D-Day at Eighty

by Nadine Revheim

            My dad, Frank Revheim, landed on Normandy Beach on the second day. I guess that is why he survived. I always wondered if his job was to pick up the bodies left behind from that first day of carnage. Or perhaps he hauled supplies to replenish those depleted by the survivors who scaled the cliffs.

            I wonder how the troops were divided. Who was selected for the first day? The young? The unmarried? And who were the remaining souls that were thought to be worth saving for the long fight ahead?

            I always pondered.

            But I never asked.

            Not even after we went to see the movie The Longest Day with his friend from work, who asked him at the end of the movie, “Was it really like that, Frank?”

            “Yes,” Dad replied.

            I guess his response was enough for me. Maybe I really didn’t want to know anything more than that.

            But if he were alive today, watching the memorial services for the 80th anniversary of the epic battle that would liberate France, then Europe, I’d ask many questions so that he’d share some of his memories. The memories of his pounding heart as he raced forward over the beach and towards the escarpment with his equipment and weapons weighing him down. The sense of dread as he saw the fallen and wondered if he might be next. The reflection on meeting his brother Reidar in England. Reidar, who was serving in the Norwegian Navy, sought him out because he heard the 99th Battalion of Norwegian-Americans serving in the US Army were on the base awaiting orders. I imagine he would remember the hope he had in his heart because they went to a photographer’s studio to take a photo together. They marked the occasion they saw each other after 11 years apart; my dad left for America at 19 years old and his brother was only 10. I wondered if he remembered the song and lyrics to the Vera Lynn classic, “We’ll Meet Again”, not knowing where or when, but repeating those words over and over like a mantra to bolster his courage. I wonder if he thought about whether he’d see his 30th birthday in October 1944. Or whether he’d see his wife, Jenny, again in Brooklyn, his new home so far away from Haugesund, Norway. And I would ask how he prayed, not if he prayed. I would ask if he cried as he remembered what he saw in Normandy.

            My father cried. I saw him cry when he listened to music. When he left for work because he’d be away for two weeks. When he wrote a letter to his family in Norway. When we sang along with Mitch Miller. When he played the accordion. Or the organ. He cried when the doctors told him he needed brain surgery. When the biopsy showed it was mesothelioma. When I told him it metastasized from the lungs. He cried when the ambulance got him home because he knew I had saved him from dying in the hospital.

            “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” he said, as I pulled the nasal-gastric tube from his nose. The hospital hadn’t removed it even though they knew he was entering home hospice.

            He said it was okay when I got angry that he didn’t eat. When I had to remove thick mucus from his larynx because he was too weak to cough it out, I swiped and wiped in the back of his throat with a sponge on a stick.

         “I’m glad you taught me how to fish in the fjords of Norway,” I said, remembering how we reeled in the red cod we caught. He laughed.

            I remember how special it was to have my father home for the week he was off from working on the tugboat. I remember how he vacuumed and dusted to help my working mom. How he cooked his specialty, fried mackerel, first dredging it in flour tossed with salt and pepper, then placing it carefully into the melted butter until crisp.

            I remember chopping down trees in the woods on the property in Pennsylvania before the country house was built and asking him if he was trying to turn me into the son he never had. The son that was stillborn six years before I was born. I remember how he told me he sang “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” to me. I remember the pink and floral alarm clock he gave me that played “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

            I remember his smile. How he always broke into a dance when he was feeling happy. Or sad. How we did the two-step and the polka. How he waltzed with me standing on top of his feet.           

            I will never forget his feet. His tender and soft soles that carried him through seventy-six years of life. Over the beach at Normandy and through western Europe. I remember the feet that he said hurt from time to time and that when they ached, everything else ached too.

            “Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you,” he said to me, many times.

            My dad did not get to see the 50th anniversary reunion of veterans returning to Normandy in 1994. I watched the TV broadcast alone and cried as I thought about missing him since his death in 1991. I didn’t know that my Uncle Reidar was there with the other Norwegian sailors who survived the battle and were honored by the Norwegian government. I would like to imagine that they would have been together, once again, to take another photo to celebrate the lives they returned to after the war. They would tell their favorite story of how Reidar knocked on the door where my dad’s troops were located, and how he almost walked away after my father kept saying it couldn’t be his brother who was just a little boy. But they were both men facing the biggest challenge in their lives, two men who recognized the grace they had to survive.

            Those feelings are present now and are even stronger since the American veterans present at the ceremony on June 6th, 2024 are in their late 90s and even 100s. My dad wouldn’t be there; he would have been 113 years old. But hopefully I will get to Normandy someday to visit the memorial that pays tribute to all who crossed the beach and have crossed to the other side. For my dad, and for the brave, with prayers and hope that our world will always remember the ‘war to end all wars’ so that tyranny will not have the final word, once again.

ACTIVITY DURING WWII

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS. SERVED OCTOBER 30, 1942 TO DECEMBER 21, 1945. ENTERED SERVICE WITH THE 99TH BATTALION, A SPECIAL UNIT OF NORWEGIAN NATIONALS AND TRAINED AT CAMP RIPLEY, MINNESOTA AND CAMP HALE IN COLORADO. SERVED IN CENTRAL EUROPE, NORTHERN FRANCE ON D-DAY PLUS 2, IN THE NORMANDY INVASION AND RHINELAND. PERFORMED VARIOUS DUTIES IN CONNECTION WITH THE STORAGE AND HANDLING OF ALL TYPES OF AMMUNITION FOR THE 95TH BOMB SQUAD, ARMY AIR FORCE. SAW ACTIVE DUTY AS A RIFLEMAN WITH THE 99TH INFANTRY BATTALION. AWARDED DISTINGUISHED UNIT BADGE, EUROPEAN-AMERICAN-MIDDLE EASTERN SERVICE MEDAL, GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL AND THE WWII VICTORY MEDAL.

BIO

Nadine Revheim, PhD, a licensed psychologist, occupational therapist, and author. Her forty-year career in mental health was primarily focused on research and clinical programs for individuals with schizophrenia with various professional publications. She is currently self-employed as a private practitioner in behavioral health for individuals and couples. Her memoir, Woven Together: Finding Me in Memories of You, is in press with Cape House Books. She has written an ad hoc blog, “Beacon Bits” – A Bite of the Hudson River Valley (beaconnybits.blogspot.com) for over ten years. Other recent published works have appeared in The Highlands Current and The Keepthings.