Why D-Day Still Matters

 

I was only two years old on D-Day, so I have no memories of that time. Despite that, I was aware of some aspects of the war through my family connections. Uncle Bill served in the Navy and fought in the Pacific. My mother was a Red Cross nurse stateside. Both my father and stepfather served in Europe. My stepfather was in the Medical Corps; his brother was in the infantry and did not survive. I have powerful memories from my childhood of my grandmother dressing in her white uniform and attending frequent Gold Star Mother meetings. She had a Gold Star in her front window to commemorate the family loss.

Years later, I had a high school teacher who had been tortured by the Japanese in a prison camp and a Jewish neighbor with numbers inked on her arm from a concentration camp imprisonment. When I subsequently worked as a nurse in New Jersey, several elderly patients carried similar numbers along their left arms. Wars have lasting effects.

During my lifetime, I learned a lot about the war itself and the lasting significance of that battle. The era of the Second World War, occurring some eighty years ago, is far different from our lives today. The world was coming off an economic depression preceded by a decade of the Roaring Twenties.

During the 1930s, repressive, fascist, and authoritarian leaders came into power in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain. In the USSR, the Communist government was solidifying its power through purges, labor camps, starvation, and murder. Italy invaded Ethiopia for the second time in 1935. Japan, already occupying Korea, moved into parts of China in 1931. Many other countries had colonies across the globe, so in their continued quest for power, said little about these invasions. The phrase: "The sun never sets on the British Empire", true during much of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, carried forward into the next century. Some estimates gave Britain control over 25% of the population in the known world.

Many leaders in America called for the US to stand back from the issues in the world, avoid conflicts, adopt a stance of isolationism, and put "America First". (Now where have we heard that recently?) Some Americans even supported fascist movements as a bulwark against communism.

As Hitler started his expansion and moved into wars against other countries in Europe, President Roosevelt grew alarmed and began planning for what he expected would be a World War that Americans would have to fight. With the Lend-Lease military equipment and arms program for Britain in 1940, the institution of the draft, and the start of industrial mobilization, tentative steps were taken for the inevitable conflict.

Yet, still, Congress would not sanction any further support to a beleaguered Great Britain. Some military officials so expected Britain to fall to Hitler during the Blitz and other bombardments, they cautioned about allowing American supplies into a battlefield where the Germans would capture them.

But when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, all of that changed, and a woefully unprepared US was suddenly at war across the world as Germany and Italy both then declared war on America. The USSR, which assisted Germany in the invasion of Poland, and supplied it with arms, reversed alliances after Germany, then invaded it, too, later in 1941.

Mini wars were fought across the globe in Southeast Asia and the Philippines, in China, North Africa, and Europe between 1941 and 1944 when D-Day happened. The major battles were always going to be the ground wars in France, Italy, and Germany. Spain, under the fascism of dictator Franco, remained away from the fray, although it was a conduit for both factions. France, soon mostly occupied and cruelly repressed, could do little to provide opposition; many troops fled to England when they could do so.

The American fighting forces were engaged as soon as possible. They deployed some into battle with minimal training. African-American troops fought in segregated units such as the famed Tuskegee Airmen. The authorities rounded up Americans of Japanese heritage and placed them in containment camps unless they were young men of fighting age who agreed to join the military. The authorities assigned these troops to fight in Europe. Skills from several Native Americans who could talk in their varied languages (the Code Talkers) allowed the military to communicate in a code not easily broken. Many Hispanic troops from the southwest, although not segregated, joined with Native Americans and deployed to the jungles across the Pacific islands.

Women could not fight in battle but served support roles in moving supplies, code craft, communication, and logistics through service in the Women's Army Corps, (WACS), the Navy Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), the Coast Guard Women Reserves (SPARS), the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and Marine Corps Womens reserve. The Army Nurse Corps and Navy Nurse Corps together supplied over 70,000 nurses who served across the battlefields, in transport, evacuations, field hospitals, and in health and safety positions. Some nurses were captured and imprisoned in the Philippines.

When the men went off to war, the women at home went to work and staffed the factories and civilian jobs that were now vacant. Think of the Rosie the Riveter cartoon. Through all of this, the country was changing. It became globally engaged. Communities followed on maps, advancement, or defeat in battles. They also came to bury their dead and mourn the losses. The Gold Star Mothers started after the First World War, added chapters to assist veterans and their families. Communities tolerated food and fuel rationing to help the troops, started Victory Gardens, bought war bonds, and saved aluminum foil. The country had a shared mission and a common goal: to bring the troops back home as soon as safely possible.

During the totality of the war, 38% of the troops (6,332,000) were volunteers while 61.1% were draftees (11,535,000). 407,316 troops perished in this war; over 670,000 others were wounded.

On D-Day, troops from several nations took part: The US, Britain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, and others all fought that day. 5000 vessels carried a force of 130,000 fighters to the French shores now defined as Omaha Beach, Sword, Juno, Utah, and Gold along the coasts of Normandy. 24,000 paratroopers attacked from the air.

Few veterans from D-Day are still alive (about 100,000 from the over 17 million who served); some were on site at the eightieth-anniversary ceremonies this week in France. Most were around 100 years old. Yet all spoke of the tremendous storming of the beaches on that day as memories they cannot erase. They mentioned the bodies cut down in the water as they arrived; seared memories they have never forgotten. Some 4400 Allied troops died that day; Americans lost around 2500 men with another 5000 wounded. The battle for Normandy would persist over several more months and lead to many thousand more deaths.

President Roosevelt announced the long-awaited invasion by saying: "They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate."

We commemorate this day, perhaps in part, because of the enormity of the mission and the depths of the sacrifices made. But, I think, what draws us together on this anniversary is our thought that our quest for victory was noble, to defeat tyranny and fascism. (The liberation of the concentration camps would still be a year away.) The veterans from that day are proud of their efforts and they should be. Many say they would fight again for our values if necessary. That is because when we went to war in that situation, we, as a country, had shared values, imperfect as they were. And yes, today, our country continues to have injustice and inequities since some citizens think they are owed special rights and privileges, but we mostly try to get things right. And as long as most of us believe in our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Rule of Law, we will get there someday. (Hear that SCOTUS?)

But, aren't all wars a failure of the human intellect? An inability to reduce discord before it becomes conflict? A refusal to see that two wrongs do not make a right? So, as a world, we have not gotten close to the goals set out when, after WWII, we formed the United Nations, often because of the notion that some have, that it is okay to start wars for no particular reason, that ethnic cleansing and genocide are permitted, as is discrimination against women and tribal minorities, and that religious wars should persist.

Til next week-Peace!