WW2 | D-Day Gravesites, 70 Years On

Map 1. Normandy Invasion. Utah-Omaha Beaches, where U.S.
troops took heavy losses. Also shows Bayeux, Caen, Honfleur.

In the week of D-Day (June 6) 1944, every available pilot was put to use.

So many RAF pilots were killed by anti-aircraft fire in their missions over France that every available pilot was put to use.

They were needed to destroy railways, bridges and roads so as to prevent Nazi troops from the south to prevent them from joining in the battles in Normandy.

My mother's younger brother, Willem van Stockum, was given a Halifax bomber to fly with six in crew.

He was an experienced pilot, with a Ph.D. in mathematics and months spent as an instructor to other pilots, way overqualified. He was 33 years old and ordinarily would have been given light duty. He was an instructor with the RCAF in Canada when he volunteered to fly for the RAF. He was posted to 10th Squadron in Melbourne. He flew six missions in the days before and after D-Day.

Monument to the crew of the plane piloted by Willem
van Stockum from the RCAF, shot down over
Entrammes, near Laval.

In a second plane  on the same mission of ten bombers was another pilot who was older than average, Thomas Henderson. He was also a Commonwealth volunteer, an Australian, Thomas Henderson. His plane and van Stockum's were shot down on June 10, 1944.

On June 7-8 2014, just prior to the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Alice and I had the pleasure of visiting memorial sites in and near Normandy, with Thomas Henderson's son Rex and his wife Deb Henderson.

It was a poignant week. We came from the United States and the Hendersons came from Australia. We were all there because  the citizens of Laval, to the south of Normandy, were about to unveil a monument to RAF airmen at Entrammes and St. Berthevin.

Monument to Thomas Henderson, the Australian pilot
of the second plane that was shot down in the early hours
of June 10, 1944, over Berthevin.

We drove north from Laval through Normandy, using routes E401 and E46. On Saturday, June 7 we went via Caen and Bayeux to Honfleur, stopping at Bayeux to see the tapestry. Honfleur is an historic gem of a port village; we stayed at la Closerie. Sunday, June 8 we went to the Normandy beaches, WW2 museum and cemetery at Omaha Beach.

June 9-10, Laval Area

Led by Jean-Louis Cholet of "Souvenir Francais" (in the Mayenne branch, the department to the south that includes Laval), Jean-Luc Peslier of the Association of the Mayenne Airmen (AMAA) and other hosts from the Town of Laval and other groups, the families of the 14 downed airmen were escorted to key spots.

The airmen were flying two Handley-Page Halifax bombers (MZ 684 and MZ 532) out of the 10th Squadron RAF station in Melbourne, Yorkshire, and were shot down over Entrammes and St. Berthevin, southeast and west of Laval, on June 10, 1944.

They are buried in a special section of the communal cemetery in Laval - photos are posted here.

(I wondered why there were 20 names listed in the cemetery, six more than the number of airmen who crashed and the number of tombstones in the cemetery in the airmen's section - Section E, Sub-section D, row 1. The answer is that five soldiers and one airman from the British Commonwealth are buried in a different part of the cemetery - in section A, sub-section A, row 28. The airman is Flying Officer Kenneth John Trask from the Royal Australian Air Force, who died November 11, 1943; grave #42500. The five soldiers are named Clark, Hunt, Morgan, Sharratt, and Stokes.)

For me it was important closure. When my mother first came to the gravesite of her brother Willem in 1954 she found that all of the other 13 airmen had gravestones. Her brother only had a wooden marker. She was deeply upset. She told me that one possible explanation was that her brother was an atheist and therefore wasn't allowed to have a Christian marker.

That, of course, was highly improbable, but my mother was a convert to Catholicism (her parents were agnostic although born to religious Dutch Reform families) and it surely reflected her state of mind. The family trip around Europe was billed as pilgrimage and we deliberately stopped at places like Lourdes and Santiago de Compostela (the end of the Camino Santiago).

In fact, the problem was that her brother died a Dutch citizen, although he was in the process of applying for U.S. citizenship - he was a young faculty member in mathematics at the University of Maryland when the war broke out. The Dutch, with many other challenges on their hands, had not yet delivered the special Dutch tombstone for Willem, whereas the RAF had managed by 1954 to get the 13 other gravestones in place.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Map 2. Normandy and Pays-de-la-Loire. Shows Laval,
Le Mans, Caen, Honfleur

10 am - Brunch in Laval at the Brasserie Chez Marcel, impasse Barbé; before the roundabout route to Le Mans on 57 RD from Laval.
12 Noon - Lunch at Le Parc Gourmand in Conlie.
1:30 pm - Visit to the WW2 Museum, guided by Mr. Roger Bellon, a self-taught wood-carver who accompanied his relics of the war with depictions of what happened.

Map 3. Shows Laval, Ernée, Entrammes, St. Berthevin.

