Tributes and Tears

By Pico Iyer

"We owe them what we are today"

Forty summers ago, they had sailed in the dark through howling winds and driving rain and later seen the sea behind them turn crimson with blood. Last week they arrived by bus and chartered plane, and the waves were calm, the heavens benign. The serene afternoon perfectly suited their mission: they had come to the windswept bluffs and lonely beaches of Normandy to encounter long-lost friends and to mourn those lost forever.

More than 4,000 veterans of D-day joined 6,000 other guests at Utah Beach last Wednesday, on the invasion's 40th anniversary. As the heads of state of eight wartime allies looked on, color guards slowly hoisted flags up eight tall poles, and eight national anthems rang out across the hazy air. At sea, where eight gray battleships idly drifted, the French destroyer Montcalm let off a 21-gun salute, and eight French Alpha jets roared through the sky, leaving red, white and blue trails of smoke.

Stepping forward to deliver the gathering's only speech, French President Franc,ois Mitterrand gallantly stressed that "the enemy of that time was not Germany but the power, the system, the ideology that held Germany in its grip." Mitterrand went on to applaud "the heroism of the Russian people." His main purpose, however, was to give thanks to the 10,000 Allied soldiers who lost their lives on D-day while helping to deliver France from captivity. "We owe them what we are today," said Mitterrand, "and I sometimes ask myself if we have ever paid them back all that we owe."

Yet amid the flawless pageantry, last Wednesday was, at heart, a day for silence and solitary reflection. Gray-haired by now, or balding, or round of girth, most of the returning veterans chose to observe their own private rituals of remembrance. During the long hours of waiting, they could be seen reminiscing with buddies, or recounting their deeds to wives and children and children's children, or simply gazing out to sea. Charles H. Sullivan, who had been a medic in the 29th Infantry Division, could only marvel at the dizzying sea of white crosses and Stars of David at Omaha Beach, where 9,386 G.I.s are buried. "If anything of this kind has to exist," he said, his eyes filled with tears, "this is about as fine a tribute as they could create."

Fine tributes came too from President Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, a rugged promontory jutting into the English Channel. Soon after dawn on Dday, 225 U.S. Rangers began to scale the sheer cliffs, inching upward under a hail of murderous gunfire; after two days of combat, only 90 could still fight. Last week 62 Rangers returned to the site. "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc," read the President. "These are the champions who helped free a continent." Some of the men being congratulated for their toughness had to take off their glasses to brush away tears.

After the speech, the President and his wife gamely descended into a German bunker, then flew to the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. Walking alone arm in arm among the geometrically perfect rows of graves, they paid silent homage to the American dead. At the grave of an unknown soldier, the First Lady placed some flowers; later she laid a spray of carnations and blue irises at the tombstone of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of his presidential namesake, who landed on Utah Beach with the 4th Infantry Division and died of a heart attack one month later.

Then, before 2,000 people at the Omaha Beach memorial, the President read from a letter sent to him by Lisa Zanatta Henn, 28, of Millbrae, Calif. Many years ago, Peter Robert Zanatta of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion had told his little girl that he would one day return to Normandy. After he died of cancer, his daughter vowed to make the pilgrimage on his behalf. "I'm going there, Dad," she wrote in the letter Reagan read, "and I'll I see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments." As the President read, his voice began to crack. "I'll see the graves, and I'll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I'll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let anyone else forget. And, Dad, I'll, always be proud."

By then, the President's eyes were red, and he could barely continue reading. Near him was Lisa, who wept openly. Afterward, the First Couple, still shaken, boarded their helicopter and flew to Utah Beach. In the end, pride and tears seemed the sweetest memorial to the fallen, and the most eloquent way of saying goodbye.

--By Pico Iyer.

Reported by Thomas A. Sancton and Barrett Seaman with the President

With reporting by Thomas A. Sancton, Barrett Seaman