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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day with Stories of Veterans
00:49:38
We hear the stories of your family members who fought on D-Day.
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- [00:01]
Koosha Navadar
It's not rocket science. Grayscale has been educating investors on crypto for over a decade. Grayscale Invest in your share of the future. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principle. Visit grayscale.com for more information. This is all of It on WNYC. I'm Koosha Navadar, in for Alison Stewart. Last week marked the 80th anniversary of D Day, the day more than 150,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, leading to the liberation of France and the beginning of the end of World War II. Here is what WNYC listeners heard from General Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 6.
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Garrett M. Graff
1944 People of Western Europe, I have.
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Mitchell
This message for all of you.
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Alan
Although the initial assault may not have been made in your own country, the.
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Mitchell
Hour of your liberation is approaching.
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Alan
All patriots, men and women, young and old, have a part to play in the achievement of final victory.
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Koosha Navadar
Last week, France hosted surviving D Day veterans in a beautiful celebration complete with speeches and remembrances and honors for those who gave their lives to help liberate France. And it struck our team watching these ceremonies how few remaining D Day survivors there are and how soon no one who lived through that mission will be among us to tell their stories. So we wanted to take the hour of today's show to make space for those memories and experiences and to share them on the air. So, listeners, we invite you to call in now. Do you have a family member or a loved one who was there on D Day? What did they tell you about that day and their experience? We want to hear your family's D Day stories or or if by any chance a surviving D Day veteran is listening and is able to call in, we, of course, would love to hear from you, too. So we are taking personal D Day history for the whole hour. That's what we're talking about. Give us a call or at 212-433-9692. That's 212433, WNYC. And joining me for the hour is someone who has spent a lot of time sorting through personal stories of D Day and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graf, whose new book, when the Sea Came Alive, An Oral History of D Day, is out now. Garrett writes in the book, but what is so remarkable about D Day is how ordinary the extraordinary was that day, the tens of thousands of people who had that June Tuesday, the most remarkable of human experiences at the height of combat and at the limits of human survival. Garrett, thanks for joining us.
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Garrett M. Graff
My pleasure. Thanks for making this space.
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Koosha Navadar
Absolutely. While we're waiting for some calls to come in. I'd love to know just about your process of making the book. It's an oral history. Why did you decide that oral history was the way that you wanted to cover D Day?
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Garrett M. Graff
Yeah. As you said in your introduction there, I think so much of why last week's ceremonies felt so poignant to us as a country and as a world was because the 80th anniversary marks in many ways the final passing as well of that greatest generation, the greatest generation that won World War II, that defended freedom and democracy in the west in the Second World War, and that my goal with this book was, in some ways, at this moment, we have every first person memory of D Day that we will ever have. And so my hope was to try to weave together archival oral histories, video transcripts, contemporaneous letters, official reports, news articles, radio transcripts, TV transcripts, and so forth to tell the story of D Day in the first person, in the voices of the people who actually planned that day, fought that day, lived through that day, experienced that day. And to me, one of the things that I think is uniquely powerful about oral history, and some of your listeners may know, I did a similar oral history about five years ago, about 9 11, that pulled together about 500 voices of people who had experienced that day in 2001, morning to night, coast to coast, and a book called the Only Plane in the Sky. And that this book, in the end, brings together about 700 voices from not just the Allied troops, but the leadership, the Churchills, the Eisenhowers, the Roosevelts, the Montgomerys, as well as British civilians, French civilians, and even German defenders. And to me, the power of oral history in telling history for a new generation is it puts you back in the footsteps of those who are living that moment, knowing only the things that they know at the time. You know, that we. We view D Day as this enormous, historic, courageous, brave moment. You know, one of the most consequential days in all of human history, certainly the most consequential and famous single day of the 20th century. Well, when you listen to the stories of the paratroopers flying across the English Channel on the night of June 5th, when you read the letters that soldiers are writing aboard the landing craft and troop ships as they are crossing the English Channel on the night of June 5th, they're not feeling particularly courageous, they're not feeling particularly heroic. You know, they're lonely, they're scared. They're wondering what tomorrow will bring. They're wondering whether they have what it takes to perform in combat. You know, for many of them, you know, D Day will be the first time that they are ever in combat after months or even years of training. And, you know, they're wondering whether they will let down their friends and comrades, you know, that they have trained alongside for so long. And of course, they are wondering, you know, very obviously whether they're going to live to see the end of the next day. And of course, for about 4,000 of those allied troops, they didn't make it to the end of the next day. And to me, I think it's easy when you're writing narrative history, and I've certainly written plenty of narrative history myself, to make events seem neater and cleaner and simpler than they were when you were actually experiencing them at the time. And so that's really the goal of trying to tell this story, this Titanic day, through the voices of the people who lived it.
