Kevin BaskinsDes Moines Register
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The long-awaited Allied invasion of Europe on the beaches of Normandy, France, began hours before the landing craft carrying troops reached the beaches in the cold, gray, windy morning of June 6, 1944.
Paratroopers began dropping behind the German lines around midnight with a mission of blocking reinforcements for the defenders of the beaches where the Allied invaders, including about 73,000 Americans, would begin landing in a few hours.
One of them was John J. Marshall of Des Moines. Two-and-a-half weeks later, his mother, Anna, would get a Western Union telegram at her home on Capitol Avenue, about midway between the Iowa Capitol and the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
“The Secretary of War desires to express his deep regret that your son, Corporal John J. Marshall, has been (missing in action) since 6 June in France," the telegram read. "If further details or other information are received, you will be promptly notified.”
The largest amphibious landing in military history, the invasion on the 50-mile-long, heavily German-fortified beach at Normandy, is now commonly referred to as D-Day. This June 6 marks the 80th anniversary of the landing, a turning point in World War II when Americans, Britons, Canadians, Free French and other Allied forces brought the war to German-occupied Europe, concluding with the Nazis' surrender 11 hard-fought months later.
More: On D-Day, they changed the world. 80 years later, an incredible journey takes them back.
It's unclear how many Iowans witnessed D-Day, but 180 are buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy, said Arizona State University history professor Jacob Flaws, an Iowa native.
Of the Iowans who came home, just one, Joe Kenneth Jones of Marion, now 100, is known to survive. The long-retired Army captain returned to France this week to mark the anniversary, KCRG-TV reported.
Not just D-Day veterans, but all members of the so-called Greatest Generation who served in the war are dwindling in numbers. Of 2.4 million veterans of that war, the World War II Museum in New Orleans, which conducts a survey each September, found that in 2023, only 119,550 ― or less than 1% ― were still around, with an average of 131 dying each day.
Only about 1,200 remain in Iowa.
“Within five or 10 years, we're going to be losing all of our living witnesses to that event, which is kind of sad because that's where the history makes the connection is with those living witnesses,” Flaws said.
Pella man was one of 'the boys of Pointe du Hoc'
The invasion was divided into five sections of the beach, with American troops landing on those with code names Utah and Omaha, British on Gold and Sword and Canadians on Juno.
“They say all history is local, and Iowa was there at D-Day in every capacity, from troops landing at the beaches to paratroopers jumping behind the lines, glider pilots and bomber pilots,” said Mike Vogt, curator of the Iowa Gold Star Museum at Camp Dodge in Johnston, which marked the anniversary on Memorial Day with a costumed re-creation of Iowa troops in the invasion.
More: How many Iowans died in D-Day? Here's what you should know about the historic WWII battle
“I think of 180 Iowan graves there in Normandy, and you know, each one of those has a story, has a family, has potentially generations that are around today who are connected,” Flaws said.
But perhaps the strongest links formed by those who stormed the beaches were those with their fellow soldiers, he said.
“Later on, it was this camaraderie, this brotherhood, that if you did that on that day, you were forever linked with the other soldiers who did it as well,” he said.
For many veterans who made it through the D-Day invasion, going back to Normandy, often with family members, became an important pilgrimage at each major anniversary, he said.
It was for Elmer “Dutch” Vermeer of Pella. His son, Richard of Bettendorf, returned to Normandy in the 1960s with his father, who had one of the most compelling D-Day stories.
Among the first to reach shore, Dutch Vermeer, as an elite Army Ranger, scaled the cliffs to reach German fortifications and destroyed German gunnery casem*nts to earn the Silver Star. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan saluted him as one of “the boys of Pointe du Hoc.”
Richard Vermeer said his Dad and others fired grappling hooks out of a mortar tube with rope attached. The hooks would catch on barbed wire, allowing the soldiers to scale the vertical cliffs.
The younger Vermeer saw just how daunting the target was when he visited.
“It was well fortified. The bunkers were concrete 10-feet thick. It was a fortress,” he said.
From the 75th anniversary: 75th anniversary of D-Day: How 2 Iowans helped Allied effort to liberate Europe during WWII
Unlike some veterans who chose not to speak of their experiences, he said, his father, who died in 1989, shared his stories.
