I think about my late grandfather every June 6, who was in the Navy on an LST. Like many farm kids, he was a diesel mechanic and gunner. His ship and attached landing craft were at Gold Beach on D-Day, landing New Zealanders. For a few weeks, his ship ferried hundreds of dead and wounded to England, then German POWs. He never told a lot of war stories, but a couple from D-Day always stood out. He saw one of his friends step on a land mine and blown in a half. When managing POWs, the prisoners would see his German surname and chat him up in German and hang around him hoping for good treatment---he came away with dozens of belt buckles, lighters, buttons, etc. Many assumed they would be lined up and shot. He was given a letter taken from the body of dead German, but couldn't bring himself to translate it for decades. Finally he did and it was a letter the soldier had written to his wife and kids to be read upon his death. A few weeks after D-Day, his ship transported items from Dutch warehouses where the Nazis were storing looted items from Holocaust victims. He would only mention that, and never go into detail. I think it really shook him. .He was 19 and as a kid dreamed of getting off the farm. After the war, he came home and farmed and later worked as a painter and carpenter and never left. He seemed to always have big plans to attend a reunion in Normandy, but never went through with it.