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Koosha Navadar
Yeah, authenticity is what I'm hearing, and the pieces that you wouldn't be able to find otherwise. Folks, we're talking about D Day, and we would love, if you called in, if you have a family member or a loved one who is there on D Day. We're here talking with Garrett M. Graf, who's author and Pulitzer prized finalist. The book when the Sea Came An Oral History of D Day. We've got a caller that I'd love to turn to now. Garrett. Here is Amy from Livingston, New Jersey. Hey, Amy, welcome to the show.
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Amy
Hi there. I'd love to read this book.
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Koosha Navadar
Wonderful. Amy, do you have. Do you have an experience with something? Someone in your family participating?
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Amy
My grandfather, yeah, my grandfather was a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, was sent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for training, and his unit ended up being one of those units that came in on the evening of June 5, and he was with a group that were pathfinders, as I told your screener, that set up communication lines for the troops that were coming in the next day. I used to sit at his feet and he would talk about these stories of the war, and he would never tell us about combat or if he was scared, but he would tell us about the guys in his group, you know, and he would tell us about what they did overnight and the stories that they told and the places that they went in France. And as a Jewish man, he was so very, very proud of his service in the American army to help Jews of the world and, you know, frankly.
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Jacqueline
People of the world.
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Amy
But one of the highlights of his life was being honored by our Congresswoman, Mikey Sherrill, at the 75th anniversary of D Day because he's one of the oldest. He was at the time one of the oldest survivors.
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Koosha Navadar
Amy, thank you so much for calling and for sharing that. I gotta ask, what was your grandfather's name?
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Amy
Herbert Turner.
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Koosha Navadar
Herbert Turner. And he was a Pathfinder, is that right?
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Amy
Yes.
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Koosha Navadar
Wonderful. Amy, thank you so much for sharing Herbert's story and for calling in. Folks, we're talking about the anniversary of D Day and we would love to get calls. If you have experience in your family, if you have stories about somebody that you know that participated in D Day, or if by, you know, by luck, by chance, somebody who is listening right now was there and can call in, give us a call. We're at 212-4433, 9692. That's 212433, WNYC. We're here with Garrett M. Graff, the author and Pulitzer Prize finalist. His book when the Sea Came An Oral History of D Day. Garrett, I see you have a response to that call that we just got. Go ahead.
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Garrett M. Graff
Yeah, it's really amazing to hear from the family member of Pathfinder, Mr. Turner, to just sort of provide listeners a little bit of context here. So the There were about 13,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne who were dropped inland of the invasion beaches, primarily behind Utah beach or what we now call Utah beach. And only about 200 of those were the so called Pathfinders. They were a special unit and they were dispatched about 30 to 60 minutes ahead of the main body of paratroopers coming over. And their job was to fly on sort of specially equipped planes to the precise landing zones where the main body of paratroopers were supposed to come. And then they were supposed to parachute down on those drop zones and then set up special sets of lights so that follow on waves of paratrooper planes could sort of follow directly to where those landing zones were supposed to be. They were two man teams. And it's amazing to go back and read and hear those stories. The paratrooper drop of the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne was an incredibly important part of the Allied plan because it was going to be to secure the exits from the Utah beach and to prevent German reinforcements from sort of sweeping down from the west and rolling up the Allied invasion before it even gets a chance to get ashore. And what's really amazing again, going back to the way that we sort of think about D Day versus the way that D Day was experienced is, you know, at some level D Day is not one big story. You know, it's. You know, we tell this one big story. But when you get into the details of D Day, what I really came to understand and what I tried to capture in this book is D Day is 167,000 individual stories. And every single person who fought that night and that day has their own little, Little slice of that story that exists almost exclusively, without context to the larger invasion. I mean, for so many of the men. And they were almost all men fighting that day. You know, they. All they knew were the one hedgerow, the one foxhole, the one stretch of beach that they fought in during that day. And you read these incredible stories of the paratroopers inland, many of whom fought all day by themselves, you know, never seeing another Allied soldier and, you know, are engaged in combat against German patrols. And for them, the paratroopers inland, you know, they don't even know for most of the day whether the Allied invasion has actually taken place. They're fighting there on their own with these small teams like Mr. Turner's team of Pathfinders, and they may not even. They may go days before they even realized that the Allied invasion happened at all.
