FRENCH FRIED: D-Day's Invitation

From my journal of essays entitled FRENCH FRIED
Copyright October 2003

            Tonight is the Annual French Poetry Reading Competition at the university, and I’ll be reading as a guest for the first time. All of us must choose poems to intone for the audience. My choice was easy, this close to Veteran’s Day. At this time of year, I always picture my Uncle Frazier, climbing up under planes as a mechanic serving in Bedford, England during WWII. He was a Supply Sergeant for the "Army Air Force" but had cross-training, because he was so good with motors. BBC was in its heyday then, and one night on BBC, the night of Jane 5, 1944—or perhaps the night before—a poem by the French poet Baudelaire entitled “L’Invitation au Voyage” was read over the air during one of the cultural programs. It was the usual fare for BBC at night, but this particular poem was the signal that the D-Day Invasion would begin the next day.

            The press corps was an interesting place in which to serve in those days, and the Allied Press was issued khaki-colored uniforms similar to that of soldiers, male and female. An account of them that does them justice is provided in the background of a novel published not so long ago by Thomas Nelson Press. Called Twilight of Courage by Bodie and Brock Thoene (a husband and wife), its characters include members of the press, who in their own way were imbedded into the fabric of the troops’ lives. One female reporter serving in Germany just after the war, Ann Stringer, forever lent her name to the type of story done in the field and sent to a news service, the “stringer” story. Up until I read some of her stories in an old Reader’s Digest, I had always thought the stringer concept came from fishing, just like the word “broadcasting” did.

            Ike, Commander Eisenhower in those days, trusted the press on an occasion that became a legend in the newsrooms of the world. The date for D-Day had been extremely hard to set for more than a year, principally because of having to figure in daylight hours and the currents in the English Channel. The sand around the French castle and stronghold Mont St. Michel, for instance, is quicksand during some springs and summers, and in earlier centuries had often claimed the lives of soldiers on their way to the many crusades in the Holy Land. Ike knew in his heart that someone in the press would figure out any day he chose, so he called them all together and told them the date three weeks in advance. No one leaked the news until the landing was underway.

            During his fifty years with us after the war, Uncle Frazier told me, as well as his son and grandsons, a few things about England then. After my first trip to London, Uncle Frazier wanted to hear all about how the place had seemed to me. What he most remembered, in addition to the kindness of the people, he said, was the quality and quantity of light. It was northern light, not so different from what we saw on television when the Olympic Games were held in Norway, and it often lasted, he said, until 10 p.m., just as bright as day. That was a help during D-Day, too.

            Uncle Frazier often spoke of a flyer’s jacket whose story he treasured from the war. He had not been a flyer himself, but one of his best friends had been.

            “Jonesy,” the fellow had said on the evening after the BBC broadcast, when the flight was certain for the next day. “I want you to hold my new jacket for me. I’m not real sure I’m coming back from this one. If I don’t come back, you wear it for me, but if I do come back, I’m wearing it Saturday night and dating the prettiest girl in town.” That time the friend returned safe and sound, having worn an older regulation jacket in flight.

            As I read Baudelaire’s poem tonight to a new group of French students, it will seem to me as if I’m hearing the droning of airplane motors revving up in the background of its words. There’s also one other picture that will come to mind with that of Uncle Frazier. It’s a picture from 1995, when my husband and I were in Paris, having tea at a little table outside a bistro. That summer was the 50^th anniversary of the Liberation of France by the Allies, and even the sugar packets proclaimed, “Thanks to the Yanks!” Celebration signs were everywhere that summer, but sugar, rationed as it was during WWII, seemed a very appropriate place for the message.

            And, no matter what has happened in the politics lately between France and the U.S., I know that all over France tonight there are people like Uncle Frazier who will never forget. For them, too, Baudelaire’s poem will always seem to come to them on wings.