Watching "The Longest Day" with Dad

The Divorce

At four years old all I understood was that Daddy wasn’t around anymore. Our house bustled with relatives and strange people coming in and going out, but he wasn’t there.

I remember asking where was Daddy?

“He’s working,” my mother replied as she tucked me into bed.

Hearing that same answer the next night, I wanted to know if he was all right. I took her hand and begged, “Please ask him to kiss me goodnight when he comes home.” I fell asleep comforted that I would see him.

Upon waking, I knew I hadn’t seen Daddy, I hadn’t felt his stubble on my cheek as he kissed me good night. When I entered the kitchen for breakfast, and he wasn’t sitting in his chair, again I asked where he was. My mother, in a breathless voice, told me, “He came home but you were so sleepy you didn’t wake up.”

My Aunt added before I could protest, “He left this morning before you woke up.” My Aunt and mother exchanged looks.

I knew it was a lie. I decided I hated lies.

“You’ll see him on Sunday,” my mother said. That was the start of a new phase of life. Only seeing Dad on Sundays.

When I think of those early chaotic years of my parents’ divorce, nothing was stable. Where we lived changed many times over, which meant friends changed, and concern over having enough money was ever present which meant our social connections changed. Like all life lessons I fought against it. I whimpered and grumbled and basically was a pest to my mother about all these changes. She snapped at me to grow up and get over it. Fair enough, she was the adult, I was the kid. Eventually, I learned to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.

To the extent that I could do that I did, until there came a time when I just couldn’t any longer. It happened when I became frightened over my behavior. I was too easily swayed by the people around me. There wasn’t always good people around.

Before I started high school, I asked to live with Dad in Minnesota. I’m not really sure why my mother fought to keep me, we didn’t have a good relationship, actually we had no relationship at all. We never talked. She was busy with her life as a graduate student at the University of Southern California, and she had a new boyfriend. My older siblings had moved out, so my younger brother and I were basically left to ourselves.

The conversations with my mother were tense until it was agreed, I could live with Dad for one year. My younger brother asked as well. But, at eight years old, he was still young and needed a mother, we were told.

That year, Dad and I became buddies. It was fall and we mowed the lawn and raked the leaves, we shopped for groceries on Saturdays, and sometimes as a treat, we went to the local cafeteria where a bowl of cubed red Jell-o cost 10 cents.

In that first year I noticed, unlike my mother, he didn’t go out on dates. One night I asked him why.

A deep pitiful sign emitted from him, it seemed he’d heard that question before. Then he said he was a soldier during WWII.

“You fought in the old war?” I interrupted obvious shock on my face.

He scoffed, “Old war?!”

In my defense, the war I saw in living color on the nightly news was the Vietnam War. The only time I’d seen pictures from WWII they were in black and white.

After he got over the shock of hearing his war was the old one, he told me all the soldiers agreed that if they made it home, they would do these things. Hug their mother, find a girl, get married and have a bunch of kids. That was what they promised before entering each battle. Some made it home and many didn’t. He felt it was his duty to keep his promise not only for himself but for the ones that died. He met my mother, saw her long auburn hair and green eyes and was smitten.

Smitten! He said smitten, I thought, how old fashioned. But in an instant, I realized how different marriage and divorce occurred for him as compared to my mother.

Thinking about my young attractive mother, I examined my father’s deeply lined face. I thought it unfair that she lived a carefree life while Dad seemed so alone. I pursued the idea of dating. “But you could remarry,” I offered thinking I was helping.

“One marriage is enough,” he answered. “Leave it alone,” he warned.

I never approached the subject again. But his war experience would return and at fifteen years old, I was unprepared.

It happened one night when a move called “The Longest Day” was to be shown on television. It was considered a breakthrough movie because it took on the monumental task of telling the story of D-Day. Over three hours long, the station felt it was too much to watch in one sitting, so it was separated into two nights.

Dad and I had watched other war movies together. “The Dam Busters” a British movie that showed the development of a bomb that bounced when it hit the water so it could blow up dams in Germany, “The Frogmen”, an American movie that told of the training of the first Navy Seals, and “The Sands of Iwo Jima”, an American movie about the battle against the Imperial Army on the island of Iwo Jima. Also, there were television shows such as ‘McHale’s Navy’ and ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ once a week. In my mind this movie sounded interesting, after all, he said he was a soldier during WWII.

