D-Day: Sixty Years Ago

Today President George Bush joined dozens of other world leaders in France at a memorial service marking the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I was fortunate within the past few days to witness a moving Memorial Day ceremony here in Anacortes, and a PBS documentary focusing on four veterans of D-Day. Each gave me an opportunity to see and listen to men who in the Forties traded street clothes and teen-aged pastimes for uniforms and roles in a system created to destroy the enemy. Both Memorial Day services and the D-Day documentary included stops at the graves of servicemen from Washington State. Here at Grand View Cemetery, I took a photograph of flags and flowers placed at the gravesite of Jones A. Turner, a U.S. Marine who served in World War II. Turner survived the war and died in 1952. In the PBS special, D-Day survivor Paul Marable of Texas stopped at the graveside of 1st Lieutenant Edward “Eddie” J. Myers of Puyallup, Washington. A tearful Marable recalled that Myers was a close friend. “He was very brave and his men liked him because he took care of them probably better than any other officer,” he told reporter Bill Moyers. “What do you mean ‘took care of them’?” Moyers asked. “He played father better than the rest of us,” Randall responded. “How old was he?” Moyers asked. “He was younger than I. He was 21…” The other photograph here is a closeup of a plaque at Causland Memorial Park in downtown Anacortes. The plaque, one of three beneath a larger plaque bearing the names of local men who gave their lives in battle, is dedicated specifically to those who fought in World War II. There are also plaques dedicated to those who fought in World War I, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.