June 6

June 7 will forever be "June 7," but to me June 6 will forever be something different, not because someone I knew was there on a beach in Normandy, but because of what went down there. Everyone connected with the secrecy of the operation on D-Day knew that the invasion would cost the Allied powers thousands of lives and it did--over 4000, with an equal number on the German side, if not more, considerably more. 

I don't know what goes on today, but the Memorial Day celebrations in my hometown, way back when, used to include--feature, in fact--the hometown vets from World War II. There were dozens of them when I was a boy, the wars in Europe and the South Pacific only a decade behind us.

But one of those vets always lit my childhood imagination more than others because my dad gave that man special honors, not because of memorable bouts of unquestionable heroism but because of where that WWII vet served--he was there, at Normandy, on June 6. Honestly, I don't know if my own perception is right--whether a man named "Linky" was there on the beach or not--but I know his face will forever be the face of D-Day in my mind because I'm quite sure my dad told me, long ago, that he was, and my boyhood imagination placed him there, on those killing beaches. 

"Linky" made it, even though 4000 of his buddies did not. He and his family lived just outside of town in a big corner house where he pulled on his khakis every Memorial Day for the parade. To my mind, he wasn't just a vet--lots of men my dad's age were vets; he was special because he was in one of those barge-like landing crafts, the LCVPs, as they were called; he was among those emptied onto Omaha Beach with thousands of others, many hundreds of whom would never move another step. Linky made it. When he'd march by on Memorial Day, I used to dream of the stories he could tell--if he chose to, and not every vet did. He was there.

My dad spent D-Day in the South Pacific aboard the kind of tugboat whose job it was to move battleships around foreign harbors. I don't know this for certain, but I can't help but believe that he never pulled on his Coast Guard uniform after the war because he believed in his heart that because he'd never seen action, spent his years of service on a tugboat, Memorial Day was meant for the Linkys, not the guys who never heard bullet slash the air. 

Today is Linky's day--that's what I can't help feeling. Last weekend we went to Pressure, a finely crafted movie whose heart is in the Normandy invasion, June 6, 1944. 

My mother-in-law lost her fiancé this morning, 82 years ago, June 6, 1944. His name was TeGrotenhuis, and he was trained as an engineer. His job that morning to demolish the "hedgehogs," as they were called, the sharp obstructions meant to keep the Allies off the beaches. I don't think he got out of his LCVP. 

In this country, that June 6 is not a holiday doesn't mean it's not somehow remembered, even by those who wouldn't be born until after the end of the Second World War.

I wasn't born until 1948, but that doesn't mean I don't remember. Lots of us haven't and won't. 

And that, I'd like to think, is as it should be.

This morning I'm thankful for an abundance of gifts on this June 6.