D-Day, June 6, 1944

There’s a book that my father gave my mother Christmas of 1975 called “Is Paris Burning?” Written in the mid-60s, this book chronicles life before the liberation of France in August of 1944 to the liberation itself. The title refers to something Hitler would say every time he called up the Wehrmacht general in charge of the defenses of Paris, von Choltitz. Fresh from an assassination attempt on his life, which (unfortunately) did not kill him but did leave him physically incapacitated, Hitler had already succumbed to the throes of complete insanity, courtesy of an overriding paranoia and copious amounts of painkillers. “Is Paris burning yet!?!” was the standard greeting von Choltitz would get as soon as he picked up the phone. The closer Allied forces got to this great city, the more Hitler wanted it scorched. Seems that if he couldn’t have it, no one would.

Today marks the 66th anniversary of the landings at Normandy, commonly known as D-Day. I don’t think much of Mother’s Day, perhaps because my “doubting Thomas” nature precludes me from thinking that it is something other than one of those holiday’s that Hallmark created. (They’ve been getting desperate lately. C’mon….Secretaries Day!?!) But I always think about my mother today, for it was the night drop the night before and the landings on the morning of June 6, 1944 that liberated her the following August of ’44.

They’re making a big deal about D-Day this year, as they do every ten years. In my mind, it’s a big day every year. The invasion of the Normandy coastline changed the entire course of history, and for the better. It spelled the end of the Nazi German domination of all of western Europe. It liberated millions of people who had been struggling and suffocating under the tyrannical rule of the Germans for four years. And it was not without its costs. The “butcher’s bill” on D-Day alone was approximately 9,000 young kids, 3,000 killed in action. Bear in mind that the majority of these numbers were kids that were in all likelihood not over the age of 22. The average age for a junior officer was 21-22. The average age for a GI was 19-20. The ferocity of the battle has been pretty well recreated in the first twenty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan”, only the charnel house that was Omaha Beach was not a twenty minute ordeal, but rather a six hour one. So bad was Omaha Beach that Gen. Omar Bradley, commander of First Army, seriously contemplated pulling American forces from it, so grievous was the situation. It was only through the grit and determination of the sergeants, captains, lieutenants, corporals and privates that they took the bluffs overlooking the beach. The generals, who planned it all out, had nothing to do with it. The plan failed the moment the first wave hitting Omaha Beach got wiped out with a 90% casualty rate. Hitler once postulated that American forces were soft, unwilling to take orders, and suffered from streaks of individuality that would make them terrible soldiers. On the morning of June 6, 1944, with a game-plan gone to hell and a situation getting ever so desperate by the minute, the spirit of individuality that Hitler so disparaged kicked in. Devoid of actionable orders, the kids on the beach made them up as they went along, and breached the Atlantic Wall, manned by Hitler’s best troops, who wouldn’t so much as sneeze unless ordered to. So much for the children of democracy being “soft”. The airborne drops the night before were similarly wrecked. Planes blew off course. Pilots panicked by anti-aircraft fire, dropped paratroopers either too low, too high, or too far off the designated drop zone. Again, improvisation and courage saved the day.

On two blank pages in her copy of “Is Paris Burning”, my mother pasted two pictures and a photocopy of a monument that sits in the town square of her hometown of St. Cloud. Her town was on the Seine River, directly across from Paris. Allied forces used the roadway through her town to get to Paris. The two pictures are of the first liberating personnel of Allied forces. One is of two or three guys on a tank, rolling down a street. The other is of French girls mobbing the tank, the joy of liberation palpable. In the margins of the pictures, written in thin magic marker, it says “First Tanks, St. Cloud, Liberation, August of 1944”. The photocopy of the monument sits on the opposite page. The inscription on the monument, in the town square of St. Cloud, says in English:

City of Saint Cloud

Square

This Square is Dedicated to the Staff Sgt. Lawrence R. Kelly from Altoona (Pennsylvania) Who Was Deadly Wounded on August 25th 1944

As He Entered Saint Cloud Preceding The Liberating Army of General Patton

For four years, my mother lived under Nazi occupation as a teenager. People vanished without a trace, food was scarce, and homework was done in the basement by candlelight on nights when Allied bombers roared overhead. The nightmare was over in August of 1944. A few years later, she made it to the United States, met my father a few years after that, and realized her little slice of the American dream. Today I’ll do three things. I’ll think about my mother, whose indominitable spirit allowed her to carve out a life after so much sadness, to Lawrence Kelly, who did not land at D-Day but was part of the liberating forces that came ashore thereafter, and I’ll think of what Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly commentator of “60 Minutes” (who was a reporter for Stars and Stripes during the Second World War) said:“If the world ever seems cruel or selfish, go to the American cemetery at Coleville, overlooking Omaha Beach. Go see what one man did for another on June 6, 1944”.