D-Day, 65 years ago: A soldier remembers

We knew it was coming and we all pretended that we wanted to be there.

We were in our final week of infantry basic training at Camp Blanding in northeast Florida, not far from Jacksonville and close to the then-infamous town of Starke, filled with what in an earlier age of America's military establishments were called camp-followers.

Some of us had been in special units, training as combat radio specialists by putting in extra hours every evening following the daily grind of learning to be riflemen. Those of us who had achieved special proficiency in taking down and sending Morse Code by hand were slated for advanced radio training at Fort Benning, Ga. I was one of the fortunate ones, having reached what was then the optimum 25 words per minute. There was a special camaraderie among we chosen few, and an inner but unacknowledged sense of elitism to counter the realization that we were still virtually at the bottom of the military ladder. Some of us had become close friends, as had Edgar Valderrama and I, working together as partners for months in taking and sending code.

That first week of June 1944, rumors were rampant. The expected invasion of France was the main topic of conversation in the mess hall and in the barracks. An aura of feigned eagerness pervaded our talks. On June 5 we heard a report that the invasion had begun. It turned out to be a false report, partially because, as we found out months later, the allied commander, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, learned on June 4 that weather conditions were unsuitable for the planned June 5 invasion — it needed a full moon and a spring tide in the English channel — and partially because a report was deliberately leaked with a false site that would divert the Germans' attention away from the actual invasion target.

"Well, who knows when they'll do it now," we decided, when the report proved to be untrue. "Yeah, maybe they'll hold off until we can get over there for the action," we boasted with bravado.

Some of the more gung-ho guys probably really meant it. Most of us secretly hoped the invasion would come sooner rather than later, with the initial battles having taken place before we could be shipped overseas. We didn't have to wait long. The next morning, June 6, we got word that the invasion had begun. The bright bravado faces suddenly became worried as reality set in. They would need more foot soldiers now. In a few days, when our 13-week basic is officially over, we'll be on our way across the Atlantic, we thought. Most of us were 18 and 19 years old, missing the first part of the war because we were too young to enlist or be drafted, and some remaining in civilian life after our 18th birthdays because we were working in an essential job or finishing a college semester. Now the time of reckoning had come — and of honesty.

That night in the barracks a couple of the guys spoke up with what had been unspoken. "I'm sure glad it happened before I got there," one said. That broke the ice. Others joined in. "Yeah, me too."

"Maybe they won't send us right away," another said hopefully.

"The good old Army bureaucracy," another said, adding to the hope. "Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. With a little luck, they'll wait a while before they send us."

"You guys going to radio school at Benning, you lucky SOBs." Most of the barracks looked at the relatively few of us with a combination of jealousy and anger.

"Yeah, we'll be over there fighting the Krauts while you guys are sitting in a classroom and getting weekend passes to Atlanta."

We hoped they were right, but we had to protest. "You think they're going to let those orders for Benning stand now? We'll all be over there together."

We were fortunate that the Army moves slowly and is generally inflexible because nothing changed. We went to Fort Benning as scheduled, finished our advanced radio course and shortly afterward were sent overseas. Four months had passed and the worst of the D-Day invasion was over. We were assigned to infantry divisions already moving through France and Belgium into Germany. There was still a lot of war left. Some of our basic training buddies who didn't go to Benning had written to us about the outfits they had joined in Europe. Those of us who could tried to find out what happened to them. We learned that many of them were dead.