I Wonder What My Dad, Grandfather and Uncles were doing on June 6, 1944?

This is the 70^th anniversary of D-Day. I wonder what my father, grandfathers and uncles did that day. My paternal grandfather would turn 50, 24 days later. He was too old for the killing war, but I doubt if he was spared any of the wrath of living with his wife, Viennie May.

My father would have been fifteen years old, well past the end of his formal education and well into screwing up his life so bad only extreme religion could rescue him.

My uncles would have been all around my father’s age, John, Richard, Jesse; dad’s brothers, all a few years older than him, but for varying reasons, not in the war. At least I do not recall any stories of any of them being in the war. It is possible Richard was, but I do not know for sure. We have sort of lost touch with that side of the family since most of my cousins would not shake hands with me after dad gave an invitation preaching grandpa’s funeral, after members of the family explicitly told him not to.  

Mom would have been ten years old, still in school; but out for the summer and no doubt doing some sort of work in a farm field or maybe sitting around bored, playing with dolls or who knows just what.

They would all have been relatively happy, healthy, with plenty more years ahead; years with no major hospital stays or long-term illnesses to set them back. I was still twelve years over the horizon and mom and dad would have had no clue who their life partner would be.

Dad would have still been a no-heller, as he would later refer to his mother and other members of the family that stayed with the beliefs she shared with them; the beliefs of Ted Garner Armstrong and Herbert W. Armstrong – from the radio program: “The World Tomorrow!”. As I recall, that father and son team thought of themselves as prophets, not knowing they were simply two more religious fanatics that would have a heyday and then pass on into oblivion the same as if they had never existed.

On that day, brave deeds were done in the name of international salvation - rescuing freedom from tyranny - would be how history would characterize it; but for the majority of Americans, I bet it was mostly just another day.

Even that great war, must have seemed far away, vague and mysterious to dad, mom and the other average Americans. To this day, I suspect mom would not be able to point out France on a map with no labels, let alone Normandy. News did not travel as fast back then, especially to rural South Carolina; so I suspect if she heard anything about the whole thing, it would have been when she went back to school in the Fall of 1944, which would probably have been the fifth grade for her. One of her teachers may have mentioned it, or maybe the preacher might have said something on the subject from the pulpit.

Boys she and dad had grown up with, who were a few years older; may have been on the beaches that day – may have died. The news would have come that several families in the general area had been affected. The same would have been true for three years before and a few months after; news of tragedy, suffering, hardship abroad and at home; of widows, fatherless children, lost brothers, lost sisters, lost hope, lost dreams.

Franklin Roosevelt was the president. He would not die for several more months. He would have been sixty-two years old, but not in the best of health. Sigmund Freud would have been dead for almost five years, on D Day; his interpretation and analysis work long past; none of which was sufficient to rescue humanity from yet another calamity brought on by what he would have assumed was a vast unconscious conspiracy.

Einstein would still be around, not dying for another ten years; about to see one of the products of his work unleashed on Japan; events that would drive him to pacifism and philosophical rumination.

The inimitable George Bernard Shaw, born the same year as Freud, would have been 87 years old, his great works known around the world, his Nobel and Oscar prizes behind him. His socialism would still not be all that feared but a few years later, its more rabid cousin – communism, would become the scourge of every U.S. conservative.

I am glad I was born after all this turmoil, after the “good war”; and certainly glad to not have been born between 1920 and 1925. The young people, mostly men let’s face it; born during those five years would wind up bearing the brunt of the coming siege, WW II. Whether a young man was born in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, or the United States; 1920-1925 were not the optimum years to later have on the left side of your tombstone, because chances were good, whatever numbers were on the right side of your tombstone, would not have been much higher; anywhere from 19 to 24 years higher, in many cases.

The Los Alamos project in Mexico, launched in 1943 with an annual budget of $2.2 billion and with 9,000 employees; was a great success, in terms of meeting goals. That was where the Manhattan Project secretly went to be completed.

On D-day, the great men and women there in New Mexico, were nearing completion of their nuclear project. A year later, the world would see what they had been working on and it would bring the proud Japanese to their knees.

So much was going wrong 70 to 75 years ago, but that one day – June 6, 1944; most of the world looks back, remembers and thanks the brave young people who hurtled onto the beaches and did not yield until the war tide was turned.

I am a pacifist. I hate the thought of wars, and struggle to call even that war “good”; so this is my sort of tribute to those people. The ones who made it possible for the world to turn the corner toward another era of peace, the ones who paid the highest price, I have no trouble calling those people “good.”