This Is D-Day

Sixty-six years ago: June 6, 1944. D-Day. The invasion of France during World War II, the biggest amphibious military operation ever. How many people remember? Some know about that day from Tom Hanks’ movie, “Saving Private Ryan.” That was several years ago. I wonder if my 22-year-old grandson has seen it.

In Albuquerque I met Russell Frye, who was a sergeant in the Army when he waded ashore on Omaha Beach with German bullets killing men around him on June 6, 1944. So many men in his company were killed that he became a captain before he was wounded at St. Lo. He refused to talk about it. With three knee replacements because of shrapnel, plus being an insulin-dependent diabetic, he died last year in Albuquerque, aged 90 plus.

In 1944 I was 15, starting summer vacation after my sophomore year at Fort Worth’s Paschal High. I barely remember the excitement when we woke up that hot Texas morning and learned our boys were landing on the beaches in Normandy.

On our honeymoon in Europe 44 years later, I stood with my husband John in that cemetery on the bluff above Omaha Beach, walking between those rows of white crosses, over 3,000 of them, and felt the full impact of what that day cost in young men's lives.

On June 6, 1944, John was on a ship in the English channel, waiting to go ashore on Omaha Beach four days later. He remembered marveling at the sea full of ships. His brother-in-law, Sam Musico, was a Naval officer on one of those ships. John was best man when Sam married his sister, Stell, in 1939, but he was not to see Sam again until after the war.

John and I danced at Sam and Stell’s 50th wedding anniversary party. John died two years later. Sam and Stell went on to celebrate more than 60 years together. Sam also is gone now, but she is a lively, alert 95-years-old, still driving her Lexis to supervise her McDonald franchise.

John’s buddy, Dominick Fallacaro, was navigator on a B-17. Shortly before boarding the troop ship, John received a letter Dominick’s wife, Vera, saying Dominick’s plane was shot down over Germany. John wrote his mother he was too sick to eat supper. Three years after the war John married Vera and adopted her son, Mike, as the oldest of his four sons.

(Vera also died too young, at age 52. John was widowed 12 years before I met him in 1987.)

My brother, George Preston Pattie, was only three months old on D-Day 1944. Although he did not remember it, he was keenly interested in World War II. I went with him to France, so that on June 6, 1999, the 45th anniversary of D-Day, we drove a rental car along all five of the Normandy beaches where U.S., British, and Canadian troops landed.

At the Omaha Beach cemetery we sat on folding chairs listening to dignitaries give unmemorable speeches. Near us sat a woman whose brother landed on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. His unit met very little opposition from the Germans, and less than 20 were killed. One of them was her brother.

In war many die, but many more live. Survivors go on to live good lives. But for their loved ones, each man killed is a tragedy.