D-Day

Disclaimer:  everything contained in this blog is MY OPINION.  Every attempt is made to present the truth through actual facts or to identify statements which are in doubt; otherwise there will be no deliberate presentation of gossip, rumor, or innuendo which can't be proven as factual.

D-Day the 6th of June.
Actually, I remember that day, just as I remember the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
I was pretty little, but enthusiastic patriotism wasn't politically incorrect in those days, and I provided my small support for America quite vigorously.  That usually consisted of stamping my feet and chanting, "Brrrrt! (raspberry sound) Brrrrt! Brrrrt!  Right in Der Fuhrer's face!" Or drawing the American shield and putting Admiral Tojo behind the stripes on it as if they were bars on a jail cell.
There was pretty strict food rationing then, and I still have my ration book.  Quite often, since my father was in an essential service-the oil field-meat was reserved for him.  The rest of the family ate a lot of biscuits, cornbread, and vegetables-it never occurred to me that I was being 'deprived.'
On D-Day my grandmother Nomy came up from Forreston, which was south of Dallas. 200 long miles on a bus which took all day. She brought a cardboard suitcase and lugged one of the big 5 gallon metal cans which originally held lard. In the suitcase was a side of bacon, wrapped in waxed paper and cheesecloth to keep it from greasing up her clothes.  I always looked forward to the lard can. Inside were dozens of eggs.
She would pour 'drippings'-usually bacon and ham fat-about half an inch deep in the bottom and wait for it to set.  Then she'd put down a layer of eggs and pour drippings over them.  She repeated the process to the top of the can. My mother thought it was all very illegal because of the rationing, and perhaps it was, but we ate the eggs and used the grease from the drippings anyway.
The bacon that trip was such a treat!  Everyone had bacon and eggs for supper.  Special for D-Day.
Our first news of D-Day came over the radio on the 6th of June.  In those days that was our first source of news and we spent hours crouched over it,  listening to reports of the war.  We had known something was going on because for weeks we'd had no letters from my Uncle Bill, who was a belly gunner on a B-29,  and we'd heard nothing from relatives in Europe.  For sure something was up;  we just didn't know what.
Things were tense around the house because my other grandmother OmaD, and Uncle Bill's wife Aunt Rowena were here.  Kids pick up on strain even though they don't know the reason for it; we had no real concept of death. The tension altered once we found out about D-Day.  It was still there, but different.
One of my dearly loved friends who was a high schooler when I was 3 years old, was killed in that invasion. I was upset and hid under the fig tree in the back yard and cried, but I didn't know what his death meant.  I just knew I'd never see him again.
There were so many men from Electra in the military, many of them my mother's ex-students.  She worried about them, and often they would write to her from overseas.  Sometimes the letters would come with great strips cut out of them; that's what censorship amounted to in those days, and it meant that the soldier had mentioned something that might constitute a danger to himself and his comrades, or that would reveal some plan to the enemy.
I thought that was perfectly understandable;  I still do.
Our town Japanese, Mr Fujita, was voracious in his support of America.  He had sons in the military.  One of them, a former student of my mother's,  had been captured with the Texas Army National Guard in Java in the early days of the war.  I remember Mr. Fujita was worried that American prisoners of the Japanese would be killed in retaliation for D-Day.
But everyone celebrated our invasion of Normandy, not knowing at the time the dreadful casualties which would result.
That day is now long ago and far away, and there are fewer each year who fought in it.  Also fewer are the people who, even as children, remember it.
We should teach our children and grandchildren not to forget.  It was a terrible sacrifice for a good cause.
Well done, America's fighting men.

Anita Huguelet McMurtrie