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Koosha Navadar
Yeah, Garrett, like you're saying, there's. I forget the number that you used. 166,000. Is that how many?
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Garrett M. Graff
Or 167,000?
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Koosha Navadar
167,000. And there's so many stories to hear. You're listening to Oliver right now. We're taking calls about the 80th anniversary of DD Day. If you have a story, I see our phone boxes lighting up. Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. We have to take a quick break, then we're going to come back with Garrett. We're going to learn some more about the history. We're definitely going to take some more of your calls, so stay with us. We'll be right back. This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Kusha Navadar, and we are talking about the 80th anniversary of D Day. We're here with Garrett M. Graf, who's the author and Pulitzer Prize finalist. His book, when the Sea Came Alive, An Oral History of D Day gives a reflection, a window into the oral history of 167,000 individuals who are part of D Day. We're taking your calls. Folks, do you have a family member or a loved one who was there on D Day? What did they tell you about that day and their experience? Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. Quick PSA for everyone. We can't take call if you're driving. So if you're driving and you're listening to this, you can pull over safely. Don't put us on speakerphone. Put the phone up to your ear and then give us a call. We would love to take your call. Just can't be driving and talking to us at the same time. For your own safety. I want to go into calls, Garrett, and there is one that is from Bonnie, who is in Union County, New Jersey, who says, I'm 88. I lived during the time when D Day was present. I never heard anyone say what the D stands. You get this question a lot. What does the D stand for?
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Garrett M. Graff
It's so funny. That is the literal first line of my book is explaining D Day. Because what's interesting in a military sense is D Day is a totally generic term for the planning of any major operation. Because when you are planning a major operation, the. You have to start that work long before you have picked a specific location, date, or time. And so D Day actually is a term that dates back to World War I. It literally just. It's an extra D for day. So the. It means day day. And then the start of the operation is H Hour, which all only stands for our hour. And what's sort of funny about it is, in a strict sense, we have had dozens of D Days, you know, across World War I, World War II, you know, Sicily, Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa, Leyte, Incheon during the Korean War, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, which was known as Operation Urgent Fury or Operation just cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama. Those were all technically D Days. But whenever we say D Day, history really only remembers one, and that's Tuesday, June 6, 1944. And the reason for that is the sheer scale and size and audacity of D Day. I think in many ways, D Day is the biggest thing humans have ever done and may ever do. You know, you have more than a million Allied personnel in motion across England and the English channel that day. 7,000 ships, the largest armada ever assembled, more than 3,000 planes carrying those paratroopers. We discussed more than 8,000 additional fighter planes and bombers involved that day. You know, it is a scale of operation that just boggles the mind.
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Koosha Navadar
And, Bonnie, we want to thank you so much for putting that question. There is a lot behind that little letter D. It's amazing. Let's go to Jacqueline in Petersburg, Virginia. Hey, Jacqueline, welcome to the show.
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Flora
Thank you.
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Jacqueline
I'm calling because my stepfather, Seymour Lilker, was a cryptographer based in England and actually worked in the unit with Alan Turing.
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Ginger
And they had broken the Enigma code and the coastal code earlier.
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Jacqueline
But he was tasked in the second.
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Ginger
Wave with his unit of scaling the.
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Jacqueline
Cliff and capturing the German coastal code books.
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Koosha Navadar
Oh, wow. Jacqueline, thank you so much for that call. We appreciate you sharing it. Let's go to Mitchell in Manhattan. Hey, Mitchell, welcome to the show.
