First off, I would like say I have seven fantastic siblings and we all grew up in a moderately sized house in Bethesda, Maryland throughout a good portion of the 1950s-1970s. We had two loving parents who gave us a great start on life’s adventure. Our wacky suburban neighborhood is recalled by many who spent cherished childhood time there as “good old Edward Ave”. But those stories are for another time, we are here to talk about our Dad or “Pop-Pop” as he is known by his 19 grandchildren with lots of great grandchildren on the way at the time of this writing.
My personal interest in D-Day began at a young age as I often heard rumors and stories that Dad landed at some beach called “D-Day” when fighting in World War II. Yet these stories rarely came from Dad. He was proud of his service and loved to speak of his “brothers-in-arms” and the times they shared when the topic came up, but he rarely spoke of it focusing more on his family, his work, and his faith. This is a trait I appreciate and marvel at more as the years go by although I continue to yearn for more interesting stories about his time in Europe. He did little preaching but rather spoke through “action” on a daily basis. Never too busy to lend a hand, do a myriad of housechores (which he did almost religiously), or help someone in need even after a hard day’s work. Occasionally his war days would come out in small ways around the house. He used to “burn his toast” in the toaster on purpose and then scrape off the black carbon. When I asked him about this he would explain that in Europe they had a “gasoline” run camp stove and they would make their toast over the open flame and then scrape off the burn marks. He seemed to just like his toast that way even given more modern conveniences.
His smile was frequent and infectious at parties and as a child if that smile was ever erased something was wrong and you hoped you hadn’t caused it.
It is important to understand the deeper man a little bit before a story about one particular trip and one particular episode in his life. Rather than a “glory days” story I see these articles more as describing a very humble man who with many other recent high school graduates became involved in a series of extraordinary historical events that changed the world forever.
Again these articles are more about my experiences and knowledge about the events and if you were a young kid in the late 60s you couldn’t miss the constant barrage of WWII films on television. Classics like: “The Great Escape”, “The Guns of Navarone”, “The Dirty Dozen”, “Kelly’s Heroes” and even the TV series reruns of “Rat Patrol”, “Hogans Heroes”, and ”McHale’s Navy” were frequently shown. It was all good fun and soaking into our brains at the time. The nostalgic and adventurous Hollywood views of WWII were a strong influence and I was no exception to its infection often resorting to playing war games with friends in the nearby woods. Capture the flag type games with elm sticks where you would find yourself creeping quietly along the creek so you left no tracks for the enemy to follow as you escaped his prison camp. How fun it all seemed?
It wasn’t until my Dad invited me to go see the “Patton” movie in the 1970s at the Hoff Theatre at the University of Maryland that I really began to get a picture of what the European WWII conflict was like. A much more complex story for my father and for all involved. He kept saying things like “Yeah that’s what it was like for us”, “Nuts!”, “we were attached with the 3rd Army at Bastogne after Normandy”, “ we were at the Battle of the Bulge”, and “ the Bulge wasn’t too good for my brother Harold and his buddies in the infantry”. This was way different than what the movies could portray this was upfront and personal.
And then every once in awhile in years to follow the occasional “I’d like to go back to Europe someday to see things again but your mother wont get on a plane”. My mother did always say she wouldn’t get on a plane. The thought of getting on a boat to Europe was floated over the years but that never materialized perhaps for good reasons.
His D-Day landing itself was still a bigger mystery to me at this time but I was interested enough that I began reading stories about Normandy and over the years we had occasional opportunities to talk about other things that he could remember and his life in the AAA halftrack crew. I even took a side trip to Normandy while on vacation in Europe in 1990. My oldest brother John has a particular keen interest in war history and in the early 1990s we began slowly collecting as much as we could about Dad’s time in the service, his records, letters, unit commendations, including getting all his campaign medals and ribbons and my brother Bill made a nice shadow box for Dad that was presented to him by the family and all the siblings were there to enjoy it with him. I think this was a great experience to share with Dad as a family and the shadow box stands as a reminder to this day.
In the early 1990s, as the 50th Anniversary of D-Day was approaching there was brief discussions of maybe we could go back but plans seemed vague and distant.
How would this turn out? Keep reading the following articles if you’re interested.
Next: Prelogue
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