Letters: Jun. 18, 1984

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D-Day Memory

To the Editors:

As an infantryman who fought in Normandy, I was struck by the beautiful truth in your retelling of D-day [DDAY, May 28]. You gave credit where credit was due, to General Dwight Eisenhower and the other officers, but you also told of the heroics and failures of the ordinary soldiers. They are the men who win or lose wars.

Tom Ward Chicago

I was in Italy at the time of the Normandy landings and cheered the invasion news. Years after, a good friend of mine who was with the first wave on Omaha Beach told me, "I was seasick, cold and scared, to the point that I wanted to lie there and die. Then I got mad, not at the Germans but at my superiors for creating such a hopeless situation." This attitude prevailed in the enlisted ranks and was a key to moving the troops forward.

Jim Bell Fremont, Calif.

I was with an airborne unit that jumped early on that unforgettable morning in June. I hope all the hawks and warmongers read your fine story. Maybe it will deter another encounter.

Alfred K. McHaney Kingston, Okla.

Without doubt, D-day was "the beginning of the end," not just of Hitler and World War II but of a naive way of life we once enjoyed. From that day on we were part of an uncertain and unstable future dominated by two new superpowers and were witnesses to the blossoming, often violent, of the Third World.

Paul F. Emery Brownsburg, Ind.

Before we lose ourselves in an orgy of self-congratulation over the Normandy invasion, we should recall that in 1944 we were allied with the Soviet Union. It is sobering to reflect on what might have happened on the beaches of France had the cream of Germany's armed forces not been destroyed by the Soviets at Stalingrad in 1942 and at Kursk in 1943. The beginning of the end for Hitler started much earlier than Dday, and it started in the Soviet Union, not France.

David McKibbin Lincoln, Neb.

Would we ally ourselves today with the Soviet Union to fight a right-wing dictator? We now support oppressors like Augusto Pinochet in Chile as long as they are anti-Soviet. If this were prewar 1938, we would be looking for a similar deal with Hitler.

Alan MacRobert Watertown, Mass.

It is the loss of mutual resolve among nations that is such a tragedy. Perhaps this sense of purpose is still present under all the rhetoric and vicious attacks that go on among those countries that once stood together against Nazism.

Beatrice Wilding Chicago

You have presented another snide, patronizing reference to the minimal part played by Britain and the other Allies in the Normandy landings. I was beginning to think that the U.S. had grown up and was no longer a braggart. How sad to find that you still need to hog the glory.

Peter Bishop Harrow, England

I am not convinced that, as you would have us believe, 40 years have erased distorted perceptions of the enemy. You present the killing of nearly 40 Allied prisoners by an SS panzer division as an atrocity, while the exploits of an American staff sergeant who killed 91 Germans, 15 of whom were eating breakfast, are portrayed as a heroic adventure.

Vernon R. Padgett Huntington, W. Va.