Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Carentan, France. In a small Normandy town where paratroopers landed in the early hours of D-Day, applause broke the silence to honor Charles Shay Penobscot Nation. Shay was the only veteran attending a ceremony in commemorating the 77th anniversary of the assault that helped bring an end to World War II.

This year’s D-Day commemorations, as well as last year’s ceremonies took place under COVID travel restrictions that prevented veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the U.S., Britain and other allied countries from making the trip to France. Only a few officials were allowed exceptions.

Shay, who now makes his home in Normandy was a 19-year-old U.S. Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He recalled the “many good friends” he lost on the battlefield.

As per the Tamp Bay Times, “Under a bright sun, the 96-year-old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island, Maine, stood steadily while the hymns of the Allied countries were played Friday in front of the monument commemorating the assault in Carentan that allowed the Allies to establish a continuous front joining nearby Utah Beach to Omaha Beach.

Shay regretted that the pandemic “is interrupting everything.” He is expected to be the only veteran at Sunday’s anniversary day ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery of Colleville-sur-Mer

Shay’s lone presence is all the more poignant as the number of survivors of the epochal battle dwindles. Only one veteran now remains from the French commando unit that joined U.S, British, Canadian and other allied troops in storming Normandy’s code-named beaches”.

For the second year in a row, most public commemoration events have been cancelled. A few solemn ceremonies have been maintained, with dignitaries and a few guests only.

“In France, people who remember these men, they kept them close to their heart,” Shay said. “And they remember what they did for them. And I don’t think the French people will ever forget.”

People in dozens of World War II vehicles, from motorcycles to jeeps and trucks, gathered in a field in Colleville-Montgomery to parade down the nearby roads along Sword Beach to the sounds of a pipe band. Residents, some waving French and American flags, came to watch.

As per the Tamp Bay Times, “Henri-Jean Renaud, 86, remembers D-Day like it was yesterday. He was a young boy and was hidden in his family home in Sainte-Mere-Eglise when more than 800 planes bringing U.S. paratroopers flew over the town while German soldiers fired at them with machine guns.

Describing an “incredible noise” followed by silence, he remembers crossing the town’s central square in the morning of June 6. He especially recalls seeing one dead U.S. paratrooper stuck in a big tree that is still standing by the town’s church”.

“I came here hundreds of times. The first thing I do is look at that tree,” he said. “That’s always to that young guy that I’m thinking of. He was told: ‘You’re going to jump in the middle of the night in a country you don’t know’... He died and his feet never touched (French) soil, and that is very moving to me.”

More than 12,000 soldiers were buried temporarily in Sainte-Mere-Eglise during and after the Battle of Normandy, before being moved to their final resting place.

In the years following the war, local people were allowed to go to the cemeteries. “Often, people had adopted a grave because they had seen a name they liked ... They were a bit like friends,” Renaud said.

“Some, especially at the beginning when there were no coffins yet, had been buried in the ground. They had become the Normandy soil,” he added, in a voice filled by emotion.

On June 6, 1944 more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. The Battle of Normandy quickened Germany’s defeat - which came less than a year later.

On that one single day 4,414 Allied troops lost their life fighting for democracy. , 2,501 of them Americans. And more than 5,000 were injured. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.