B4
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2019
World War II
veterans from
the United
States salute
Monday in front
of Les Braves
monument at
Omaha Beach in
Saint-Laurent-
sur-Mer,
Normandy,
France.
AP Photos
Rafael Yaghobzadeh
CHASING DEMONS
75 years on, D-Day haunts, drives its veterans
In ever-dwindling numbers, and perhaps for the last time, D-Day vets are answering the call to return to Normandy
By JOHN LEICESTER
and RAF CASERT
Associated Press
O
MAHA BEACH, France — They are
back, some for the fi rst time since war
stole their innocence 75 years ago on
Normandy’s D-Day beaches.
They are back on battlefi elds where the
World War II veterans saw friends killed,
took lives themselves, were scarred phys-
ically and mentally and helped change the
course of history.
Given the painful memories, given
their unfamiliarity with the country they
liberated, given the diffi culty of traveling
abroad, why are Americans in their 90s
coming back for this week’s anniversary of
the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy?
For many, returning is a duty, a way to
honor fallen comrades and fulfi ll promises
they made as young men never to forget
each other. Some buried their memories
for decades but feel a compulsion to face
their demons before going to their graves.
Many fear the world is forgetting and want
young people to hear their stories one last
time.
The inevitability of all veterans of the
1939-1945 war being gone soon is acting
as a clarion call. From across the globe,
people are converging on Normandy to
follow in the footsteps of, perhaps even
rub shoulders with, the remaining men and
women who made a military success of
D-Day.
Here, in their own words, veterans
explain why they’re back for this week’s
anniversary:
World War II veteran Roy Huereque, second right, from New Mexico, visits with local
schoolchildren at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.
‘You grow up fast’
Jerry Dietch thinks he’ll be able to keep
his nerves in check but isn’t sure. The sur-
vivor of Utah Beach, one of the fi ve D-Day
beaches, had always refused to go back to
Normandy.
“I said, ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can
handle it. I’ll get too emotional,’” he says.
Now 93 years old, Dietch decided he
must see where good friends died and
revisit the spot by a seawall where he was
hit by a piece of shrapnel that left a fi st-
sized dent in his helmet.
Dietch, who is from Nevada, was 18
years old when he landed and says “after
the fi rst day I felt like I was 30. I went in
a little boy and came out a man. You grow
up fast.”
Serving in a combat demolition unit,
his job was to clear obstacles and blow
up strongpoints that could slow the Allied
advance inland. The shrapnel that dented
Dietch’s helmet gave him a concussion; he
was evacuated back to England.
“I know exactly where I was when
I was hit. Exactly the spot. I see it in my
mind all the time,” he said.
Long unable to speak to his family
about his experiences, he recently started
writing down his recollections so they’ll
know, when he’s gone, what he went
through. “I did a few chapters just before I
came here,” Dietch says.
“It changed my life, yeah,” he said of
D-Day. “It taught me to be very tolerant.
God gives us free will; you’ve got to use
it.”
Having long kept his war to himself,
Dietch thanks people for listening to his
recollections now.
in the fi rst wave of American troops aim-
ing for Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the
D-Day landing zones.
The former private in the 29th Infan-
try Division was immediately injured and
he still suffers from post-traumatic stress
disorder.
“For a long time, I really didn’t want
to come back, and I kind of dreaded it,”
he said. “I can’t say that I really enjoy
the whole thing, you know? When I head
back on the beach and all that kind of stuff,
sometimes it does things to you. But like
this, you can see kind of what we was
fi ghting for and, you know, that makes a
little difference.”
With a fl amethrower strapped to his
back, Pickett was wounded when an explo-
sion tore at the landing craft transporting
him onto a beach which was sprayed by
German machine-gun and artillery fi re.
He blacked out and woke up on the
water’s edge, next to a dead body and
unable to move his legs. Plucked out of the
water by another landing craft, he was hos-
pitalized in England and then returned to
Normandy, where he fought in the dense
hedgerows that slowed the Allied advance
and was injured again.
Pickett says he long tried to deal alone
with his trauma before fi nally seeking
medical help.
“I’ve got it now where I can handle
it pretty well, because you live the war
almost every night, you see? And you
don’t get rid of it, no matter what you do,”
he says. “I would love to forget it, totally
forget it, but no way, especially when you
go through a battle like D-Day.”
‘Every day is a memorial day’
World War II veterans salute with local school children at the Normandy American
Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.
White roses and U.S. fl ags are placed Monday in the sand at Omaha Beach.
‘IT CHANGED MY LIFE, YEAH.
IT TAUGHT ME TO BE VERY
TOLERANT. GOD GIVES US FREE
WILL; YOU’VE GOT TO USE IT.’
Jerry Dietch | World War II veteran from Nevada
“I feel better when I speak about it,” he
said. “If you have demons, face them.”
His wife, Selma, felt the trip would be
too arduous and stayed home. They’ve
been married 71 years.
‘I kind of dreaded it’
Russell Pickett, 94, has made several
return visits to Normandy. He says com-
ing back helps him cope with the horrors
he’s lived with since he was a 19-year-old
The last time Leila Morrison saw
Omaha Beach was when she landed on it
in 1944, three months after D-Day, when
she came to nurse soldiers injured in
combat.
“I felt as though when I stepped on that
sand I was stepping on sacred grounds
because so many people had given their all
for it. It was just plain sand,” she recalls.
At the end of the war, she nursed sur-
vivors of the Buchenwald concentration
camp.
“I want to tell the French and the whole
world how great it is that we do have our
freedom, and we have so many privileges
in America that other places don’t have,”
Morrison says.
“Every day is a memorial day for me. I
see those young fellas that didn’t make it.
So many of them, and I am thankful over
and over again.”
Honoring sacrifi ces
Helen Patton, a granddaughter of famed
American tank commander Gen. George
S. Patton Jr., is back in Normandy for
the 75th anniversary with a message that
younger generations should enjoy the lib-
erties so many soldiers fought and died for.
Presiding Monday at a game of Amer-
ican football played close to the landing
beaches, she quoted from a poem written
by her grandfather during World War I to
convey the idea that part of honoring those
sacrifi ces is relishing life:
“When I sit in my tank and wait for the
hour for the great barrage to come down,
I wish to god there was one more day for
raising hell in town.”