Veterans of key World War II battles are disappearing. Europe facing new conflicts recalls why their comrades died.
Roger Cohen reported from Normandy, Laetitia Vancon From Normandy and America.
They are very ordinary. On June 6, 1944, under Nazi artillery fire on the cliffs of Normandy, the young people who came from afar did not think of themselves as heroes.
Gen. Darryl A. Williams, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said that no, Allied soldiers “were ordinary men in this great battle” who “meeted it with courage and a tremendous will to win.” Challenging young people.” free. “
At a ceremony this week in Deauville on the Normandy coast, the general stood before the 48 American survivors of the day, the youngest 98 and most 100 or older. Veteran in wheelchair. They saluted, their movements brisk. Eight decades have passed and many have lived in silence because the memory of the war is too horrific to tell.
When the 90th anniversary of D-Day rolls around in 2034, there may not be any veterans left. The living memory of the beach where they died will cease to exist.
Gen. Williams said “war clouds are forming in Europe,” hinting at the Allies’ determination to defend Ukraine from Russian attacks. The 80th anniversary of the landings was a celebration, but also a somber one. Europe is troubled and worried as extremism eats away at its liberal democracies.
For more than 27 months, war has raged across the continent, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians. Despite the Soviet Red Army’s crucial role in defeating Hitler, Russia was not invited to the commemorations. Ten years ago, President Vladimir Putin attended. Now he talks about nuclear war. This is a time of division and uncertainty.
Every long-lived veteran who has returned to Normandy knows what this drift can lead to, how easy it is to sleepwalk toward the fire.
“That’s between you and your superiors,” said George K. Mullins, 99, a former staff officer with the 101st Airborne Division’s 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, who recalled his death. The day he landed on Utah Beach with a folding carbine. “We know there’s a soul somewhere.”
D-Day was not the end but the beginning. The Battle of Normandy wound its way through hedges that still separate fields to this day, teeming with insects in the sun and taking a horrific toll.
Sergeant Mullins, who now lives in Garberville, Calif., looked up from his foxhole a few days after the battle and saw Private First Class two foxholes away. William H. Lemaster looks over the edge. That proved to be the final act for the young man from West Virginia.
A German sniper’s bullet pierced LeMaster’s head and killed him – a memory so vivid that Sergeant Mullins spent some time this week at the Collerville-sur-Mer American Cemetery. Kneel down at the grave of a friend.
There are 9,388 graves in the cemetery, most of which are in the form of white Latin crosses and a few are Stars of David commemorating Jewish American service members. They seem to be somewhat more visible as anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Europe.
The Allies did not come to save Europe’s Jews—suggestions to bomb the railways to Auschwitz were rejected. But the end of the war in Europe 11 months after D-Day did bring an end to Hitler’s massacre of 6 million Jews.
In Germany today, Maximilian Krach, the far-right Alternative for Germany’s top candidate in this weekend’s European Parliament elections, claimed that not all members of the Nazi paramilitary group the Waffen-SS were criminals. Another AfD leader, Bjorn Hock, was convicted last month of using a Nazi slogan.
“A far-right party that advocates historical revisionism has an approval rating of 20 percent in the polls,” said Jan-Werner Mueller, a professor of political science at Princeton University. “I never thought I would. There seems to be no limit to the growth of the far right in our lifetime.
As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
In Normandy, the thousands of people who died as the Allies gained a foothold in Europe can be seen everywhere, their black-and-white photos plastered on wooden telegraph poles that stretch from Colleville-sur-Mer to the path of the 1st (U.S.) Division. Ha beach. Their young expressions are full of innocence and hope. French essayist Roland Barthes observed that disaster lurks in every old photograph.
Perhaps, two years after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world needs little reminder of what it is like to be swept away by the winds of history, what it is like to have every assumption crumble, to feel freedom and the profound fragility of life. Of course, as armed conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza intensify, one needs no reminder of the long-term human impact of war.
Hatred gets the blood boiling, but rational compromise and civilized disagreement—the foundation of any healthy society living freely under the rule of law—do not. Today, many politicians in Western society do not hesitate to use this sentiment to attack the “other.”
