This year marks the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing by Allied forces into Nazi-occupied Europe, a significant turning point in World War II. The full story of all the events that led up to D-Day, as well as its completion, is much too long to tell in such a short space here, but it is a story that we should all know, study, remember, and pass on to the following generations. With so many years having now passed since that momentous day, those who served and survived that day (and the remainder of the days of the war) are becoming fewer and fewer. As a result, many of these stories are becoming lost to the fog of history, never to be known this side of Heaven.
Having been raised in a home with a WWII veteran in my Grandpa, this period of history became very special and important to me even as a child. I can remember spending time looking at the pictures of Grandpa in his Army uniform and from various places in both the European and the Pacific Theaters of Operation (Grandpa had the dubious privilege to serve in both). Sometimes, I would ask, “Grandpa, did you ever see any action?” His reply was almost always the same: “No.” It was only when I was a young man, going through the enlistment process with the Army, that I heard him open up about his experiences. While he was not involved in the D-Day operations, he worked to supply those who were on the front lines. When the beaches were secured, he departed from England to join his fellow soldiers on the continent. He fought his way behind Patton through the Battle of the Bulge and was in Berlin on VE Day (then, he was put on a boat and shipped to the Pacific to fight his way up through the Philippines and into Japan, where he spent VJ Day). When the Army recruiter began speaking to him, he opened up and spoke about the things he saw and the things he did. He also explained his reason for having never spoken about these with Grandma: “She didn’t need to know about them, because she would have worried about me.”
The stories Grandpa would tell at home, however, were usually about the people he would meet in places like Italy, Germany, England, France, Luxembourg, the Philippines, and Japan. Two things always struck me about those stories: 1) Grandpa never described those people hatefully (though he did, as was common among his generation, often use terms to refer to them that we would be uncomfortable with today), and 2) Grandpa always treated other people – even those who were his enemies – with dignity and respect. He spoke of giving both German and Japanese POWs he encountered his chocolate rations or cigarettes. He carried on conversations with them, as though they were human beings made in God’s image. He helped them by paying them to perform certain services (such as laundry). He did not do this because he wouldn’t do it or thought these people were below him, but because he knew they had nothing and this would provide them with assistance while not demeaning their humanity. Many of the souvenirs he brought home were gifts from these grateful people (one, a charcoal drawing of my Grandma that hung on our living room wall, was done by a German POW and so incredibly detailed, I thought it was a photograph until I was in my late teenage years!).
My Grandpa’s story is not uncommon. Often, the men who fought through Europe in order to liberate the nations and defeat the fascist Axis powers are portrayed as being hateful toward the people, but the reality is that more were like Grandpa than not. While we normally remember their great sacrifice on this day (as we rightfully should), we ought not to lose sight of how so many of them tried to live out the commands of Christ – to love their enemies – even in the most difficult and dangerous conditions…ones that so many of us cannot even begin to fathom. Those stories also need to be told, remembered, and passed on to future generations as examples of faithfulness no matter the cost. Just something to think about…
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