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Mitchell
Thank you for having me. I'd like to tell a short story about my stepfather. His name was Arnold. They known him as Artie Cohn. C O H n. He did four tours from 41 through 45 throughout North Africa, France, Italy, and Germany. Spent the last nine months of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Germany until he was liberated. He came back to the United States and didn't speak a word about the war for 55 years. Very stoic man. I guess he was more likely than not shell shocked. But in 2000, and my mother, who is a volunteer at the VA, brought him to a post Traumatic stress disorder clinic where he met quite a number of other World War II POWs. And they spoke. And this is the first time he spoke to anybody about the war in 55 years. Well, when he came home, he called me. And he's not a man that spent any time on the phone with me for all the years that I know him. And that was from 65 till 2000. At that point, for 35 years, we barely spoke on the phone. And he told me the story of when they landed on Omaha beach on D Day. And he was originally, he tried to sign up for the Navy, but they said his eyesight wasn't good enough. And he ended up signing up for the army. And he was became a sharpshooter, marksman, and a sniper. And his. When he landed on the beach, he tells me a story that they had partners, and they would run up the beach with their partners. And this particular partner, he was holding his hand for some reason. I don't know if that was part of the protocol or not, but he looks back over his shoulder, and all that's left of the man is his hand, his arm. And the rest of his body somehow was blown up. Whether it was a grenade or something else, I don't know, or if he stepped on a mine. All I know is that my stepfather says he hit the ground and dug a hole, put some bush over his head, and became this person he called himself. They turned me into a murderer. He didn't know the people but it was kill or be killed. And so for those 55 years that he didn't say anything, who knew what was going on behind this man's mind?
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Koosha Navadar
Mitchell, thank you so much for that call. And I just want to add, I'm looking at the notes from your caller as well. Your stepfather would have been 102 today. So thank you so much for sharing your stepfather's history. And Garrett, I'm listening to Mitchell speaking. And one thing kind of pointed out, I want to tease this out, not talking about this for such a long time. This is a generation that has a reputation for being reticent to talk about hard things. How does that come through in the interviews and writings about this day? Do people seem hesitant to get into the emotional side of things while you're collecting these stories?
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Garrett M. Graff
Absolutely. And I think to me, that was one of the reasons that I really wanted to try to do this book in the first person, in the voices of the people who participated, because this was a generation that very famously came back from the war and did not talk about it often for decades, if at all. And so in some ways, the fact that we actually have this archival record of oral histories is itself interesting and remarkable. And you see that theme of ptsd, or what we would now call ptsd, as something that pervades a lot of the veterans memories and I think very directly contributes to why many of them don't sit down and record their stories until the 70s, 80s, or 90s, you know, sort of 30, 40, 50 years after the war. And that, you know, this was a generation that not only didn't talk about it, but didn't sort of understand the trauma of living through that experience. And, you know, they called them, you know, shell shock cases or exhaustion cases back then, but there was not the sense of what we now call PTSD or the sense of that this was actually something that you needed to confront and deal with. And there are lots and lots of memories in this book of people coming back from the war and talking about the nightmares that they had for years afterwards.
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Koosha Navadar
Folks, we are Talking about the 80th anniversary of D Day. We're here with Garrett M. Graf, who's the author and Pulitzer Prize finalist. The book is when the Sea Came An Oral History of D Day. And we were just talking about the reticence of some folks from this generation to talk about these experiences, which is why it. It is so gratifying to hear the stories that you are able to share if your family or even you yourself have an experience with D Day. So give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. I'd love to go to Ginger in Bronxville. Hi, Ginger. Welcome to the show.
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Ginger
Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my call. My dad was a member of one of the all black ammunition segregated ammo units that was on the beach, on Utah beach on D Day. And I just like a lot of the other callers, he was reticent to talk about the actual experience, though he did talk about the bonds with his fellow soldiers and members of his outfit, who in the 70s and 80s actually used to have small reunions that never hit anyone's radar that these segregated ex D Day survivors were meeting every year. He did share a couple of things. First, he talked about how warmly the people in Europe embrace them as American soldiers and where people. He said people would literally physically come and hug them and bring them food and. Which startled him because for, you know, white Europeans to come and. And physically embrace them was a little shocking for a group of black soldiers. However, he never wanted to return, even on vacation, even though he spoke very, very fondly of Europe and the Europeans. I think he does have a friend from. He was from a small town in Texas, did have a friend from his unit who's probably multiple friends who's buried in the cemetery there. I wanted to send him to the 50th and the set, I don't think. Well, no, he wasn't around on the 75th. I wanted to send to the 50th. He said, oh, no, that's okay.
