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I have been emotional these past few weeks covering the D-Day commemorations and celebrations in Normandy.
I kept thinking about Jim Bennett.
Jim was my husband’s grandfather. In the family, he was known as a Renaissance man: an investment advisor who preferred building boats, cooking donuts on a wood stove, and growing giant zucchini. He was also a veteran of World War II with the Canadian artillery who landed on what would become known as Juno Beach on June 6, 1944.
He was in charge of about 100 men who operated tanks whose tracks left traces on the sidewalks of Courseulles-sur-Mer, still visible in some places today.
After the Normandy landings, he spent weeks bogged down in the fighting in Caen, a city so battered by bombs that molten lead dripped from the buildings. He didn’t like to talk about the war. One of the few stories he told was that of VE Day. He found himself next to a barn and took a horse for a ride on the beach to remember that there was life.
He never returned to Normandy. He said that his 1944 visit was hell and that he had no need to repeat it.
I wish I had done it. I think I might have found it healing. He would surely have been overwhelmed by the reception that awaited him.
As a New York Times correspondent based in Paris, I spent about a week in Normandy covering the 80th anniversary of June 6, 1944, when 156,000 Allied troops landed on Nazi-occupied beaches and surrounding fields, and then they moved inland. It proved to be a critical turning point in the war.
Among my stops was the tarmac of the small Deauville airport, where Delta airlines were scheduled to land, with 58 American veterans. On June 3, it looked like a fairground: There was an honor guard, an Army band playing swing songs from the 1930s, and a local reenactment group dressed in authentic World War II uniforms. While we waited, I wandered through the crowd doing interviews. Every Frenchman I spoke to burst into tears, partly because the moment sparked their own family stories about the war, but also out of sheer gratitude.
Christelle Marie, a teacher from a nearby elementary school who had brought her class, cried as she told me about growing up near Juno Beach. She often saw older men walking along the shoreline, looking for the exact spot where they had landed and witnessed the death of a comrade, she said.
The enormity of her pain and loss had been impressed upon her. “The duty to remember is very important,” she said, crying. “It’s an honor to be here.”
At 47 years old, he was born decades after the war.
I wondered how Jim had processed his words. Would it have taken some of the pain out of him?
In every small town and village, the feeling of adoration for the approximately 200 returning World War II veterans bordered on mania. It was like they were aging rock stars, coming to play concerts.
I had just finished writing a story about the small town of Ste.-Mère-Église and its relationship with the American paratroopers, when I saw a parade of veterans in their busy schedule. I went back there to check it out and found a parking spot in a distant farm field. From a distance, the small central plaza looked like a crowded anthill. It was filled with thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder.
When I later asked 99-year-old Jim O’Brien what the crowd experience was like, he responded: “Overwhelming. “I would like to do that every day.”
But Henry Kolinek Jr., 98, told me it was too much for him. “I’m a shy guy,” said Kolinek, who goes by the name HJ and who flew 37 missions over France, Belgium and Germany as a tail gunner on a bomber. This was the first time he had returned to Normandy since the war.
I thought about Jim again. I wondered how he would have reacted to all the love and gratitude. One Thanksgiving dinner, he was asking her about the war, when his wife asked me what we were discussing so conspiratorially, with our heads together. “Catherine was just asking me about sex,” she responded, prompting a laugh.
I don’t think he would have liked all that attention for what he did during a war he worked so hard to forget. But perhaps the experience could have been a balm.
Jim died in 2009. He was 90 years old.
On June 6, I attended the ceremony at the Colleville-sur-Mer American Cemetery to hear President Biden speak. The sun was bright and full. The graves of 9,388 soldiers dotted the grass, row after row, around us. One veteran said that when he looked at them, he saw his former comrades greeting him.
The veterans, of course, were the stars of the event. Many wore thick knit scarves around their necks and blankets over their shoulders. It was clear that for many this would be their last time in Normandy. Their average age is 100 years.
President Emmanuel Macron of France awarded 11 of those present the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest award.
Each man struggled to stay on his feet for the moment. After placing the large medal with a large red ribbon on each veteran’s chest, Macron grabbed them tightly by the shoulders and then leaned down to give each “la bise”: two kisses, one on each cheek.
I wasn’t the only one who cried in the press area.
Everyone in the crowd wanted to kiss them too.