More Than Just A Day

“Sacrifice is meaningless without remembrance.” 

-Unknown

Today is the 70th Anniversary of D-Day.

I have always been fascinated by WWII history, and I've always gravitated toward WWII books and films, but for the longest time it was merely history that lived in a book to me. Not the lives that my grandparents lived before I was even blip in the universe. Not the stories that only came out when their generation--who had already lived through the worst and survived--reached old age and began to come to terms with their true mortality.

My brief time in the military thankfully changed some of that. As the last of our WWII vets leave this earth, and as their experiences become more and more distant to both our generation and future generations, the need to write them down before they are lost seems ever more urgent. Some of the memories and stories of that great generation that I’ve encountered are beginning to elude even me as the years go by. So I'm using my quiet time today to write down what little I have to share—before it, too, is gone.

As a child, I knew that my dad's dad had been a pilot and my mom's dad had been a top exec at Keebler. My maternal grandfather, who died when I was seven, was well-traveled, liked to read the newspaper, and ate his cereal out of humongous bowls. At least from what I remembered. My paternal grandfather died before I was born, but I knew that he was good-natured and well-loved by all with a quiet, mischievous side. Eventually I learned their "before" stories, too.

My maternal grandfather, Anthony Miles Swartz, (nicknamed the "Big Cheese" and known to me as "Poppy Cheese"), tricked his mom into signing a parental waiver so he could enlist in the Navy at age 17. She had poor eyesight, so he slipped the paper in with some other forms, and before they knew it he was shipping off to sea on board the USS Murphy, a Navy destroyer. My mother-in-law, an avid geneaologist, was able to look up his military records; they showed that he was received on board on March 1st, 1944. A few short months later on June 5th, the Murphy departed England for the Normandy beaches, and starting early the next morning the ship's crew provided support fire off the coast of Omaha beach for the duration of the D-Day invasions. Over the next few days and through the end of June, the USS Murphy got in a 'gun duel' with German shore batteries, repeled German U-boat attacks, and conducted screen duty for transports. In July, the USS Murphy headed south to do the same for Operation Dragoon in the south of France. 

My grandfather started to share a few select stories right before he died; one of those was of the Purple Heart he didn't feel he had rightly earned. He was injured when a round cooked off from the ship's guns during the most intense part of a gun battle, but since it was only during combat and not from enemy fire, he didn't feel his medal was warranted. He also spoke of escorting King Ibn Saud to the Yalta conference, a fairly unknown mission due to the censorship and security/confidentiality standards at the time. The king had never left his country or been on a ship, and there were tales of Persian rugs laid out on the deck for the king to walk on, and part of the deck penned off to hold goats to slaughter for the king's meals. Shortly before that adventure, my grandfather's ship (in concert with the USS Quincy) was also part of the security escort for President Roosevelt to a series of conferences, among them being the Malta conference. 

My grandfather also shared (with my uncle I think) that he had spent a significant amount of time in the Pacific Fleet, and was part of the first allied elements who stepped foot in the obliterated city of Nagasaki after the atomic bomings. Based on the ship's records, that means my grandfather was in the midst of the carnage a mere month after the bomb went off, and just days after the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, which officially ended WWII. It's amazing to think that he was witness to some of the greatest and also most horrific moments of the war, spanning from the very first seconds of the U.S.'s official involvement on D-Day until the very end when the Allies declared victory. Growing up, I remember my grandparents' house filled with all kinds of interesting decorations and souvenirs from my grandfather's travels, each one part of his story. And yet we still knew so very little of his personal experience. 

I know slightly less about my paternal grandfather, Jack Dempsey McQuaig, called "Champ." He served from 1938-1949 and was a Navy fighter pilot who flew Hellcat fighters off aircraft carriers, mostly in the Pacific Theater. His home ship was the USS Hornet; he flew missions over Tanian and Saipan, and also Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima in preparation for the U.S. ground forces to attack. After the war he was stationed at various Naval bases, where he met fellow officer, CPT Henry Cleveland Hunley (“Cleve”) whose family became close friends with my dad’s family over the years. Following his discharge from active duty, my grandfather continued to fly and work around the Naval yard in Philadelphia. He died when my dad was college; five years after his death my grandmother remarried, which is how that old family friend, Cleve Hunley, became my step-grandfather. He himself was a Navy flight surgeon who flew on some of the most acute life-saving missions of the war, then moved on to positions of prestige within the medical and aerospace departments of the Navy. From what I remember during my lifetime, he was simply the quietest, most introspective and docile man I knew. He liked tending to his garden and smoking his cigars. At his funeral in 2004, I was honored to wear my uniform and present the American flag to his daughter—my wonderful aunt—for his service on behalf of a grateful nation. It’s ironic that even then I didn’t even consider what half of his service might have been like. 

As for me: my encounters with the realities of WWII have been brief, but left lasting imprints on my world view.

