Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994 TAG: 9406070106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JERRY SCHWARTZ ASSOCIATED PRESS NOTE: Lede
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
D-Day plus 50 was a day for old soldiers and their long-loved brides. It was a day for remembering.
There were grand speeches: ``On these beaches, the forces of freedom turned the tide of the 20th century,'' said President Clinton at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy.
``They secured a foothold for freedom,'' he said. ``Today many of them are here among us. They may walk with a little less spring in their step, and their ranks are growing thinner. But let us never forget when they were young, these men saved the world.''
About 100,000 people attended ceremonies to remember the day that 156,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel aboard the largest armada in history and breached Adolf Hitler's Atlantic Wall, at a cost of 10,000 lives.
Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II and other leaders of the Allied nations presided solemnly at a series of ceremonies along the Normandy coast. The climax was a multinational commemoration at Omaha Beach, scene of D-Day's bloodiest combat.
``I thank you for the world's freedom,'' said the French president, Francois Mitterrand. ``What we won that day on the Normandy beaches was our freedom today.''
The grand speeches paled beside the quiet moments, however. Like Charles Neighbor surveying 9,386 graves at Normandy, peering intently but not too carefully for fear of seeing the names of men with whom he served.
``I got a lot of friends buried here,'' he said. ``I haven't tried to see any of them. I want to remember the way they were.''
Neighbor, 69, lives in Roanoke. Fifty years ago, he was thrown into the bloodiest battle of the day with the 29th Division, fighting alongside men like Henry Tyler. A half-century later, Tyler's memories of the war are untinged by sentiment.
``It's dog eat dog. You live like an animal,'' said Tyler, 76. ``If a guy gets wounded, you say he's a lucky b------ he gets killed, you say he got it. Not much you can say.''
Some had no interest in returning. Willie Usher, 71, was among the veterans who gathered in Jerusalem at the Yad Vashem Memorial to victims of the Holocaust. In 1944, he was in a British artillery unit.
``I thank God I came out of it alive, and I don't ever want to see the place again,'' he said. ``That's my feeling.''
The Germans weren't there either, though they watched on television.
``The recreation of the `longest day' smacked not a little of Hollywood,'' said the newspaper Die Welt. ``But who can criticize our former war enemies for using the tools of our media age to reflect on the sacrifice of their sons?''
Others thought they did not receive their due: ``There's a lack of recognition of what Belgium did,'' complained Jean Hoogewyss, 71, of Brussels, once an Allied radio man. ``You never hear much about the Polish contribution to the invasion,'' sniffed Stanislaw Dyszynski, who fought on Gold Beach.
And there were veterans who objected to the presence of a president who avoided service - albeit in a very different war, at a very different time.
But these were minor notes on a day when the guys who once ate C rations were the focus, not the leaders who dined Monday on oysters in lobster sauce, fresh goose liver in apricot sauce and baby lamb with 13 garden vegetables.
Earlier, Mitterrand and Clinton placed wreaths at a monument to U.S. soldiers at Utah Beach, then went to a British cemetery at Bayeux with Queen Elizabeth.
Charles MacGillivary of Braintree, Mass., attended a ceremony at the Massachusetts Statehouse. He recalled watching as men drowned at Omaha Beach; he survived the day, only to lose an arm at the Battle of the Bulge.
``I wasn't thinking of medals. I was thinking of living,'' said MacGillivary, who was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Eleanor Thomas went to a graveside ceremony at Belmont Cemetery in Massachusetts for her husband, Harold. She had met him at a Glenn Miller dance in Boston; they had a son and seven good years, before he died at Normandy.
``I think of Harold every day and every minute,'' she said.
But this was not entirely a day of sadness. The gray heads wearing American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War caps, their wives with matching decorations, clapped and swayed to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman music in the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery.
They jitterbugged in the aisles to ``In the Mood'' and ``Take the A Train'' played by the Army Band. And the Army chorale turned the clock back 50 years with ``Elmer's Tune,'' ``Pennsylvania 6-5000'' and ``I Got A Gal in Kalamazoo.''
Oh, what a gal. A real pipperoo.
Somehow, it seemed fitting, even in the midst of more than 200,000 graves representing veterans of every war the United States has fought.
After all, these once were young people, living at center stage during times both horrible and exciting; they sacrificed much, but they achieved even more. These are not memories that die in 50 years, or a lifetime.
As Bill Clinton said, ``Oh, they may walk with a little less spring in their step, and their ranks are growing thinner, but let us never forget, when they were young, these men saved the world.''
On D Day plus 50 years, no one forgot.
by CNB