Reporter recalls traveling with top US soldier
STE MERE EGLISE, France — The soldier had target fixation. He had three beers in hand, a full day of leave and a group of young women waiting. But a crowd of Army uniforms also gathered for that village’s D-Day celebrations stood in the way.
The soldier navigated another step and realized he was pushing his beers right into the uniform of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Palomino, what are you doing?” Milley said, reading the captain’s name tag.
Palomino’s eyes went wide.
“Whoaaa!” he said, backing away from the big guy.
“Whoaaa!” Milley said right back, grinning and taking a step toward him.
LAST PILGRIMAGE
While the captain may have been surprised to find Milley so at ease, it didn’t surprise me. For those who have covered him, there’s the Milley who has been defined by the controversial moments under former President Donald Trump, who branded him a traitor. And then there’s Milley with the troops, mischievous and at home.
“Here, I’m going to give you a coin!” Milley said, approaching the 173rd Combat Airborne Brigade captain, dropping his chairman’s coin into his beer to the laughter of a herd of troops.
Once soldiers get a coin as high-ranking as Milley’s, any time they are at a bar and are challenged to show what coin they carry, well, they win and the other soldier buys the drinks. It’s a good coin to have.
I was a few steps behind, on assignment for The Associated Press, but this was becoming no ordinary reporting trip. It was Milley’s last pilgrimage to Normandy as a soldier before his term ends Saturday. And along the way, he would make my late great-uncle, who is buried at Normandy, part of his journey.
READING LIST
It began that sunny, beersoaked day in Sainte-MereEglise — on the square famous for the American paratrooper whose parachute got caught on the church steeple as thousands of men spilled out of planes and into the darkness June 6, 1944.
“For me, it’s deeply meaningful. It’s spiritual, actually,” Milley told me. His father was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima, his mother served as a nurse. And Milley had served in both divisions whose battles here on D-Day made Normandy sacred ground.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions packed the town’s bars and streets. During the weeklong party, Sainte-MereEglise embraces the men and women wearing patches of the units that liberated them.
Everywhere on the square Milley went, curious onlookers followed. During Trump’s presidency, Milley had become one of the most recognizable chairmen in recent history, and one of the most controversial. He drew fire from critics and he enraged Trump for opposing some of the president’s plans.
But among the troops, he was their Milley.
“It was ... incredible meeting him. He’s been a huge influence,” said Sgt. Muniz, a 4th Infantry Division sniper team leader, after getting coined by Miley.
“There you go — it says General Milley, Commanding Officer 1-506th Infantry, BCT 101st, 39th Chief of Staff of the Army and 20th Chairman,” he said, slapping the shoulder of another 101st Airborne Division soldier, Staff Sgt. Wolfe, who’d draped the Screaming Eagles flag across his back to secure the chairman’s autograph.
“What are you reading?” Milley said as he moved among the group, slipping a coin into the hand of another young sergeant. “You’ve got to read Clausewitz and Sun-Tzu, ‘Art of War’ and ‘On War.’ If you read those you don’t have to read any other books. And the Bible, that’s it,” he said, with a roar of laughter.
‘NEVER FORGET’
A few days before, I’d shown Milley a photograph. My grandfather and his brother were standing in uniform in an English field just weeks before Operation Overlord.
Terry “Salty” Harris would die days after jumping into Normandy, but he was already immortalized by HBO’s “Band of Brothers.” I’d brought the photograph and my grandfather’s wings thinking there might be an opportunity to slip away and leave both on Terry’s grave at the Normandy American Cemetery.
Once I told Milley about them, he latched on.
“I commanded the 506th!” he said, talking about the 101st Airborne Division’s 506th Infantry Regiment. Terry had been in the 506th’s Easy Company; Milley had commanded the unit in Korea.
With Milley, a carefully planned itinerary is always just an opening salvo; it never survives his first conversation. Add in the chairman’s love of history, the sea swell of active-duty soldiers and line of WWII veterans in wheelchairs who embody the last living memory of the fighting, it’s a bit of a miracle Milley is not still there deep among the troops and veterans, coining every one of them.
But now he had Terry in mind, too.
“We’ve got to get to Carentan,” Milley said, nudging his staff to find a way to make it happen.
Carentan is a village about 10 miles from Sainte-MereEglise. It’s also where Terry died.
On the nights that followed June 6, 1944, paratroopers who had not been picked off by German guns gave their all regrouping on the ground. The road to Carentan is known as “Purple Heart Lane.”
We would go to Carentan, but only after more hours of meeting soldiers; then visiting two orders of nuns, where Milley told stories of his own Catholic upbringing; then a street vendor, where Milley took over the grill and cooked sausages for his wife, Hollyanne Milley, and his staff. Then we headed to Carentan.
“This right here, the turf we are on, is the beginning of the liberation of France, and the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe,” Milley said. “We should never forget why they fought here.”