'This is what we fought for': World War II veterans see results of D-Day's success at Cantigny
The most poignant moment of this D-Day ceremony is just an observation, a few words exchanged between two World War II veterans.
The two men are watching children take turns placing red and white flowers at the base of a sculpture called "The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves," a smaller replica of the one at the Normandy American Cemetery in France.
One of the boys is dressed in a stiff Army uniform for the ceremony Thursday behind the First Division Museum at Cantigny Park in Wheaton. Another wears a "Star Wars" shirt. A toddler waddles to the statue with the help of his mom.
They're all too young to know the horrors of the D-Day invasion 75 years ago. But their parents and Cantigny Park historians have the children show their gratitude to the men who, against all odds, stormed the beaches of Normandy and turned the tide of World War II.
And that's when Steve Pizzello turns to D-Day survivor John Ullinskey, seated to his left in the front row, and puts the whole three-minute scene into perspective.
"This is what we fought for," says Pizzello, who served in the Army's 44th Infantry Division during the war.
And then he finds some hope in the youngsters with the flowers. "I think they understand it, too," he says.
Only a decade ago, 90 or so D-Day veterans gathered at Cantigny for the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion on the northern coast of France.
For the 75th-anniversary observance, the museum worked with Honor Flight Chicago to bring nine World War II veterans to the ceremony in remembrance of the men who confronted "extensive obstacles" and losses against the Nazi war machine on the five landing beaches of Normandy, said Lou Marsico, a vice president of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the nonprofit group that operates Cantigny.
"On this 75th anniversary of D-Day, please remember that we owe these veterans," Marsico told the audience. "Europeans owe these veterans. The world owes these veterans. What we owe them is to carry on their spirit of commitment, an obligation as Americans to put duty first, as did these veterans to get off that beach that day."
Ullinskey witnessed the largest seaborne invasion in history as a 20-year-old diesel mechanic aboard the USS Arikara seagoing tug.
"The English Channel was not that smooth," said Ullinskey, now 95 and living in Westchester. "When you saw and looked out onto the ocean, as far as you could see, there were ships of any size, battleships, cruisers, LCIs, LSTs. I mean any conceivable thing that could carry anything into the beach, that was there." Landing craft infantry and tank landing ships were among what he was referring to.
At the ceremony, Ullinskey caught up with Hank Roberson. They met on an Honor Flight and share the same birthday, but since Roberson, at 96, has one year on Ullinskey, he calls him the "rookie."
"That's my friend," said Roberson, who lives on Chicago's West Side.
He landed at Normandy two weeks after D-Day, assigned with other black men to the Quartermaster Corps, helping supply gasoline to Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army. After the war, he returned to the Jim Crow South and later became a minister.
"The only people who welcomed me when I came home was my family," the Mississippi native said.
He received a far different welcome during Thursday's ceremony, grateful to accept the hands of strangers who thanked him for this service.
"I just feel blessed, and I just thank God for the privilege that I have to be here," Roberson said.
And if he could pass a few words to the next generation, represented by the children with the flowers, he would say this:
"Remember the sacrifice that was given for their lives and to appreciate it, learn how to appreciate it, and to love and respect one another," he said. "That's the main thing."