D-Day veterans choke back tears to ensure memories live on, doing their duty above all else until the end.
Old sailors, too. And airmen. Even Marines. Makes no difference.I’ve spent the past few months interviewing veterans about D-Day and the Allied invasion of Normandy that ultimately liberated France. This was a turning point in World War II. As one veteran put it, “Europe would be one big Auschwitz otherwise.”
They use walkers and wheelchairs and canes now, these men who once carried guns and drove tanks into battle. They don’t see as well as they once did, and they sometimes struggled to hear my questions. But no matter what, they all felt a responsibility to tell their stories so that those who died were not forgotten and that those who weren’t there could understand the horrors of war.
No matter what one might think of war, it’s impossible to hear someone like Emmings talk about seeing his friends die “more or less in front of you” and not feel deep respect for a man who, 75 years later, refuses to let his friends down. Not remembering their sacrifice? Now that would be unthinkable.
“You could see tanks burning on the skyline. They burned for more than two days. They were going off like fireworks as the ammunition in them was blowing.” “All I can say is, it was hell,” he said. “There were dead bodies all over the seas. We wondered why we were doing this.” And then there was Mervyn Kersh of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, a spritely fellow with bright eyes who seems far younger than his 94 years. Kersh experienced anti-Semitism in the British military even before he crossed the channel to fight the Nazis. But he refused to remove his religion from his dog tags — even though some Jewish soldiers did so to protect themselves in case they were captured.Kersh said there is a lesson, even now, from WWII that we seem to be missing.
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