Jun 6, 2008

D-Day still looms large for vet

Guest Opinion

By David Negrin

It's June 6 and I can't forget the World War II invasion at Normandy on D-Day in 1944. D-Day blots out efforts to recall other significant times in my life like getting married, the birth of my first kid or my graduation from college.

I was about 19 at the time. I'd been in the service for about a year and a half on a Navy minesweeper, the USS Auk, AM 57. Our job on D-Day was to detect and destroy the mines that had been placed off the shore of Omaha Beach, the invasion landing site; there were also several other possible landing sites at that time.

Destroying a mine didn't mean blowing it up. The ideal scenario was to cut it loose from its moorings by dragging cables equipped with cable cutters through a suspected mine field, forcing the mine to rise to the surface. Then with rifle fire aimed at its waterline, we would pierce its hull, the ammunition chamber became flooded and the mine would sink. But that seldom happened. Mines are supposed to be moored and charted; that's international "law," but try enforcing it. Most times, magnetic or acoustic mines would explode if a ship got too close. Occasionally, you'd drag one in with your cables and have to cut it loose and then try to sink it.

It was June 5 when we left Torquay, England. The initial landing had already been delayed 24 hours due to unfavorable weather, and was now scheduled to begin at daybreak on June 6. The first ominous sign occurred in mid-channel, when the ship directly forward of ours, another minesweeper in our squadron, struck a loose, floating mine and sank within minutes, with most of its crew trapped at their battle stations. Many of them were below decks behind dogged down hatches.

We completed our crossing and arrived at the invasion landing site around midnight. Our specific job was to clear an area for the battleships and heavy cruisers that had the task of bombarding the bunkers, the coastal defensive sites that could not be destroyed by aircraft strikes - the bunkers were just too deeply embedded. We finished that first task around 3 a.m. and proceeded to sweep paths parallel to the coastline, getting closer and closer to shore, hoping to bait the bunkers into firing at us and exposing their position to the heavy ships just waiting to open up on them.

Their bombardment started as soon as we were out of their line of fire when the shore batteries then started returning our meager fire; we had 3-inch guns. At dawn, the landing craft arrived in unimaginable numbers. As they approached the shore, they were fired upon by the shore batteries that waited until the landing ramps were lowered so that the troops ready to disembark as they approached shore became "sitting ducks." Since our prime job was about completed, or so we thought, we watched the carnage that seemed to last forever. It wouldn't stop. Plain old horror was no longer a description of what was going on.

Suddenly we were again on the move and the most horrendous part of our task was about to begin. Our job now was to lift the floating bodies of the guys who didn't make it to shore, and in all of their contorted positions, to stack them on our deck like cordwood. A couple of our crew members were given the gruesome task of removing one of the two dog tags from each body. These would be sent to some location for further processing so the next of kin could be notified. I suppose we returned to England after depositing the bodies near some Normandy cemetery. Someone, sometime later asked me if there were soldiers of different ethnicity like black or brown or yellow. My response was simple; I couldn't tell; they were all red. And they were all younger than me (or about to be). What a waste.

And since that day, I've come to believe that war represents the ultimate failure of rational people who are determined to avoid it by using all means available to achieve their purpose. Despite the tragedy of World War II with almost 30 million dead throughout the world, we haven't learned much about war's futility. We just continue to erect memorials and monuments to its victims that seem to glorify war. It's a real problem. How do we remember the sacrifices of the too-young and yet not glorify the worst means of solving the world's problems?



With the help of the GI Bill, David Negrin got an engineering degree and worked as a development engineer for several companies, including 25 years with IBM. Negrin is also a longtime Peninsula resident.