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Koosha Navadar
And Ginger, what was. What was your Dad's name?
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Ginger
Elza McKnight.
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Koosha Navadar
Elza McKnight. And you were gonna say something before I stepped on you. What were you gonna say?
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Ginger
Oh, that. Luckily, he did leave behind a scrapbook where I have handwritten notes, including one with all handwritten lists of locations throughout Europe where they traveled and fought and, you know, with the top. June 6, Utah. And the one time he did talk about that experience, he described it very, very similarly to the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, though he refused to see the movie because he said, I heard there are no black soldiers in that movie, and I was there, so I'm not gonna see it.
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Koosha Navadar
Ginger, thank you so much for sharing Elza's story and for, you know, being willing to share it with us. And Garrett, I imagine you have something to respond to before you get to that as well. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the all black units and maybe just that sense of their black soldiers experiences.
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Garrett M. Graff
Absolutely. And that to me, was actually one of the things. I spend a chunk of the book talking about this in the voices, obviously, of the black soldiers who lived this. So we tell this story now of this sort of very simple allied partnership, the story that Biden and Macron and King Charles told on the beaches last week of this wonderful, strong ally partnership. And Great Britain and America were always its great allies and this special relationship, yada, yada, yada. And that's really not the case in World War II. And in fact, you know, one of the things that really surprised me in writing this book was coming to understand how much of the D Day story takes place before June 6th. And so the first third of the book is actually the sort of early part of the war. And I have a chapter titled the American Invasion. Because before you get around to the Allies invading Europe, you have America invading Great Britain, Britain. And we move 1.4 million American troops over to Great Britain, including about 130,000 black soldiers in what was then a segregated Jim Crow era American Army. And that for those, exactly as the caller was just talking about, for those black soldiers, it was for many of them the first time that they had experienced anything like a society that treated them equally. Because Britain had no history at the time of racial discrimination or segregation. The British government actually puts out official notices to the local police and constabularies saying, we're not going to do anything to enforce American segregation here. And, you know, much to the horror of, like, the white Southern officers of the army, the, like beautiful British ladies are just as happy to dance with the black soldiers at the local pubs and community halls as they are with the white soldiers. And it becomes this real point of racial tension between the US And Great Britain and within the American army in Great Britain in 43 and 44 leading up to the D Day invasion. And then you get to D Day, and the caller was exactly right. There were about 2,000 black soldiers who landed on D Day on Utah beach and Omaha Beach. Of those units, just one was a combat unit. And I tell the story in the book of one particular black soldier named Corporal Waverly Woodson, who was a medic with that one combat unit on Omaha Beach. He lands on Omaha Beach. He is wounded even before he makes it to shore, then sets up what is one of the first first aid stations on Omaha beach amid this awful carnage of those first couple of landing waves, spends 30 hours treating wounded on Omaha beach, treating somewhere around 200 US casualties before being evacuated himself. He is considered at the time for the Medal of Honor. And amid the racism of the segregated military at the time, there is not a single black soldier in World War II who receives any of the 432 medals of honor that the U.S. military awards in World War II War II. The Clinton administration in the 1990s tried to rectify that and re evaluate the heroism and valor awards of black soldiers and found that there were four black soldiers in World War II who were considered at the time for a Medal of Honor and gives Medal of Honors to the other three of them, but not Waverly Woodson. Because by the 1990s, the Pentagon has lost his paperwork. And for the last 30 years, there has been an ongoing fight by members of Congress, by Waverly Woodson's family, and even by the first army to get him a Medal of Valor. And I actually was excited last week that the Pentagon announced that Waverly Woodson, 80 years late, will receive now the Distinguished Service Cross, which is the nation's second highest award for combat valor. And it will be awarded later this month to his widow, who is 95. She just turned 95 about two weeks ago. And you know, in my book of those 167,000 Allied soldiers, there are just two photos of individual soldiers from D Day. And Waverly Woodson is one of those two, because I think he is a story that I wish more Americans knew, and I think he is someone that our country still owes a good, bigger debt to than we have paid.
