I want to tell you about my stepfather. He was in the Canadian army during WW2 and witnessed the liberation of France. Elmer was extremely private about what he had experienced. Only after a few drinks would he make any comments. Some people drink to forget, for him, he would only remember.
“You don’t know what I’ve seen,” he said many times. A single tear would run down his cheek and he would close his eyes and shield his face with one large hand as he remembered.
As a child I would sit at his feet at those times, waiting for him to tell me more, but all I ever learned were mere snippets of painful memories. What horrors had he seen that he needed to protect me from them?
There was one memory that seemed to replay frequently. He described how he’d gone on an ambulance ride into a field to recover the body of a downed pilot. The body was badly burned. The crew loaded the body and then headed back out when they had to make an emergency stop to put out a fire. The smoldering body had burst into flames. The story always horrified me, no matter how many times I heard it. What had it done to Elmer, who was there at the time to see it, to smell the charred flesh?
He did have a few good memories, too. The camaraderie and brotherhood that exists in life-and-death situations. When Paris had been liberated, he’d been welcomed and treated like a hero. He had the privilege of dancing with Queen Elizabeth while she was still a princess. Recalling those moments, he would beam.
Who has not seen the disturbing videos of the holocaust? Dead, naked, degraded bodies loaded on a truck then dumped into mass graves. Many were desecrated by removing the gold from their teeth for the national treasury and rendering the remains to make soap. I have been haunted by the images of allied soldiers impaled on spikes on the beaches of Normandy. I do not want to dishonor them by forgetting.
The years have trickled by. My mother and stepfather went their separate ways and I have lost track of Elmer. Now we have come upon the 60th anniversary of D-Day. The memories, mine of his, have also come back and there is only one last thing for me to say: Elmer, I respect you for what you faced, and what you had to do. Thank you.
Note : This was the essay that appeared in “Military” magazine’s 60th Anniversary of D-Day edition in June 2004. Again. Thank you, John D. Shank.