WWII veteran on traveling back to Normandy for the first time since D-Day
WWII Navy vet Jack Gutman travels back to Normandy with the help of his son Craig Ciampa.
The words used to describe the heroes of D-Day are not the current lexicon we tend to use for success. Humble, selfless, brave. Those are not words we attach in 2019 to superstars. They are words attached to warriors who are willing to die for a day they will never see, for the price of freedom, for those they do not even know.
Jack Gutman, who suffered from severe PTSD and the alcoholism it saddled him with, rejoiced this week because France was so beautiful and the people were so kind.
He never made it past the beach in 1944. He stayed down there while others went up and over the cliffs.
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He was just 18, but he bore the heavy burden as a medic on the sands, of saving those he could and lying to those he could not.
He held their IV bag or their heads while they passed on. He says he knew in the frantic chaos of the beach that the boys who cried out for their mothers, had only him. That he would have to do. His face might be the last thing they saw on this earth. So he did the best he could to reassure them that they would be OK. That he was with them. That help was coming. Anything that would ease their pain, until they breathed no more.
He was 18.
He never spoke to his children about the war. When the veterans donned their bold lettered hats and dusted off their medals and pinned them proudly to return to Normandy, Jack stayed home.
But at home, he saw Normandy all the time. In fitful sleep, it came to him. The arms, the legs, the severed heads and the boys whose bellies were soaked with blood and shiny organs that were in places they should not be. He was in Normandy nearly every day. So to make it go away he drank, for nearly 66 years.
Until one Thanksgiving, during what should have been a joyful family occasion, somewhere between turkey and dessert, Jack went face first into his plate. He says it was so embarrassing. He felt terrible for his family and himself. Still, it had to happen. It was a low that changed Jack’s life.
After that that he finally listened to his daughter the therapist. She helped Jack get the help he needed. He is so honest about what happened because he wants some of those 20 vets who take their lives every day to know that there is another way.
Sobriety and therapy changed Jack into a man who at 93 decided it was time. Perhaps now that Normandy was no longer slamming wave after wave on him at home, he could go to Normandy.
So this week Jack and his son Craig, took a journey together to the place that had seared itself on Jack’s heart. He got on the plane and took the long trip to Paris and then the bus to Normandy and then Jack saw that beach again for the first time in 66 years.
He walked the rows of white crosses and that was where he wept. Their pristine white shapes stand snapped at attention, tall and fresh like the boys below once did.
Jack saluted them. Promised he would never, ever forget them.
He thought about all the life he got to live. Marriage. Children. A daughter who saved him and a son who helped him heal by being at his side as he walked the rows.
He said, some of these boys I tried to save.
It always haunted me, said Jack, could I have done more?
But mostly Normandy transformed into a place of gratitude for Jack this week. He met the people of the villages they fought to liberate. Everyone was so nice. France was so pretty.
He’d only seen the beach.
He said of his return, it changed my life! Again. This time by softening his worries, laying them down.
Jack and others told me this week that at times they felt like celebrities. And celebrate them we should. Not because they are glamorous or athletic, but maybe because they are not. They are what we should all want to be, though.
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Selfless, humble and my goodness, so astonishingly dashing and brave. These men are true heroes. They battled the Germans, and so many like Jack, silently battled their demons, wrestling with them all these years.
But Jack won. And we salute you, Jack. We salute you.