The Caretaking of Memories
- Omaha Beach and Uncle Bill
First Wave, 116th Division, 29th Regiment
“Your Uncle Bill
was killed on D-Day,” my father would tell us. Curiously, he’d always refer to Bill
as our Uncle, not his.
My earliest memories of my father talking about our Uncle were
from the 1960’s. The oldest of my siblings were probably seven or eight. We didn’t
understand Vietnam then, much less Normandy.
Just because we didn’t understand World War II didn’t mean
couldn’t see how dad was different when he spoke of Bill. He seemed more
vulnerable. Sometimes, when he spoke of Bill, he’d pull off his glasses and wipe
a hand across his eyes.
In the 60’s, we were too young to understand more than that we
had an uncle that was killed on D-Day. For a time, dad would spare us from learning
more. But the story was there, and it would eventually need to be remembered.
Someday, but not then.
Dad was only eight years old when Bill was killed on that
June morning in 1944. At that age, I’m sure he knew nothing of the “liberation”
of France; why Uncle Bill and the 116th Division would be asked to open
a path on Omaha Beach. That it would allow for 1.5 million soldiers to move toward
Berlin and ensure the end of the European conflict.
He wouldn’t know, until he was much older, about the bodies,
like Bill’s, which floated in the French surf. Of the dead and dying that
covered every stretch of beach, lying in the sand like broken and crushed
seashells and twisted seaweed.
His mother, Esther, or his father John, would certainly not
tell dad about what his other uncle,
Robert, faced in the Pacific. Robert, Bill’s twin, was the determined and eager
one, and he enlisted in the Marines.
Esther and John probably learned later that, in the Pacific,
Robert and his Marines would witness unspeakable
things - in battles of unspeakable horror.
Only Oppenheimer and the other physicists, working beneath
the grass fields at The University of Chicago, would end that conflict. Then,
Robert would return home, scarred and “shell-shocked,” as my father described
him. With his brother lost, his family changed forever, PTSD likely pushed Robert to his unpleasant end.
Of Oppenheimer’s instruments, Big Boy and Fat Man, my
young father would probably think they were comic book characters, not the hydrogen
bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not weapons that would end the war and later
change the world. Weapons so destructive that when their scientist-creator witnessed
their devastation, he felt the need to cite a quote from the Hindu
Bhagavad-Gita: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds.”
Dad was an only child. In 1944, his backyard comprised most
of his world. In his small, leafy Blue Island backyard, he built his own sort
of play-house, cobbled together with scraps from nearby alleys and garages. My
grandfather probably helped.
I remember seeing a black and white photo of the play-house,
a tiny Kodak picture that was like looking through a keyhole and into the past.
A glimpse into his innocent pre-war world. It helped me understand where my
father’s imagination was seeded; there, among the dappled shadows of the tall maples
on the summer grass.
In that tiny fenced fortress, his Blue Island backyard, our
Uncle Bill would visit him.
My father eventually became a sort of caretaker of Bill’s
story.
He was a good caretaker, for he was quite the storyteller. One
story we especially enjoyed was that of his pet rooster, Blackie. He would describe
how he’d ride his bicycle, with Blackie on the handlebars, around the
neighborhood; sometimes to the gravel pit, where he’d shoot his BB gun. In one
adventure, Blackie’s misbehavior made him crash, and he allegedly broke his
nose.
“See, that’s from Blackie,” he’d claim, pointing to the
bridge of his nose as proof. But my sister would be born with the same nose,
the same bump. Perhaps a Blackie inheritance, perhaps not.
My siblings and I would tease him about Blackie – that the story,
while entertaining, was on the edge of disbelief. We considered it more of dad’s
creative lore – a kid and a bicycle and his crazy pet rooster. Until the day we
discovered a faded photograph in some attic box; that of a child on his bicycle
with a large black bird perched on the handlebars.
Like the Blackie story, it was hard to imagine dad’s
favorite uncle in the first wave on the deadliest beach on D-Day.
It was just anecdotal. Until a box appeared, and dad began
removing items we hadn’t seen before. A purple heart. A telegraph from the War
Department, dated June 6, 1944 – August William Diedesch, missing in action. Another
telegraph, killed in action.
He told us of the heartache of his grandmother Diedesch, of
her worry with both sons in the war, and her unending grief at the loss of Billy.
The rest of Bill’s story we’d have to learn on our own.
We learned that Bill was the more peaceable of the twins.
Robert enthusiastically enlisted in the Marines. Bill didn’t. He would instead
go to the Blue Island library and enlist in the Army Reserves. Robert was sent
to boot camp and then to the Pacific.
Bill stayed in Blue Island, a twenty-year-old Reservist. But
that lasted mere weeks. After basic training, his Reserve Unit was immediately
“called up” to active duty. In a profound turn of fate, his unit was placed
into the 116th Division, 29th regiment, a unit destined to be the spearhead of
the invasion force on D-Day.
Their unit would ride the Higgins boats into the surf - and
into history.
Their story was memorialized, in part, in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Its opening scene
portrayed the carnage on that infamous beach; in shocking and upsetting ways
that most Americans had never imagined.
Before that movie, the reality of Omaha Beach would largely
be captured in print. In its November 1960 issue, The Atlantic Magazine published
a story by S.L.A. Marshall about the 116th and 29th.
It sought to describe the real fate of those caught in the first
wave of the assault. Marshall noted that historians had taken great efforts to
document what happened to each unit as they came ashore, in detailed accounts
from the survivors.
“At exactly 6:36 A.M.
ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere
from waist deep to higher than a man's head.
Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by
crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.
The first men out try
to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly
wounded die by drowning, doomed by the water-logging of their overloaded packs.
From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads.”
And that was the fate of Uncle Bill, who was lost departing
his Higgins boat, there in the surf.
As I’ve discovered this more complete history of Bill, I’ve
tried to keep the memory alive; to share the story more completely than my
father would, or could.
When my father passed, he left me a framed collection of
Bill’s memorabilia, including the purple heart and the MIA and KIA telegrams
from Western Union. And I cannot imagine a more cherished, valued item among
anything I own.
Thus, I also have become a caretaker of memories. To remind
our family about their famous Uncle
Bill. Most years, I’ve posted stories on my blog about Bill on or around June 6th.
And thus, I come to this. I believe that we are entrusted to
keep memories alive - even if we don’t have an uncle who rode a Higgins boat into the French surf. Even if we
don’t have a sibling or relative or friend who served in Southeast Asia or
Afghanistan or Iraq.
It’s up to each of us, on this Memorial Day, to remember all of our Uncle Bills, from every family, who found themselves to be in the
path of destiny; who would be a part of history.
For we are entrusted to remember the soldiers and families
that were willing to sacrifice upon “the altar of freedom.”
In Saving Private
Ryan, a letter is recalled and quoted, by heart, from a general. He
recalled words penned in 1864 to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow believed to have
lost five sons during the Civil War. While it authorship is debated, It reads:
Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in
the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of
Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on
the field of battle.
I feel how weak and
fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the
grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the
consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only
the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely
and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
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