The movie started at 8 PM on Friday night. I was excited. I could tell by how the movie began that it would be a different kind of war movie. First of all, it started immediately. There were no opening credits, no list of stars names, no big overture from an orchestra. It simply showed a soldiers helmet upside-down on a sandy beach and played the beginning notes of Beethoven’s fifth but like a code. That let me know this was serious.

Next, a group of Nazi Generals talked about the possible invasion of the Allied forces. Then it went to a group of French peasants smuggling soldiers to safety from a Nazi camp. But what was different was the German Generals spoke German, the French Resistance fighters spoke French and their words were translated into English on the bottom of the screen. It was like seeing a foreign film. The first thirty minutes rotated between how the Nazi Army either readied for the expected invasion on the French coast or how they scoffed at the weakness of the Allies. Every once in a while, in the background, the Resistance Fighters prepared to sabotage any advantage on the side of the Nazi’s.

My father sat on the couch behind me and gave a few grunts watching the Nazi Generals play cards and drink champagne. He made a few scoffs watching the resistance fighters, mostly at the woman playing the French resistance fighter. “Christ, I look more French than she does,” he said.

Finally, the story turned to the gathering Allies along the coast of Britain. It showed rows and rows of canvas tents getting pummeled by a downpour. “Judas Priest, I’ll never forget that rain. It was miserable,” he said. I nodded and listened.

As the movie progressed, it finally showed the American and English commanders reading the troops to land in France. Dad’s comments began to get louder and more intrusive. It was like watching a football game with a person arguing with the players on the television.

When John Wayne stood in front of the troops to tell them the invasion was on, he said, “They never talked like that,” or when actors like Henry Fonda and Robert Mitchum were on screen, “They’re too old to play those men.” At one moment when John Wayne was pulled through the French countryside in a cart because his ankle was broken Dad jumped up from the couch, pointed to the television and yelled, “It wasn’t like that.”

Exasperated, I asked, “Well, what was it like?” Thinking I’d caught him being a know-it-all.

He sat, folded his hands in his lap and when the next commercial break happened, he said, “We weren’t pretty boys like these actors, we were kids caked with mud and blood from the moment we stepped on shore.”

“Were you there?” I asked.

“I was D-Day 3,” he said and held three fingers up. “I couldn’t wait to get out of England and get to work.” He gave a low grumble in his throat. The hair on my neck tingled. I didn’t know much but I knew not to press him.

We watched the rest of part one in silence. After it was over, he went to bed. That night I heard the first of his nightmares.

We watched the second part of the movie and he seemed to calm down. There was one long shot of troops running out from behind buildings along a road next to a river. The troops that to attack an outpost protecting a bridge. The soldiers convened along this road and attacked an outpost protecting a bridge that spanned the two sides of town. Dad nodded. “It was exactly like that, ” he whispered.

Whenever a soldier from the 101st division was on screen, he said, “Those guys, I knew those guys. They had it rough.”

“What did you do in the war?” I asked.

He just waved his hand. “Maybe another night.”

We finished the second part of the film and again he retired early. He had no nightmares that I heard.

Sunday morning we went to church. After Mass he said he wanted to talk with a priest and asked me to wait in the car. When he finally returned, he said he was going to see that priest after work the next few nights. I asked if he’d see the priest before or after dinner. I wanted to know so I could plan. He smiled and patted my knee and said after dinner.

I didn’t know at the time, but several men in the neighborhood that watched the movie also made appointments with priests. Why priests and not therapists or psychologists? One of my father’s

childhood friends returned from WWII and had what was called a nervous breakdown. He was sent to a hospital for rest and recovery. When he got out, no one would hire him. He was labeled ‘nuts’. Not one ex-soldier that knew the story of Jake Burke ever went to a psychologist, they turned to priests.

I am not one that honors the Catholic Church, with all the cover ups of abuse, money laundering and downright criminal behavior for decades they need to completely reorganize. But for the many, long nights into the wee hours of the morning that these priests listened to men recount the horrors they lived through during battles I will be forever grateful. My Dad was one of those men.