Days of Days — D-Day,

Among the days of May are the days of Military Appreciation Month, which comes with a presidential proclamation, wrapping in Armed Forces Day and some nice discounts at restaurants and hardware stores for Americans who served.

May also ushers in Memorial Day which is different from Veterans Day because it is the day when we remember our fallen brothers and sisters, or our absent friends from time in service.

Another day to honor the men in our lives is Father’s Day, though that falls in June.

All the other days mentioned fall just a bit before June 6, the commemoration of D-Day, 1944, the “Day of Days,” when the United States and its Allies launched the largest seaborne invasion in history, joined by thousands of airborne troops, all the vast effort to end defeat Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and end Nazi tyranny.

I spent my Army time in the Cold War, dreaming of earning my jump wings, then jumping with other Airborne troopers in Europe, always aware of our heritage and the legacy of D-Day. Anyone with time in service and belief in our country reveres our D-Day predecessors celebrated in books and film like “Band of Brothers” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

During the past 20 some years as a Valley Press journalist, I met and made friends with D-Day veterans who survived to long life. Most, but not all are gone now. They all earned our gratitude, along with their comrades who fought in the Pacific to defeat Japan’s empire that launched the attack on the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor.

On June 5, 1944, Pvt. Henry Ochsner, of California City, was barely old enough to drink a legal beer. His youth a strategic necessity, he joined his 101st Airborne buddies to climb aboard the aerial armada of C-47 transports that would carry 13,000 paratroopers and glider troops to Normandy.

As he was climbing aboard with 100 pounds of extra gear, so was Pvt. John Humphrey of Rosamond, an 82nd Airborne trooper who would spend a week missing behind enemy lines after the D-Day drop. He would be awarded the Bronze Star for valor.

On the second day of the Normandy invasion, Lt. Kurt Ullman, who grew up on a farm in Lancaster, was flying his C-47 “Skytrain” to resupply 82nd Airborne paratroopers. In his aircraft, shot up with engine on fire, Ullman ditched in the waves and was scooped out of the frigid English Channel waters by Sea-Air-Rescue.

My father, Army Cpl. Carl R. Anderson didn’t make it to Normandy, but he arrived in England the day after D-Day, just in time to start processing Signal Corps invasion film and classified photos of the V-1 and V-2 Nazi rockets and missiles that were raining on London, killing thousands of civilians.

Lew Shoemaker, of Lancaster, waded ashore with the 1st Infantr y Division, the famed “Big Red One.” With artillery screaming overhead and blowing Americans to bits, he said, “You may not believe it but you can actually breathe dirt for a while” if your face is pressed that hard to land.

Lew survived to be a teacher and football coach at Quartz Hill High School and never bothers to see “Saving Private Ryan,” saying, “I was there. Why see a movie about it?”

All these good men are gone now. Memorial Day is how we remember them, but I also know they enjoyed Father’s Day with family, because I know their sons and daughters from my generation who enjoyed the freedoms they fought to preserve.

So that puts a few of our Military Appreciation Month days together: Father’s Day, Memorial Day and the memor y of what America achieved in saving the world from the evils of Nazism and fascism.

A few D-Day and Normandy veterans remain, survivors still. Art Ray of Lancaster, is 96. On D-Day, he sailed on the U.S.S. Quincy in the fleet that delivered naval gunfire to cover troops wading ashore at Omaha and Utah beaches and airborne forces scattered across Normandy.

Soon after D-Day, Adolph Martinez of Quartz Hill arrived with the 17th Airborne. In a fight to the death, he was taken POW in the Battle of the Bulge and escaped — twice. He became an educator and school principal and raised a great family, many who reside in the Antelope Valley.

In March of this year, I met 97-year-old Daniel McBride, another 101st Airborne D-Day vet. He is yet another dad and grandfather honored this Father’s Day. I met him in Texas during Operation Lone Star, with a group of paratrooper vets who gathered to train for our own commemorative jump at Normandy, in expectation that the COVID-19 clouds will have cleared by next year. McBride, whose jumping days are over, is a kind of elder statement.

He was awarded three Purple Heart decorations for combat wounds and a Bronze Star for valor. He’s nearly 100, but his memories of the long ago World War II are clear. McBride lifted off for D-Day with his buddies in the same model year of C-47 transport we younger vets would use to jump for our “refresher” wings.

In the hours before D-Day, McBride and his “Screaming Eagle” buddies received a special visitor, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, overall commander of the Allied invasion, Operation Overlord, who would go on to be 35th president of the United States.

“He asked me if I was afraid, and I said ‘No,’ because I wasn’t,” McBride recalled at a dinner for the Liberty Jump Team hosted by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3066 in Corsicana, Texas.

