Return to Omaha Beach

It was 40 years after World War II when I met John.  I was 57; he was 68 and had been retired for 12 years.  For the next four years he spent all his time doing things to make me happy. We were married in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Downers Grove, Illinois, on the day after Christmas, 1987.  The next week we left for Albuquerque.

When I told people John had four sons, someone asked, “Did you have to raise your stepsons?”

“No,” I said, “They were all in their 40's when I married their father.” 

One day John, carrying a handful of brochures and papers, came into the living room. He said, “I thought we might take a trip to Europe.  Would you like to do that?”

Like it?  I was thrilled!

We flew to Luxemburg, picked up a rental car at the airport, and headed first to Germany and then to France.  After a week in Paris, we used a rail pass to go to Rome, Venice, and Vienna, spending a week in each city.

For John the highlight of the trip was his return to Normandy for the first time since he waded ashore on Omaha Beach on June 10, 1944.   At the cemetery we walked between the crosses, tears streaming down our cheeks as we read the names.  Each cross was inscribed with the name of a young man (really just boys), his rank, the state he came from, and the day he was killed. 

Photographs show the overwhelming number of dead (over 5,000), but walking among the crosses made us see them as individuals, young men (really boys) cut down before they could really live.  There were names familiar to me in Texas: Brown, Thompson, McDonald, and also names with strange spellings of American boys whose ancestors came from Italy, Scandinavia, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland. And from all the states, a sergeant from Iowa or Wisconsin lying next to a colonel from Oregon or California, next to a boy from Georgia or Alabama or New York or Connecticut.  All those different names and states reminded me how diverse and yet united our nation is. 

At the edge of bluff was a low wall and a sign that said, “Warming!  Do not climb down the cliff!  Danger!  Wild boars!” 

So what did John do?  He climbed over the wall and headed down the cliff, now covered with knee-high brambles.  I gasped.  Then I went to the parking lot and drove the rental car a safer way down via a road.

I found John on the beach where so many boys died as German machine guns cut them to pieces as they waded ashore on June 6.  I took a picture of John walking where little waves met the sands of the pristine beach.    John said, “This place has not changed a bit since the last time I was here in 1944.

People believe what they want to believe.  On Omaha Beach I learned that people also see what they want to see.
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