From Normandy with Love

My Hero, My Father; Normandy Invasion; June 6, 1944

FROM NORMANDY WITH LOVE

 

 

Dank, cold, crowded

Ship filled to bursting

with boy/men trying to be brave

And keep stoic faces

Under the pressure of the coming unknown;

 

Into the darkness

The palatable fear creeps

In the deep night of despair

As they await the coming

Of the muddy dawn

 

Sheets of gray rain,

waters as rough as piles of gravel

ripping at their clothes

those boys turn

to face fate in the ocean of despair

 

Operation Overlord

Hail, Mary, full of grace …..

No girl giving birth in Bethlehem

Is going to save me today.

 

Feeling the sting;

Cold, oh so cold;

and heavy, the equipment bears down

as their wretched, vomiting bodies

gasp for just a moment of respite;

wishing only for oxygen in the chilly waters

And there is none.

 

Lo, the shores of Omaha

In the no-man’s land of Normandy await,

and those children

lucky enough to make it to shore

bend double, heaving,

Not knowing the enemy has trained mighty guns

upon the smallness of their foreheads.

 

The universe implodes

as life-long friends crumple under the barrage

and life seeps out of them and into the foreign waters

coloring the frothing waves crimson;

these children give up their lives for freedom

and the chance to save the damned.

 

Young boy, from the heartland of Kansas,

rise up and face the enemy

(is he so very different from you?)

No, but it must be done

There’l be no resting till it’s through.

 

The hellish red, the blazing flame

And march uphill to Normandy

Will leave no succor for any soul

But only nightmare dreams forevermore

Upon the beach at Normandy.

 

He watched his best friend die

And vowed to make it home again

He had a brand-new bride;

She would wait forever, she’s said so

In her letter he still had at his side

tucked away, but wet and mushy now

Good for nothing, not even for wiping a tear.

 

Oh, false peaceful and green of Normandy

Rising up around him

marred by stench of death all around

He dug a hasty foxhole

Once he reached the hedgerows

And swore he’d never raise his head

After seeing what had happened to his friend

T’was best to stay underground.

 

21 days he spent

that boy from Kansas, who’d never seen the world

in one foxhole,

He knows only that it was in St. Lo;

Where he wrote by candlelight

Words his bride would never read

 

They simply kept repeating in his tired brain:

I love you, honey, you’ll never see this letter;

 

From Normandy with love;

 

I saw my childhood friend

Cut in half by machine gun fire

There were men we burned alive

With flamethrowers

It was them or us

I did what I had to do

 

From Normandy with love;

 

If they find this letter with my body

Remember, please, dear wife

Something big is happening

And I did not easily give up my life.

 

May God watch over you

And keep you safely in the USA

But here in this hole

With just a patch of black sky above

Should death find me here

 

This letter comes to you

From Normandy with Love.

 

 

Reviews

[Brian K. Walters]

Jane,
Your writing is very fresh and extremely well formatted. I was both intrigued and captivated throughout this piece. I too had a father as well as two uncles who were there on D-day. The respect I have for what that had to indure and the pure courage it took for them to survive is incredible.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

[Carole]

Explicitly detailed with your choice of imagery. I assume you have heard this story many times. Touching...kept me spell bound. Very good recollection of what they experienced. I am not much of a History buff and though I have heard of this, I have not read much about it. Forgive me, but did your father die?

[Brenda Sue]

Absolutely amazing. I love it. Wonderfully penned. Great job.

[Emily B]

I found this again. Now I can put it back in my favorites where it should be.

[Yvonne Heidt]

Tears in my coffee on this lazy Sunday morning. This is written excellently and it floored me with the emotion that I recieved from it. That you managed to put a history lesson in it as well, shows your versality as a writer.

EXCELLENT job, Jayne.

[Rain]

An amazing write. I think I read the average age of thos at Omaha was 19..in the gul war it is close to 30. My God, I think back when I was 19, and can't imagine the fear, and the shock of killing and friends being killed. Your style of writing is what I love. Rain..

[Legion]

Didn't you post this before. I think I read it once before. Either way, it is wonderfully done. What predicaments we put ourselves in as a species. Great work.

[Jayne Ann Saporito]

This boy from Kansas was my father. Forever my hero, forever in my heart.