My Inner French

WHO KNEW???

I certainly DID NOT!

I was 39 years old in 1995. My mother was visiting, without my father, from the West coast, when she inadvertently let "the cat out of the bag"..... She mentioned that my parents had been in Normandy France the past Summer. I wasn't aware they had been there that Summer but what she said next really shook my brainpan....

she mentioned how they had gone back to see where my father had landed as an
American soldier who had fifty years earlier, participated in
America's invasion of Normandy ......"Operation Overlord".

Remember... "Saving Private Ryan"... well that was my father's outfit. The 116th Infantry Battalion part of the US ARMY 29th Division. The BLUE and GRAY! The one with the Yin/Yang symbol....and I never knew it.

He was a QuarterMaster...the equivalent of a Captain, though a non combatant,
he distributed Gas....and Body Bags!

He landed mid-day on D-Day June 6th, 1944 wading ashore amongst 3000 dead American bodies.....the majority of them from his own Battalion.....who suffered the worst defeat of any American Battalion in the War, having landed between 0600 and 1200 hours an historic moment at the Verille Draw on Omaha Beach that day.

He actually spent that evening on the Beach.....amongst all those dead....

My father really had it stacked against him.

                                                                   
He was from the North
He was an Officer's Candidate
He was Jewish....

He ran an all Black Squad.....
They wanted to shoot him for dragging them thru this war....

He slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow....

and he never said a word to me about it.........not......

one.........

Well of course NOW I had to know all about it....

I read Brokaw's The Greatest Generation"... and

I saw "Saving Private Ryan"...then

I read Balkoski's "Omaha Beach"....

Then his "Utah Beach"...

Finally my wife and I just went to France......We flew to Paris                                                

We visited the Caen War Museum  Memorial

The Beaches

The Beaches......

                                          Gold Beach

      THE Beach                                    Omaha Beach

 ...............

.                                                                     The Cemeteries....

When we came home I immediately enrolled in a French class
offered by the Brown Continuing Studies Department. Then I took another.....

I started listening to "Pimsleur" conversational french tapes. I went to

the Rock and armed with my French-American dictionary started reading LaMonde,

I had a French tutor for a short while...I started reading Prevert.....

and NOW I have been to France THREE times!!!

I read about the Maginot Line, of Petan, Degaulle, Joan of Arc, The "SunKing"... I have been to War Museums and War Memorials all over France....

and now after all of this...... I at least finally have just the slightest notion

of what my father went through, of what he had to endure.....

So NOW after all these years...

I am finally in touch with this ...

hidden dimensiion of myself,                Rodin Museum
House Boating on the The Canal Midi..................

I never knew existed.....

        


                                                                  "My Inner French"