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D-Day "Reenactment"

By Ellie Shunas

Ellie Shunas,
Chicago Chapter

On Saturday, 4 May, a mock D-Day invasion was staged on Montrose Beach (along Lake Michigan) in Chicago. This reenactment was a disgrace and an insult to the vets who participated in the real thing.

The invasion of Normandy in 1944 was planned by the brass and carried out by the soldiers from France, Great Britain, Canada, the U.S. and a small number from various occupied countered in Europe. About 19,000 soldiers lot their lives on or near the beaches where the landing took place. Today, their grave markers make an eerie ocean of white on the green meadows of the D-Day memorial site in France.

Veterans whom I have heard interviewed on recent television specials tell their experiences of bravery, horror and death on the beaches code named Omaha and Utah. Some were landed in 12 feet of water and forced to ditch all their weapons and equipment to avoid drowning, many swam to shore through a sea of corpses and body parts. They fought their way up the beached inch by inch just trying to stay alive. All the time there was the deafening pounding of the weapons fire and the yelling of the troops. Then there were the African-American soldiers many of whose jobs it was to gather up the dead, whole or in pieces, for identification if possible. And the women nurses, following shortly behind the invasion, patched together the wounded.

The reenactment allows some macho war fans to have an outing in the park, to strut their stuff, risk-free, in front of the television cameras.

The reenactment sanitized the battle. It allowed us to engage in the kind of sentimental nostalgia that casts a rosy veil over the past and makes it cozy and safe. It trivialized the sacrifices made by the vets and their importance to our nation's history.

A more fitting memorial would have been to remember D-Day with a parade. Similar to the Welcome Home parade for Vietnam veterans, it would honor the vets, alive and dead, and the sacrifices they made. Fifty years is a long time but vets still vividly remember. All of us should learn to see this historic even as clearly as they do.