Childhood Memories on this Memorial Day
Mon, May 30, 2022 
The picture shown here is of me aged five with my Uncle David. He was my father’s younger brother, and I was named after him.
It was 1941 during the early days of WWII, America had yet to enter the war at the end of 1941.
In the background of the picture, you can see tents.
This was a British Army camp, and I have clear memories of watching a drill sergeant marching the new recruits up and down the road outside my house.
We were living in a rural area in Southern England, having moved there in 1940 to escape the bombing in London.
The war was something I didn’t understand at the time, but it was all I knew.
My father left in September 1939 and was fighting somewhere in Sahara Desert of North Africa. I was only 3 1/2 when he left and was too young at the time to remember him.
Another clear memory I have is of early 1944 when the American Army arrived in preparation for the Normandy Invasion. They were everywhere, camped on every spare piece of land, including the same camp behind my house.
I was now eight years old and although they seemed like grown-ups to me, I realize today that most of these young army recruits were barely ten or twelve years older than I was at the time.
I remember they were always happy, laughing and continually goofing around, wrestling, and chasing each other, as teenagers will do.
They were so good to us British kids, giving us candy and chewing gum every time they saw us. This was a huge deal as sugar was rationed and we had to get by on an allowance of only 2 oz. of candy a month.
We became used to the American army being there, jeeps, trucks and even Sherman Tanks driving by all the time. Then one day, the first week of June 1944 the soldiers were gone. I went to school in the morning, and they were there, I came home from school that afternoon and they were all gone.
A surreal experience like that, as a child, stayed with me forever. I didn’t understand at the time, any more than I understood anything else that went on during that period of my life.
Later when I became an adult, it had a profound effect on me. Because even to this day I can still see the faces of those young American boys, (Because that is what many of them were.) just out of school, constantly at play, laughing and goofing around.
In early June 1944 things got serious, and only now I realize that many of those same kids died in their thousands on the Beaches of Normandy and beyond.
I will never forget the sacrifice they made. A sacrifice not of their choosing. But one they made none the less so I would never have to do the same.
Reader Comments (1)
Excellent post Dave!