Around midnight on June 5-6, 1944, McBride and the

Airborne troops flew into fog, scattering the planes across the sky above the French coast, with Nazi anti-aircraft artillery tearing into aircraft, crashing some in fiery blazes, but most making it through.

“I was third in the door and the pilot was already swerving,” McBride recalled. “Maybe 300 feet altitude . ... I looked up, and I saw France coming at me. I looked down and I saw canopy.”

He was hanging upside down, one of his boots tangled in harness straps called risers.

“I don’t know if I was knocked out 10 seconds, or 10 minutes,” he said.

He regained consciousness and sometime before sunrise, he connected with a buddy and a lieutenant.

“We spotted a 1936 Ford painted with camouflage,” he recalled. “We thought it might be the French Resistance we heard so much about.”

Next, they spotted the driver’s German helmet and his buddy made a killing shot.

“The rear door of the car came open with this squarehead armed with a handgun getting out and I opened up (with a submachine gun). It fired four rounds and stopped, but they must have all hit him.”

McBride took the German’s pistol, a 9mm Luger. They commandeered the vehicle and later found the town of Ste. Mere Eglise — the first town liberated in Normandy.

“That’s all we did on D-Day,” he concluded in a masterpiece of understatement.

To honor these men, the Liberty Jump Team, a nonprofit association comprised mostly of paratrooper veterans, makes its own commemorative jump most years on D-Day. Last year’s jump was canceled because of the pandemic, but the team is already preparing for next year.

The Liberty Jump Team also has provided all-expenses paid trips to Normandy for dozens of surviving D-Day veterans like McBride and Jim “Pee Wee” Martin, who just turned 100.

In March, a half dozen of us “retreads” trained as if we were back in harness at jump school on active duty. At a small airfield in Texas, we boarded a World War II vintage aircraft dubbed “Southern Cross,” a C-47 troop transport like one of the 2,000 planes that dropped thousands of American paratroopers over Normandy on the “Day of Days.” The lovingly restored plane took off with a roar, and we Airborne veterans were airborne again.

“On your feet!” our Jump Master, an Green Beret named Kris shouted, then shouted,“hook static lines!”

Our static lines hooked up to the long steel cable that spans the cabin’s interior like a clothesline.

“Check equipment!” he shouts.

“OK!” six jumpers shout back in chorus.

We each tap the leg of the jumper in front of us. “One minute!”

The C-47’s vibration, twin-engine roar and cold rush of wind can only be experienced first-hand, hands clenched to the door, knees in the breeze. Near sunset, on a cool evening in a week punctuated by thunderstorm and tornado warnings, we were on final jump run. Jump Master Kris shouted final jump commands above the din. “Stand in the door!” and “Go!”

The first jumper stepped out into the sky and the rest of us followed in one-second intervals. The prop blast and breeze is blowing my cheeks sideways, my boots are set, hands on the door.

Next, I’m in rushing air and I look up to check a green nylon canopy that blossoms like a giant mandala. The lines are slightly twisted, so I bicycle with my legs the way I was trained in 1973 and the thing straightens out nicely.

At a little above 1,000 feet, sudden silence and a cool breeze hits me in the face. A panoramic view of Earth rotates beneath my jump boots. Exhilaration flows through the pores ... even if you are 68 years old, like me.

I’m back, under canopy, in the heady performance of confident youth. With eyes on the horizon, I guesstimate last seconds, put my feet and knees together and drop to Earth in a heap, hitting terra firma like a lineman sacking the quarterback.

My jump buddy, Klint Jackson, his gear bundled, trudges my direction and calls out, “You good?”

“All OK,” I answer. At sunset, we plod toward the hangar at dusk, feeling our age a bit. The next day, a blue sky Saturday, we line up like many of us did in service a long time ago. Our Liberty Jump Team wings are pinned to our chest by Sgt. Daniel McBride, Veteran of D-Day, Holland, the Defense of Bastogne,and capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

McBride saluted, shook hands and said, “Congratulations. Proud to know you.”

With our silver wings, both old and new, we were qualified to return to Normandy and jump in honor of the fast-vanishing veterans of D-Day, under peaceful skies, with our friends.

Next year, 2022, the 77th anniversar y of D-Day, I plan to be in Normandy, accompanied by my Marine combat veteran son, Garrett, who plans to train for the jump. Nothing in life is certain, but that would close out Father’s Day, Memorial Day and D-Day plus 77, nicely.

Retired Valley Press Editor Dennis Anderson trained as a paratrooper in Cold War Europe during the 1970s and made more than 100 free falls with the 8th Infantry Division’s Coleman Barracks Parachute Team. He deployed to Iraq as an embedded reporter and currently works on veterans issues as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at High Desert Medical Group.