D-Day

June 6, 1944. My father was a 1LT, stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO as part of the cadre training up the 97th Infantry Division. As part of the build up for the invasion of the continent, thousands of men, of all ranks, had been levied to be sent to Europe as additional troops and replacements for what was feared would be horrific casualties.
He sailed to England as part of the largest convoy to cross the Atlantic up to that time.
As the invasion began, he was waiting in a replacement depot in England, while his older brother was already ashore, before H hour, assigned to an amphibious engineer unit, whose mission was to destroy obstacles on the beaches to allow for the passage of the landing craft and tanks.
My mother was home in Harpswell, Maine, living in her parents small camp, tucked into a thick woods of beech and fir trees. Communication with the outside world was by radio broadcast, perhaps WBZ from Boston and party line telephone. Communication in the small hamlets, which made up Harpswell, was by telephone or by special signal. Most families had a bell or whistle by which neighbors could be notified in time of emergencies. My grandmother’s happened to be the hand bell from an old one-room school house. Woe betide the child that rang it for a lark.
From across the road she could hear Marion Williams whistling as I remember her signal. My mother rushed out to the road to hear the news she had gleaned from the radio. “The boys are going in,” she called.
With mail taking weeks to arrive, my mother had no idea of my father’s whereabouts. That would come later when his first letters arrived, and she would learn that he had not been levied yet. That would come later in the fall, when he was brought across and assigned to the 104th Timberwolf Division.
I was not born at that time, but the memories of those who survived those times, whether overseas or at home, were so strong I sometimes feel like I actually remember them.