dad, who went on to serve also in Vietnam (my dad was too young for WWII).
I know a lot of people didn't like to talk about what happened to them in war.
I am kind of selfish and wish more of them did. Put their stories down for history.
It seems the younger generations keep knowing less and less about what happened.
Fading into a distant memory.
My dad, who passed away December 7, 2019, at age 99, was at Omaha beach on D-Day. He was a naval Seabee, a construction battalion, drove a Rhino with troops and equipment to the beach. Also helped demo some of the German mines. He did not talk about it until he was in his 80s, and then rarely. Once he said the beginning of Saving Private Ryan was accurate, men dying as soon as they left the boat, water was red with blood. He carried a kind of quilt that he survived.
A salute to your dad.
I had the honor of speaking to four survivors of Pearl Harbor for well over an hour in 2011 at Pearl Harbor.
Alfred Benjamin Kame'eiamoku Rodrigues
Sterling R Cale
Herb Weatherwax
Robert G Kinzler.
A salute to them all.
On a number of occasions I met and attended lunches and dinners with Senator Daniel Inouye, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Medal of Honor recipient.
Those were times that I will never forget.
And to you Senator Inouye, respect and honor.
Senator Inouye was a member of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team. ''Go For Broke''.