D-Day Pathos

First some background … my wife is of Polish heritage although her mother was born in the U.S.A. of a Polish mother and Polish father (here to work in the Pennsylvania coal mines). Her mother’s mother died giving birth to her younger brother and so the father took my wife’s mother, the younger brother and an older brother and sister back to Poland to marry his wife’s sister. When World War II eventually loomed the father sent my wife’s mother (a U.S. citizen and now a young woman) back to the States to escape the war … eventually to be followed by the younger two siblings (also American citizens … the brother eventually was killed as a soldier in Italy.) However, the oldest sister was not born in the U.S. so she tried to escape the war by moving to France … where she eventually married a Frenchman … but didn’t sidestep the war.

Fast forward about thirty-five years … my wife and our two young children were visiting France where we went to stay a few days with this older aunt in a small village west of Arras, France. (She was a fabulous cook.) On our last day there, a few neighbors came by to this modest home to meet us … one was an Englishman and his French wife … he acted as a translator for our backs and forths. Since it was early June and since this village was near to where the D-Day invasion took place, this became one subject of our conversation. One French neighbor woman then broke down in tears telling us that her son had been killed by the bombardment on that fateful day. She added, between sobs, that she held no grudge against Americans since we were just doing what we had to do to liberate France.

However, re-reading my previous blog post on the details of the Omaha beach invasion (see: A D-Day Recollection), I noticed that U.S. bombers could not see the details of their coastal targets because of clouds and mist so, fearing hitting their own men, they dropped their ordinance a number of miles inland.

Now, I can’t help but wonder if this overcast weather is why this French neighbor’s son lost his life?