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Koosha Navadar
And, you know, I thought this story that you included from Private J. Robert Patterson in your book was particularly instructive when we're talking about this idea of racism. And Waverly Woodson Jr. Here's what you had, what you included from Private J. Robert Patterson. You wrote, we were going back to sleep, and we were coming up a wooden pathway that they built so you wouldn't be in the mud. And there was a black soldier coming down the street, and there were three of us. He looked at us and we looked at him and he. He said, get out of the way, white man. I'm never going to step aside for a white person again. I think that was perhaps the first time we got the message there was a new world ahead of us. Folks, we're Talking about the 80th anniversary of D Day. We're here with Garrett M. Graff, and we are taking your calls. We've received such lovely, instructive, beautiful calls so far. We'd love to keep hearing them if you or your family have an experience with D Day, give us a call. We are at 212-433-969 do. Let's go to Flora in Manhattan. Hi, Flora, welcome to the show.
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Flora
Oh, hello. Hello. Very nice to have my call. Well, I'm a little different. I mean, I, you know, we were like, I think three months after D Day. We were actually wonderfully liberated by the Americans. I was hidden. I was a small child. I was. I was a hidden child, Jewish child in the countryside near grass. And, you know, we were having. Next to us, actually, the Germans had all this ammunition and they're blowing everything up. And we were lucky the house was not blown up, but that we were getting, you know, actually we were getting from the sky these flyers. I think it was from the Americans telling us they were coming. And anyway, so one day we decided to get out. We were in the middle of the country and we walked along, along, along for at least 1 mile and finally got on the road and guess who was there? All the American soldiers who were there to liberate us. And, you know, it was such a meeting and we just all cried and hugged each other and it was amazing, you know, I mean, it was so. I. So still so touched when I think about it.
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Koosha Navadar
And Flora, when did you. When did you move to the United States?
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Flora
Well, all this is a long story, actually, but I just wanted. I'll answer this to you in a minute, but I want to say that they all came with chocolates for the children. Okay? Let's not forget that.
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Koosha Navadar
Do you remember what kind of chocolate it was? Was it milk chocolate? Was it dark chocolate?
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Flora
Oh, listen, listen, that's a. It's a little long time ago.
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Koosha Navadar
Fair enough, fair enough.
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Flora
But actually, I got sick afterwards because we hadn't had anything to eat for a long time. So, I mean, you know, but we invited my adoptive future adoptive parents because my mother was murdered in Auschwitz and my father was sick and died before. And finally, it's a long story. I was hidden four different places. And this older couple, you know, finally adopted me. And they're the ones who spoke English. And we invited the, you know, maybe I should tell that story. We invited the, you know, the soldiers home. And one of them, Unono, had the gloves that he wanted us to send to his lover in America. And we did. And, you know, long, long time. Like, I don't know, by chance, you know, at the time I was working in a tourist company and there was a group of American women, and guess who was one of them was this lady, no. Oh, wow. You know, the men had died in Africa and we had sent the gloves to her before.
- [37:01]
Koosha Navadar
Flora, I'm going to have to pause you there, but thank you so much for sharing that beautiful long in a lot of ways tragic, but also just livening story. Thank you so much for sharing that part of your life with us. As you can hear, folks, we are hearing from so many folks who have a connection to D Day. We're celebrating the 80th anniversary of it. We've got to take a short break, but when we come back, we're going to talk more with Garrett M. Graf. We're going to take more of your calls. If you can text us because we're getting a lot of calls. The phone lines are basically full. So you can still text us at 212-433-9692. Stay with us. This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Koosha Navadar and we're here with Garrett M. Graf, who's the author of when the Sea Came An Oral History of D Day. We're celebrating the 80th anniversary of D Day and we're taking your calls, folks. If you have stories within your family or if maybe you yourself have an experience with D Day. We just heard from somebody before the break who did that and it was really quite lovely to hear from Flora. So we're here for your calls and your texts. A few texts have come through that I'd like to read. One says, On June 6th, my grandfather, a Yugoslavian officer, was starving in a German pow. He was captured on the second day of his war by his own troops. We've got another text that says, my dad fought, then enlisted at 18. The only Jew in his unit passed away at 90 years ago. Thank you so much for sharing your stories. We've got our phone lines full. I'd like to hear as many as possible. So let's start with Chris in Manhattan. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the show.
