D-Day Anniversary 2004

In June 2004 I was blessed to be able to participate in the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. My wife and i had found a tiny little hotel room in an ancient French town about 20 minutes from Omaha Beach where the ceremonies were to take place begining at 6 a.m. On June 6, 2004, 60 years to the minute of the beginnings of the beach landings.

We arrived in Normandy on the 5th which was the actual start of the Normandy operations. Anyone who saw Band of Brothers on HBO should recall that elements of the American 82nd and 101st airborne units actually began dropping into Normandy on the 5th. The first of these guys to land were a bunch called the pathfinders. These guys were the original "Seal Team 6" in terms of the level of danger of their job. If i recall there only a couple hundred of them. Most were killed. I somehow managed to meet two of the surviving members of the pathfinders on that trip. What are the odds?

So, in fact the actual invasion started on June 5th, 1944. To commemorate the paratroop drops the town of St.Mere.Eglise holds an annual commemoration of the liberation of their town, the first to be liberated in Nazi occupied France, by U.S. Paratroopers. Photographs of the festivities in. St Mere Eglise, that included a drop by current U.S. Paratroops that day are included on the site which i uploaded today. I met a number of veterans that day. So this brings me to the punch line of the story.

The night before we were to be at Omaha Beach at the crack of dawn, my wife and i were holed up in the tiniest of French Hotel rooms. My mind awash in dreams of 1944 France, asleep in a room that wreaked of the ghosts of Nazis past, at exactly 4 in the morning, my tiny French bedroom erupted in earth shattering banging and shouting as I lay dead asleep. This would have been the approximate hour that the skies over Normandy opened up with German anti aircraft fire, exactly 60 years ago to the minute. To say i freaked out would be an understatement.


I hurled myself out of bed in a dream like state thinking the invasion had begun and the Germans were opening fire! When I came to my senses I looked around the room and my wife was......missing. I could now identify the source of this massive assault of noise as coming from my bathroom. What I had thought were Germans opening up into the sky was actually my wife locked inside the bathroom of our Hotel room.....at 4am. And she'd been in there a full 20 minutes! I gently opened the door to see my frazzled and crying wife who had apparently somehow locked herself into the very tiny bathroom and had been sitting there before breaking into a full blown panic attack that manifested itself into the sounds of a German 88 opening up in my dreams.

Needless to say the door opened seemlessly from my side. And I didnt get more than 3 hours sleep over the next 24 hours.....More on the DDay Anniversary tomorrow. What a day of days.