Nine years ago I stood in the center of Avranches, France, staring at a WWII monument and a bust of Patton as my peers in the history department briefed the group on what had happened there so many years ago on D-Day, and in the weeks that followed. I was tagging along as translator for the group during their staff ride—essentially an educational trip to see Normandy’s WWII sites in person. An elderly man walked up next to us, waiting patiently. As the briefing ended, without fanfare and in his colloquial French, he turned to me and began his story: "I was four years old when I watched General Patton and his soldiers march down this street." He pointed down the main avenue. "They gave us candy, les bons-bons, we thought, but then we couldn't swallow it--it was the first time we had seen chewing gum." Then, pulling an old weathered photograph from his pocket, he pointed back and forth between the photo and a building on the street in front of us. "This was my home," he said. In the photo was nothing more than a massive pile of stone and rubble. Finishing his story, he simply thanked us for what we had done and bid us farewell.

We then visited Café Gondrée next to Pegasus Bridge. We listened to Mme. Gondrée, whose family participated in the French resistance in German-occupied France, recount her memories as a young girl of the night that American gliders landed and drove out the Germans next to the café they lived in. Their story is incredible. Later, as we toured the American Cemetery overlooking a serene Omaha Beach, a teacher approached after hearing my American-accented French to tell us she would always teach her students about what "we" had done so they would never forget. As we continued our trip, young and old alike stopped us in the streets of a small beach town nearby to say the same.

This is the France I encountered over and over again in my few years of travel. Humbling doesn't even begin to describe it. We--a group of idealistic officers-to-be who weren't even close to being alive during the war, we who had no true reference to the reality that our grandparents' generation had lived, we were trying to teach each other about a war from which we were already so far removed--all the while being thanked by an elderly man whose childhood memories consisted of his home being reduced to rubble and watching Patton liberate his town. All we could do was try to thank him--a living, breathing, piece of WWII history--for the lesson in persepective he gave us while passing on his personal account in a way that the history books could never capture.

The view of Omaha Beach from the American Cemetery in Normandy.

Indeed, though the U.S. is flooding its media today with the importance of this 70th anniversary, for those who call Normany home, the importance of remembrance is more than just one day; it is an everyday attitude. The culture I experienced there is one that wants nothing more than to preserve its gratitude for the freedoms that the past generations could not take for granted. They are fiercely proud of their heritage; they have seen the worst and never want to relive the horrors or the marginalization of humanity that happened on their soil and across Europe. So they tell their stories, they continue to say thank-you, and they teach their children to do the same, even if it's directed at a group of unaffected officers-in-the-making who clearly did nothing personally to bring about such freedoms. Truly humbling, I tell you.

When I was about to leave for Airborne school in the summer of 2005, my dad—who was a Jumpmaster himself—gave me a few motivational gifts. They included a copy of the book Pegasus Bridge, some keepsake cards, and a framed poster all signed by Major Richard "Dick" Winters. He was made famous by the Band of Brothers series, which re-tells the harrowing details of how he parachuted into enemy territory on D-Day with his men and ultimately led one of the most dangerous and well-documented assaults on the Germans to carry out his unit's mission. After retirement, Major Winters lived a long and quiet life in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, not far from my parents' home (which is why my dad was fortunate enough to get those gifts signed for me before Maj. Winters died in 2011). He always signed items with the quote "Hang Tough," the motto he coined while leading his troops in the most brutal of fighting conditions. 

It's doubtful that today's generations will ever define "tough" in the same way that they did. The kind of tough they saw and lived and suffered is fading along with the rest of their generation. Which is why the memories must be preserved. When all was said and done, 16.1 million Americans served in WWII. That's nearly twice the population of New York City. The number of American forces who died over the course of the war would essentially wipe out the entire city of Miami. And as for those who participated in the D-Day landings and Airborne Operations on June 6th, 1944...more than 9,000 would become casualties and at least 4,000 would not live to see the next day. For reference, a total of over 8,000 U.S. troops have died in the past 13 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think of all the friends and soldiers who are part of that number and whose sacrifices have touched me personally, and it is just unfathomable to me that the troops who served during D-Day saw over half that percentage of loss in a single day than we have grieved in the past 13 years. 

American Cemetery in Normandy.
The significance of the Star of David
cannot be overlooked.

They did it all in the name of freedom--the cost of which was bought at a dreadfully high, bloody price. But the freedoms they defended and the evils and atrocities they overcame are greater than most of us today will ever understand. At least, I hope we will never understand. Which is why I hope we can keep sharing the stories, putting faces to the names on the white crosses and stars, and seeing the childhood images of the rubble beyond the quaint structures and serene beaches of post-reparation Europe today.

And in remembering, by the grace of almighty God I pray that we forever avoid repeating the events we memorialize.

"The purpose of all war is ultimately peace." 

-St. Augustine