6:30 pm - Ernée, dinner with the musicians of the Army Air Force, at Grand Cerf.
7:50 pm - Clair de Lune Hall by car or on foot. Seating in the concert hall reserved for family, AMAA and VIPs.
8:45 pm - Concert by the brass band, Music of the Paris Air Force.
10:30 pm - Drinks with the conductor and musicians.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

9 am - Laval, RV esplanade "Ch Nine" for guided tour in English of Old Laval, starting with the old castle. Guide is Helene.

Map 4. Shows Laval, Conlie, Ernée

10:30 am - Laval, Vaufleury Cemetery - Graveside Ceremony at the Airmen's Square with a brief ecumenical service, speeches, RAF Anthem and wreath-laying.
11:30 am - Laval, Official reception at City Hall.
12:30 pm -  Laval, Lunch at Relais Champetre ("Country Stage Stop"), near the Airport.

2:30 pm - Entrammes, Pear Farm (outside the village on the road to Maisoncelles ), ceremony following unveiling of the monument to Halifax bomber MZ 684. Laying of wreaths/flowers in the presence of the Mayor of Entrammes and other local officials, with anthem and flag bearers. This is the plane that was piloted by flying officer van Stockum, about whom a science-fiction novel called Time Bomber was published in 2014.
3:15 p.m. - On to the Lycée Agricole, "Chateau Blancherie", remembrance of MZ 532 with testimony and comments on the mission. For a photo of the MZ 532 crew and a British presentation in 2013 in honor of the 10th Squadron based in Melbourne, Yorks., go here: Halifax Crew MZ 532.

4:45 pm - St. Berthevin, in Pont-Alain. Unveiling of the monument to Halifax bomber MZ 532 with wreath-laying in presence of the Mayor of Berthevin and other officials, and flag-bearers.
5:45 pm - Meeting Centre of the City of St. Berthevin, northwest of Laval. Welcome and toasts in memory of the downed airmen.
7 pm - Welcome by staff of the AMAA, restaurant "Maine".
7:45 p.m. - Farewell dinner, presentation of mission maps for the nights of June 9-10, 1944 (Melbourne/Laval) and gift souvenir of the monument for families.

Memorial Day 2014 - 70th Anniversary of "A Soldier's Creed"

Willem van Stockum, front center, with crew members of the
Halifax bomber (in background) that he piloted. A Dutchman,
he joined the RCAF and RAF before the USA mobilized.

America's Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, was first observed as "Decoration Day" after the Civil War, on May 30, 1868.

That day, 5,000 people decorated the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Similar events were held in more than 180 other cemeteries, often with potluck meals, hymn-singing and prayer.

Last year on this day, I reprinted "A Soldier's Creed" at the request of my sister Lis, and I am doing so again this year. It was written in the form of a letter in June 1944 from the RAF Station in Melbourne, Yorkshire, home of the 10th Squadron, to my mother by her brother, Willem van Stockum.

Willem was killed June 10, 1944, a few days after D-Day.  He was piloting a Halifax bomber well behind the Normandy lines. His letter was published in The Horn Book, November-December 1944. It is also reprinted at the end of Time Bomber, by Robert Wack. Willem is buried in Laval with six members of his crew and another seven airmen who were crew members of another Halifax bomber shot down the same night. My wife Alice and I will be visiting the grave sites in the first week of June.

A SOLDIER’S CREED 

By A BOMBER PILOT 

(later credited to Willem van Stockum, previously kept anonymous for military protection) 

Published in The Horn Book, November-December 1944. 

Willem J. van Stockum
in uniform.

I didn’t join the war to improve the Universe; in fact, I am sick and tired of the eternal sermons on the better world we are going to build when this war is over. I hate the disloyalty to the past twenty years.

Apparently people think that life in those twenty years, which cover most of my conscious existence, was so terrible that no-one can be expected to fight for it. We must attempt to dazzle people with some brilliant schemes leading, probably, to some horrible Utopia, before we can ask them to fight.

I detest that point of view. I hate the idea of people throwing their lives away for slum-clearance projects or forty-hour weeks or security and exchange commissions. It is a grotesque and horrible thought. There are so many better ways of achieving this than diving into enemy guns.

Lives are precious things and are of a different order and entail a different scale of values than social systems, political theories, or art. “Why are we not given a cause?” some people ask. I do not understand this question. It seems so plain to me. There are millions and millions of people who are shot, persecuted and tortured daily in Europe. The assault on so many of our fellow human beings makes some of us tingle with anger and gives us an urge to do something about it.

That, and that alone, makes some of us feel strongly about the war.

All the rest is vapid rationalization. All this talk about philosophy, the degeneration of art and literature, the poisoning of Nazi youth, which the Nazi system entails, and which we all rightly condemn, is still not the reason why we fight and why we are willing to risk our lives. Here, let us say, is a soldier. He asks himself, “Why should I die?” You would tell him: “To preserve our civilization.” When the soldier replies: “To Hell with your civilization; I never thought it so hot,” you take him up wrongly when you sit down and say to yourself: “Well, after all, maybe it wasn’t so hot,” and then brightly tap him on the shoulder and say: “Well, I’ve thought of a better idea. I know this civilization wasn’t so hot, but you go and die anyway and we’ll fix up a really good one after the war.”