- [38:45]
Chris
Tyke. How are you?
- [38:47]
Koosha Navadar
Wonderful, thanks. How about you?
- [38:49]
Garrett M. Graff
Good.
- [38:50]
Chris
My dad was a 1940 graduate of West Point, and by the time D Day rolled around, he'd already been in North Africa and Sicily and they were in Scotland, I believe, preparing for the invasion. He was in the 1st Infantry Division and I think at that point he might have been a captain. And he spent the night of D Day in the conked out. LST said that I don't know who, who sabotaged the motor or whether it was sabotage, but he said they didn't go in on D Day, which is always says, that's the reason I'm still alive. And for him it was just another piece of the war because then he went into the Battle of the Bulge and he stood in Hitler's bunker at the end of the war. He went in with some American newspaper men.
- [39:47]
Koosha Navadar
And Chris, what was your father's name?
- [39:51]
Chris
His name was Bidwell Moore.
- [39:53]
Koosha Navadar
Bidwell Moore. Chris, thank you so much for sharing that and for saying that point about it was one day. And Garrett, this is kind of what you're talking about. It was one day. But there was so much before and after that that played into the whole experience of these individuals as well. Let's go to Alan in New Cannon, Connecticut. Hey, Alan, welcome to the show.
- [40:13]
Alan
Hi, thanks for taking my call. Very interesting. So lots of things happened prior to D Day, including air reconnaissance over the Atlantic Ocean in the weeks before to determine when the best day for the invasion was. The air reconnaissance took place in B17s. My father was a navigator in one of those planes. He was out on, on the 29th of May during reconnaissance and preparation. And his B17 lost two engines, crew of eight ended up having a ditch in the ocean right at the shore of Ireland. They were ultimately rescued and they ended up coming back to the United States. 1999, I did a project with my sons to find those people. I found five of them still alive. We reunited. I brought one back, the co pilot, to Ireland and we did a program for the Discovery Channel. And I then had a new relationship with a person my father had a relationship with who he claimed had saved his life and with my kids that I hadn't expected. And it turns out that my father, who died in 1958 of plutonium induced cancer, went on to help build Los Alamos and Trinity. And they were all experimented on with plutonium. He died of the same disease that Oppenheimer died of in 1967, and he was one of many people who had that situation.
- [41:49]
Koosha Navadar
And Alan, what was your father's name?
- [41:51]
Alan
Nathan Swordlow.
- [41:53]
Koosha Navadar
Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I want to get to one more caller, Ann in Brooklyn. Hi, Ann, welcome to the show.
- [42:01]
Garrett M. Graff
Hi.
- [42:01]
Jacqueline
My dad's name was Sam Kornfeld and he was from a poor Jewish family in the Bronx, enlisted after high school, and he made the invasion of Normandy at 6:30am on Omaha Beach. And his landing craft, LCI 6 was bombed by the Germans. And his sergeant named Lewis Fast told him, sam, go back, swim and get the radio. He's very strong swimmer. There were bodies all around him. But he had listened and inflated his life vest, like they tell us on the airplane, by blowing in. And when he turned around, his sergeant's head had been blown off in front of him. His sergeant is in the cemetery in St. Laurent. My dad never spoke about this for 50 years. He was a brave New York City firefighter. But on the 50th anniversary, when the French venerated the soldiers who made the invasion, he went back with my mom, retraced their steps, and at that point, he did begin to speak about it. But he also went on to the Battle of the Bulge. And on that day, I know he was in heavy combat. He spoke German because his parents and he had to engage in battle, and it wasn't a good day for him. He didn't ever really want to talk about any of this. But when he would drink, he was a young man. He was 18, 19. So he was with a lot of young women, prostitutes, I should say, especially in Belgium before the Battle of the Bulge. And he's had a difficult life, and it's difficult for us, but I just wanted to get out his story as best as I can.
- [43:39]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah. And you did a wonderful job. Thank you so much for calling in and for sharing your dad's story. And, you know, Garrett, we're hearing a lot of different emotions here. There's so much death associated with this. And, of course, there are parents and wives and kids who lost a loved son or a husband or a father that day. And I'm wondering, in your book, how did you want to make sure that this book memorialized the dead as well as shared the experiences of those who survived?
