D-Day – Seventy-Five Years Ago
Both my parents passed away in the last few years. They were in their nineties, and lived a wonderful life together. They were active, travelling and enjoying life until just the last few years. They were very lucky, and very in love, and our family was very lucky to have them for so long.
Mom was born in London, Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor. As the baby of her family she was nicknamed “Babs,” a name she used her entire life. She was British, and educated in England and later in Belgium. She married Donald Lee Dahlman of Cincinnati, an American soldier who was part of the vast US Army preparing to invade Europe. They were joined on March 27th, 1944, in a civil ceremony in England.
He was a finance officer, making sure the troops were paid. Mom supposedly worked in the Old Age Pensions Office in London, but was actually a part of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. They were an elite unit who carried on the fight against the Germans in Occupied Europe, slipping into France on small aircraft to plot espionage attacks and communicate with the Resistance.
They were supposed to be married in June, but moved their wedding date up because they received orders to report to their units. It was clear that the invasion of Europe, D-Day, was coming. Babs’s mother got all of her friends to pitch in part of their sugar rations for the cake, and her brother Leslie contributed champagne he had managed to get off the beach at Dunkirk during the evacuation.
Don’s cousin and friend from Cincinnati, Buddy Levine, served as best man, and the two were married. It was a civil ceremony because Babs was Roman Catholic and Don was Jewish. The Church wouldn’t accept their union unless Don promised to raise any children as Catholic, and he wouldn’t. In the end, the British end of the family had less trouble with the religious differences than those back in Cincinnati.
As part of her secret life, Babs spent time in the “War Rooms” in London. Those were the secret underground headquarters of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his generals. SOE was a small group, developed and used by those top leaders to carry out their particular missions. She became acquainted with some of the commanding Generals; the telegram congratulating them on the wedding from Omar Bradley still remains in their scrapbook. She adored Bradley, but didn’t have much good to say about Eisenhower, who disparaged her “uniform.” The SOE was improvisational in much of what they did, both in Europe, and in their uniform choices. Babs didn’t appreciate criticism from a “Yank General.”
Like most British citizen, Babs adored Field Marshal Montgomery, “Monty.” He was their “winner;” the man who drove the Nazis out of North Africa and led the successful invasion of Sicily. She had a sketch of Monty; a small color drawing done by a friend during a planning meeting. It was on the wall of their home for sixty-six years, and it’s hanging in my family room today.
After the wedding there was little time for “honeymooning,” just a couple days of hiking in the countryside. Then Don reported to Southampton, the debarkation point for much of the Army heading to Normandy. He would say he hit the beach “…with the third wave of WACs (the Women’s Army Corp).” He spent the next several months in France, making sure the GI’s got their pay checks, and trying to deal with the complications of French, Nazi, and Occupation currency.
Babs left their wedding to report to headquarters, and was soon flying out of RAF Base at Tempsford, on a small single engine plane called a “Lysander.” The plane could land on a short farm field, only 600 yards, and was designed to fly low and close to avoid enemy radar. Agents were dropped off in the night, often met by French Resistance operatives who put flashlights out to outline the “landing strip.”
She was dropped into Normandy, where she helped prepare Resistance plans for D-Day. Phone lines were cut, rail lines disrupted; the Resistance did everything they could to confuse and delay German response to the invasion. She was in town just days before the Allied paratroopers arrived in the night. A Resistance cell she was working with was captured and killed. She escaped.
The D-Day invasion, the greatest amphibious invasion in history, took place during a lull in the storms on June 6, 1944. 156,000 men hit the beach or parachuted behind the lines. Ten thousand died, but the Allies gained a foothold in Europe, that ultimately led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
It would be ten months before Babs and Don would see each other again. Her missions would take her from France to Yugoslavia, and his work would follow the invasion across France into Paris. They only were reunited at the end of the war, when Don was transferred back to London. They spent several months together there, while he arranged for their passage back to America, and a life in Cincinnati. But that’s another story.
Thanks for writing and putting this out there. I am always thinking about Mom and Dad and continuously amazed at what they did during WW2.
I always love the stories of your mom & dad from the war. I often share them with family & friends. They were both extraordinary people, and your mom’s stories from the war are particularly amazing. “You tell her story”.