I say you take him up wrong because his remark: “To Hell with your civilization” doesn’t really mean that he is not seriously concerned about our civilization. He is simply revolted by the idea of dying for ANY civilization. Civilization simply isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to die for. It is something to enjoy and something to help build up because it’s fun, and that is that, and that is all.

When a man jumps into the fire to save his wife he doesn’t justify himself by saying that his wife was so civilized that it was worth the risk! There is only one reason why a man will throw himself into mortal combat and that is because there is nothing else to do and doing nothing is more intolerable than the fear of death. I could stand idly by and see every painting by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo thrown into a bonfire and feel no more than a deep regret, but throw one small, insignificant Polish urchin on the same bonfire and, by God, I’d pull him out or else. I fight quite simply for that and I cannot see what other reasons there are. At least, I can see there are reasons, but they are not the reasons that motivate me.

During the first two years of the war when I was an instructor at an American University [the University of Maryland] in close contact with American youth and in close contact with the vital isolationist question in the States, I often felt that there was much insincerity, conscious or unconscious, on our, the Interventionist, side of the argument. We had strong views on the danger of isolationism for the United States. We thought, rightly, that for the sake of self-interest and self-preservation the United States should take every step to ensure the defeat of the Nazi criminals.

But however sound our arguments, our own motives and intensity of feeling did not spring from those arguments but from an intense passion for common righteousness and decency.

Suppose it could have been proved to us at that time that the participation of the United States in the stamping out of organized murder, rape and torture in Europe could only take place at great cost to the United States, while not doing so would in no way impair her security. Would we not still have prayed that our country might do something? And would we not have been proud to see her do something?

There is an appalling timidity and false shame among intellectuals. The common man in the last war went to fight quite simply as a crusader. I am not talking about politics now, I am not either asserting or denying that England declared war from purely generous and noble considerations, but I am asserting that the common man went and fought with the rape of Belgium foremost in his mind and saw himself as an avenger of wrong.

After the war the common man went quietly back to his home. The intellectuals, however, upon coming back, ashamed of their one lapse of finding themselves in agreement with every Tom, Dick and Harry, must turn around and deride the things they were ready to give their lives for. As they were the only vocal group, the opinion became firmly established that the last war was a grave mistake and that anyone who got killed in it was a sucker.

And now, in this war, these intellectuals are hoist with their own petard. They lack the nerve and honesty to represent the American doughboy to himself for what he is. They do not give him the one picture in his mind which would stimulate his imagination and which would make him see beyond the fatigues, the mud, the boredom and the fear.

The picture is there for anyone to paint who has a gift for words. It is a simple picture and a true picture and no one who has ever sat as a small child and listened with awe to a fairy story can fail to understand. The intellectuals, however, have made fun of the picture and so they won't use it.

But some day an American doughboy in an American tank will come lurching into some small Polish, Czech or French village and it may fall to his lot to shoot the torturers and open the gates of the village jail. And then he will understand.

There is a lot of talk among our intellectuals about our youth. Our youth is supposed to want a change, a new order, a revolution or what not. But it is my conviction that that is emphatically NOT what our youth wants. Have you ever been in a picture house on a Saturday afternoon, when it is filled with children and some old Western movie is ending in a race of time between the hero and the villain? Have you seen the rapt attention, the glowing faces, the clenched fists? What our young men really want is to be able to give that same concentrated attention and emotional participation, this time to reality, and this time as heroes and not as spectators, that they were able to give to unsubstantial shadows, before long words and cliches had killed their imaginations. Killed them so dead that they can no longer see even reality itself imaginatively.

It is up to the intellectuals to rekindle the thing they have tried to destroy. It is as simple as St. George and the Dragon. Why not have the courage to point out that St. George fought the dragon because he wanted to liberate a captive and not because he wanted to lead a better life afterwards? Some day, sometime, my picture of an American doughboy in a Polish village will become true. Wouldn’t it be better for him then to have the cross of St. George on his banner than a long rigmarole about a better world?

As long as our intellectuals and leaders do not have the courage to risk being thought sentimental and out-of-date and are not willing to stress that nations as well as individuals are entitled to their acts of heroism and chivalry, they will never be able to give our youth what it needs. It is true that every fairy story ends with the words: “and they lived happily ever after.” How irritating a child would be, though, if it interrupted its mother at every sentence to ask: “But, Mummy, will they live happily ever afterwards?” It simply isn’t the point of the fairy story and it isn’t the point of this war.
Presumably we won’t live happily ever after this war. But just as a fairy story helps to increase a child’s awareness and wonder at the world, so this war may make us more aware of one another. Perhaps we shall learn, and perhaps some things will be better organized. I hope so. I believe so.

But only if we engage in this war with our hearts as well as our minds. For goodness sake, let us stop this empty political theorizing according to which a man would have to have a University degree in social science before he could see what he was fighting for.

It is all so simple, really, that a child can understand it.