- [44:05]
Garrett M. Graff
Yeah. Obviously, when you're writing an oral history, part of the challenge is you are naturally biased towards. You can only hear the stories of the people who lived. And one of the ways that I tried to get around that was including contemporaneous letters from people who did end up dying in combat. And so, you know, there are letters from people written aboard the ships crossing the English Channel on the night of June 5th from people who then later died in the battle for Normandy. But, you know, listening to that last caller, listening to the callers across this hour, you know, one of the things that just really stands out when you get into listening to these stories and collecting these stories is just how young so many of these men were. I mean, that these were, you know, 18, 19 year olds, you know, being led by, you know, grizzled veteran sergeants who are all of 21 or 22 years old. And you know, what we asked of this generation is really hard to fathom. You know, there are paratroopers that I quote in the book who are 19 years old, and D day for them is their third invasion. You know, that they are after North Africa and Sicily and Italy. And, you know, there's one of the landing craft coxswains I talk about in the book. He was 17 years old on D Day and he piloted a landing craft into Omaha beach not once, but twice. And it is, you know, the other thing that sort of stands out in these calls that comes through in a lot of the stories in my book is while D Day feels from a historical standpoint, as, you know, the end goal, you know, the launch of the Allied invasion is, you know, a major goal in and of itself. You know, D Day was just the beginning, not the end. You know, everyone who made it ashore survived June 6, had to get up on the morning of June 7 and fight all over again. You know, the fight for normandy itself lasts 77 more days. Combat on the English continent goes for 10 more months before the April surrender of the German army. And, you know, it's just incredible, the bravery and the heroism that we saw in that generation. And my goal with this book was to try to recapture that spirit 80 years later as D Day shifts permanently from memory into history.
- [46:52]
Koosha Navadar
And we hear the memories being shared from all of these callers, and we thank everybody so much for sending us their stories. We're looking to wrap up this hour, but there's this quote to your point, Garrett. There's this quote from Private Buddy Mazara, Company C, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division. He had a quote there that really stood out to me. He said, D Day was an experience you would never want to live through again. But I am glad I was there. And I'm wondering for you, was that a sentiment echoed by anyone else you read about and feeling glad to have been a part of something so momentous, even if it was so dangerous and harrowing?
- [47:30]
Garrett M. Graff
Yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of voices in the book who talk about D Day was the high point of their entire lives as a 17, 18, 19 year old moment. You know, they, you know, and people who are very explicit, you know, they go on to have wonderful, successful careers. They, you know, get married, they raise families, they. And, you know, when they look back across their life, the thing that they are proudest of is that they were there on D Day, June 6, 1944.
- [48:00]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah. And it's tough to say, but very soon There will be no more D Day veterans alive to share their stories. And I'm wondering how you hope their stories continue to be passed down through the generations, even as you said, as that living memory fades away. Part of it, I'm sure, is with this book. But how do you hope to see those memories stay with us culturally?
- [48:19]
Garrett M. Graff
Yeah, that was one of my goals with this book, obviously, was to try to capture 700 of those voices and to put future generations and generations like mine who never knew living through D Day, you know, out there for people to understand that as a firsthand experience. And it's something that I felt really powerfully in the research. You know, I was going through archives at the Imperial War Museum in London last year and, you know, wading through boxes of postcards that people had sent in in Britain in the 1970s about what their D Day memories were. And, you know, you hold some of these documents in your hand and you're like, you know, I might be the last person who ever looks at this document. And so I think you can't help but do a project like this and then feel a real debt of history to try to keep these stories alive.
- [49:17]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah. And we just got a text coming through that I want to be sure that I read. It says D Day program. Thank you for this touching, moving program. The stories, memories kept alive. Wonderful. That's from Marjorie and the Socrates. Thank you all so much for listening and for sharing your stories. Especially, we've been talking to Garrett M. Graff, who is an author, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, his book an Oral History, the title is when the Sea Came An Oral History of D Day. Garrett, thank you so much for joining and for listening to these calls and for your work.
- [49:50]
Garrett M. Graff
Thanks. This was a wonderful hour.
- [49:54]
Ginger
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