Patrick Thomines, the mayor of Collerville-sur-Mer, stood in front of a school covered in French, American and European flags, symbolizing the transatlantic foundation of the postwar West. “You realize that peace is never won and it takes an eternal struggle to get it,” he said. “We should be united to avoid war, but extreme parties are on the rise, which is the exact opposite of what we are celebrating here.”
The celebration has an extraordinary appeal. Pointe du Hoc’s eerie cratered landscape, reminiscent of the still-pockmarked terrain from the Battle of Verdun in World War I, raises and raises the question of how American rangers scaled the cliffs. People flocked to the place, curious.
They come from countless countries to join uniformed reenactment groups. They drove their jeeps around the hedgerows, causing endless traffic jams. They party, dance and gather on the vast beach to solemnly contemplate how Europe was saved from Hitler. Their children go to museums to recreate terrain and battles.
Slovenian Yuri Milavc set off from Ljubljana in a jeep, along with 18 friends who were also traveling in jeeps. Today, he said, the feelings are more mixed. “I remember what Europe used to feel like,” he told me. “Now Putin has shown his true colors and he is fighting the last imperialist war in Europe.”
President Biden will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Normandy this week in a show of allied support for Ukraine as the country comes under increasing Russian attacks. President Macron invited Biden to a state dinner on Saturday, and he also chose to tie the 80th anniversary of D-Day to Ukraine’s struggle for freedom.
“I know that our country has brave and fearless young people who are ready to make sacrifices like our ancestors,” he said in a speech in Brittany on Wednesday.
When it comes to spirit, it’s hard to compare to Cpl. Wilbur Jack Myers, 100, of Company B, 692nd Tank Destroyer Battalion, 104th and 42nd Infantry Divisions. He’s so excited to be in Normandy to celebrate his anniversary that he says he “doesn’t feel like I’m over 85!” To prove it, he’s been enjoying karaoke at his home in Hagerstown, Maryland. .
Corporal Myers was one of 13 children from a Maryland family trained as a gunner who arrived in Cherbourg, France on September 23, 1944. It ended with the liberation of the Nazi Dachau concentration camp.
“It was really sad to see those emaciated prisoners, and I knew a lot of them were dead,” Corporal Miles told me. “I have never forgotten it, but I kept silent for 50 years because if I tried to talk about the war I would burst into tears and be embarrassed. Finally, I had the strength.
Corporal Miles said he felt he had to be part of the fight to stop Hitler, but he didn’t want to die. He was a gunner with a 90mm anti-tank gun, a “terrible weapon” in his words. A tank crewman died when shrapnel ripped through his helmet during a devastating firefight, causing severe emotional toll. The deceased was a Native American named Albert Husker.
“Recently, his great-great-nephew saw me on television and got in touch with me,” Corporal Miles said. “He looks so much like his uncle!”
Sometimes he would examine the bodies of Germans and find crosses and conclude that, despite their beliefs, they could not say no to Hitler. His own Christian faith was strong. He said it kept him on the straight and narrow and loving people, which is why he’s where he is today. He believes that hatred is part of human nature, and the pursuit of power and money will lead to war, but all this can be defeated with faith. “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know you, but I love you!” Corporal Miles said.
He began to think about war. “You know, I have never killed anyone, although I wanted to do so many times when we were trapped. I find it hard to believe that Putin is so ready to kill and take over other countries today.
As war returns to Europe, the ghosts that haunt the continent feel closer than they seemed to have laid to rest twenty years ago. The EU was founded to end wars and has proven to be a magnet for peace. NATO has always been Europe’s military guarantor. The two institutions have always maintained a line, but the line between the world and war is more tenuous today than it has been in a long time.
Even in festive Normandy, it was hard to shake this feeling, and I found myself reminded of the final stanza of Siegfried Sassoon’s World War I poem “Suicide in the Trenches”:
You smug-faced, scorching-eyed people
They cheered as the soldiers marched,
Sneak home and pray you never know
The place where youth and laughter belong.
