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| Pointe du Hoc, June 6, 2004: D-day Rangers celebrated by their successors. |
Pretenders Pale Beside Old Veterans
The New York Post, June 7, 2004
by Jonathan Foreman in France
POINTE DU HOC, France - The strangest thing about the D-Day anniversary was the swarms of military re-enactors and vintage vehicle enthusiasts who tooled around the countryside in World War II jeeps and trucks, dressed in original uniforms.
Every cafe in Normandy was filled with Italians playing British paratroopers, or Czechs pretending to be U.S. infantry - and now and then people turned to glare at men who played German SS men in motorcycle sidecars. There were re-enactors hovering around even at the official ceremonies.
Neither the old vets nor the young soldiers who were taking part in the commemorations thought much of the wannabes. There was something creepily trivial about such make-believe.
The most affecting ceremonies were the smaller ones. They had a special resonance because they were meetings between today's combat veterans and the D-Day heroes.
The Rangers' ceremony at Pointe du Hoc, at which today's Army elite honored their predecessors, really felt like a family affair. As a crowd stood silently in the bleachers built overlooking the clifftop battlefield, each of seven survivors was crisply escorted by a young Ranger.
All of the young Rangers present had been deployed in the war on terror, but Special Operations Command would not divulge where.
The importance of this little ceremony was underscored by the VIPs there, including the secretary of the Army and Gen. Peter Schoonmaker, the Army chief-of-staff (and a former head of Special Operations Command).
"I'm very proud of these guys," Schoonmaker told The Post as he chatted with the seven older Rangers before they placed a wreath against a newly assembled memorial made of a rifle, helmet and sandbags.
Ranger veteran Leonard Lowell of Toms River, N.J., joked to the general after he couldn't answer a young Ranger's question: "You know what happened to my ears," he said to the general. "Too much sex."
"Roger that," echoed a Ranger colonel behind him.
D-Day hero Ranger Ivor Jones gave some advice to his young comrades: "You kill him before he kills you. You can't please everyone. We never looked as good as you do."
Jones also told everyone how much he loved the "Normans" he'd met over the years since D-Day - their hospitality, their graciousness. "They're the greatest people in the world."
The celebration at Utah Beach included a march-past by troops of the 4th Infantry Division, the unit responsible for Saddam Hussein's capture in Iraq. It featured the usual, astonishingly loud fly-past by F-15s, the playing of taps, a 21-gun salute. But it was made special by the aftermath during which Schoonmaker signed autographs and posed for snapshots only to be outshone by five members of the "Band of Brothers" - the E Company of the 101st Airborne soldiers featured in the HBO series.
They seemed to enjoy their popularity with the French ("Band of Brothers" was a huge hit in France), who were anxious to express their gratitude to America.
One of them, Marcel Lombardo, also hit these beaches as member of the Free French 2nd Division. At 15, he was the youngest soldier in the French army. But for this reporter, the most moving experience of D-Day was to encounter Col. Gregg Martin, and to see him place a wreath on the memorial at Utah for the 1st Engineer Special Brigade, together with engineer veterans of that unit.
Martin is the commander of the 130th Engineering Brigade in whose 54th Engineer Battalion I was embedded in Iraq. Combat engineers - including the 130th - played a vital part in the Normandy landings, clearing away obstacles, demolishing bunkers and building ports, all under fire.
"It's very humbling," said Martin. "And it's great for our young soldiers who recently came back from a year in Iraq to honor these vets and get their picture taken with them. It means a lot because they're the same age now as these men were then, and they are combat veterans, too."