This time of year, I think about my mother's father a lot. He was on the beach at Normandy on June 6th, 1944. He was one of only a handful of men in his platoon who survived the initial assault. His unit pushed on through France and fought in the Ardennes Forest in the Battle of the Bulge in December and January. As I was growing up, he told me terrible stories of things that happened during that time. It gave me a very non-Romantic view of war that persists in my mind even to this day.
My grandfather suffered from terrible alcoholism and bouts of anger and depression for the remainder of his life after returning from Europe. And many of us in his family also suffered by association. But we loved him dearly. My grandfather often told me that the day on the beach in Normandy was the worst day of his life. He said is was the day he stopped believing in God.
In the fall of 1990, as he began the downward spiral of succumbing to the cancer that would claim his life just a few months later, my grandfather told me a part of the story that he had never told me before. For 20 years after D-Day, around June 6th, my grandfather would get terribly drunk and do awful, abusive things to his friends and family members. That part wasn't news. We were all well aware of the problems he had. Of course, this behavior was simpy a projection of the internal anger and guilt left over from those bad earlier times. My grandfather told me that near D-Day, he would cry out to a god he knew wasn't there for a sign. He wanted some sort of redemption, some sort of answer for the lives he had taken and seen taken all around him. And every year, his plea for help went unanswered. Year after year, for 20 years it went on like this.
Then, in 1964, he said that something radical happened. My grandfather's oldest daughter, my mother, announced that she was expecting her first child. He was angry. He was mad at my mother for getting married in the first place. He was mad at her for getting pregnant too young in life. He was mad at his wife for not stopping all of this. He was just mad about everything, really. His anger continued to fester and grow through the winter and spring of 1965 as that fateful time of year approached when he would be forced to relive all the horrible memories of what had happened in France. He told me that he often dreamed of the faces of the men he had killed. He dreamed of the faces of his friends who had died. He dreamt of their horribly disfigured bodies. My grandfather told me that in the spring of 1965, he asked God for some relief from his own memories once again. And he expected to be disappointed.
Then on June 6, 1965 at 6:30 a.m., I was born. His first grandchild was born at H-0 (or D+0) time 21 years later, meaning the exact moment of the amphibious landings on the beaches at Normandy. My grandfather never accounted for the several hours of difference between Eastern Daylight Savings Time (EDT) in the US and British Double Summer Time (BDST). To him, if his wristwatch read 6:30 then and now, it was the same 6:30 in the morning. In any case, my grandfather, Lester Earl Lawson, counted the timing of my birth as a miracle, a sign that God was listening to him. He continued to struggle with alcoholism and anger for the rest of his days. But he told me that the horrible dreams and sleepless nights ended when I was born. I don't think of myself as a miracle, per se. But to him, I was a gift from God and he treated me that way. I miss my grandfather at this time of year more than any other. The stretch of time from Memorial Day to D-Day is an important period of remembrance for me. Thank you, grandpa, for your service. I love you.
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