“You know, there's stuff that you hear about people that went to war that they didn't talk about it at all, but he talked about it, and we went to Ranger picnics and I suppose that was his form of therapy, either reworking it or reimagining it through his mind," he said. "There was no such thing as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) when I was growing up.
“I mean these men that he did that with were his lifelong friends. Those were the people that he would get really relaxed around.”
When Dutch Vermeer came home, he farmed but also served in the Iowa Legislature and as chief of staff for Gov. Robert Ray.
And even though he was offered several jobs when he returned, he always had one pertinent question for any would-be employer: Would he be able to be home every night? his son recalled.
“If they said no, he wasn't really interested in doing that then.He really enjoyed being home,” he said.
Rev. Milton Cole-Duvall of West Des Moines was born after World War II, but he has a strong appreciation and reverence for those who fought on D-Day, having visited the historic battleground, and plans to take a 100-year-old friend from the East Coast who was part of the invasion back to Normandy later this summer.
“I hear people all the time say they are ‘too busy,’ but then I think of the ... soldiers who landed on the beaches and think, what if they had said they were too busy?” Cole-Duvall said.
Cole-Duvall said historical accounts of the battle talk about the amount of blood shed as the troops struggled to establish a beachhead against the heavily fortified German armaments.
A little jar of sand he collected from Omaha Beach could very well have been saturated with blood on the day of the invasion, he said.
“But this was what was expected of that generation, to come forward, to stand tall, and have a world that would be unencumbered by Nazism,” Cole-Duvall said.
One who came home to Iowa: Paratrooper was captured but survived
As the direct memory of D-Day fades, Flaws said there are some important lessons that must not be lost to history.
One of the things that makes the D-Day attack so noteworthy is the nature of it ― the idea that infantry divisions and material can be landed on a beach to work its way back through the continent of Europe is unprecedented and probably a little anachronistic in terms of the state of modern warfare, he said.
“The daring nature of it was so massive,” he said.
From 2014: Recalling the 50th anniversary of D-Day invasion
Flaws also pointed to the iffy weather that threatened to thwart the massive invasion, originally set for June 5. It was at that point, Flaws said, that a meteorologist informed Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in the invasion, that there might be a brief window when a landing could be made on June 6.
It was a big risk, given the rudimentary level of weather forecasting in those days, “But I always thought Eisenhower was gonna go regardless because the thought of pushing it back another day would have meant you got your soldiers amped up one more time and then canceled it again," he said. "And doing that two, three, four times, it's just not feasible. There's this moment where it's all or nothing."
Flaws said the importance of D-Day can be understood by simply envisioning a world had it not taken place.
“Without D-Day we have a world that looks entirely different," he said. "If the U.S. never opens that second front, or if it is not successful, there's a chance that Stalin and Hitler sue for peace and in that case, Nazi Germany keeps all this land in France, keeps all this land in Western Europe, and there's a chance that Stalin overruns all of Europe as well, and then defeats the Nazis on their own. And then it’s now a Communist France after the war.
More: World War II's Ghost Army, including an Iowan, to receive the Congressional Gold Medal today
"So, I think D-Day 80 years ago is a reminder of what it takes to defend democracy and sometimes that takes making the tough call, having the guts to make the hard decision, like Eisenhower did,” he said.
Flaws said the lessons to be remembered from D-Day at 80 years are the sacrifice and the bravery that the men and women on the front lines demonstrated, something that has to be remembered every day.
“Having the people who are willing to literally go on shore, fight through the tides, walk through the sands, climb up hills, fight pill box after pill box," he said, "to put yourself in those shoes, that's almost indescribable, the amount of fortitude you need to have to do that.
"And so really, 80 years later, D-Day is that shining example of what humanity can accomplish when everyone works together, especially when it's in defense of democracy.”
More: Six Des Moines Register, WHO and other Iowa journalists who reported on World War II
And Marshall, the Des Moines paratrooper who went missing in action in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944? He lived, made it home and “lived to a ripe old age,” according to Vogt, the curator of the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum, who had the opportunity to talk to Marshall years later.
“After he landed with his parachute, he looked up to see a German rifle pointed at him. He said he knew right then his war was over. He spent the rest of the war as a POW until being released by the Russians" in 1945, Vogt said.
The owner and operator of Marshall Electric Co. in Des Moines until his retirement in 1981, Marshall passed away in 2009 at the age of 90.
