A Firsthand Account from the Aftermath of D-Day
“I still see that baby bed,” he said, “and I wonder. I still wonder.”
A few years ago, I shared a meal with my wife’s great uncle Roy in Virginia, and I listened to his story of the Second World War.
Roy maintained the radios for the Douglas C-47 Skytrains, first in Africa then in England. In the spring of 1944, he was repairing radio systems for planes whose wings bore the triple white stripes of Operation Overlord. These were the aircraft that would drop nearly 14,000 American, British, and Canadian paratroopers behind German lines five hours before the first boats landed at Utah and Omaha Beaches.
Later, he followed those first troops into France, and he described this scene to me, in these words:
One scene somehow really brought the war home to me. It was something I saw in France. We were walking the streets of a town there. Almost everything we saw was damaged or just gone, but it was quiet now. And we passed an apartment building. Seven floors, I think it was, and it was split right down the middle, like a meat cleaver had torn right through the middle of it, down to the ground, and left both sides sagging in toward the center.
I looked up and down, and I saw all those apartments ripped open for everyone to see. And there, on the very top floor, I saw something I’ll never forget. There was a bed there on that top floor, hanging by one leg. Beside that bed there was a baby bed, dangling there above that awful mess between those two halves of that building, and the baby bed was empty. Somehow, I always wondered what happened to that baby.
I’ll never forget that scene. I still see that baby bed, and I wonder. I still wonder.”
Roy has since passed away, but his eyewitness account is worth remembering.