Point of No Return

It is the anniversary of the The Day that the Allies went across the Channel and opened the second front against Hitler. Mr. Churchill was nervous about the prospects for success. If this gamble failed, it would set back the war effort for years. It was a point of no return in the crusade against fascism.

But the roll of the dice against the bad weather worked. To paraphrase his words about the Battle of Britain, this was far beyond the end of the beginning.

It was, finally, the beginning of the end.

Uncle Dick was there, though he is gone now. He was scheduled to take his B-17 bomber to strike a bridge behind the landing areas, take it out so that the strategic reserve of the reinforced SS Panzer Lehr and the 12th SS Panzer could not be rushed to the beaches, once the Germans figured out exactly where the Allies would land.

Dick lost an engine on take-off, the airplane full of gas and bombs and the young men who depended on him. Standard procedure, should the aircraft get airborne and not cartwheel into a gigantic fireball at the end of the runway, would be to declare an emergency and proceed direct to a designated holding area, dump the bombs and burn down the fuel to landing weight.

Instead, Dick went on to the target, over the gray ships that filled the Channel, shoulder to shoulder, and over the beaches where the landing ships were disgorging their human cargo and he dumped his bombs where they were supposed to go.

That was sixty-one years ago. Dick was always committed to the mission. He was demobilized as quickly as possible when the war was over, and like everyone else, elected to try to pick up the threads of his life once more. The way he treated his personal automobiles was legendary in the family.

He operated his cars with the same élan he flew his Flying Fortresses over Europe .

My cousin told me recently that she recalled one of the summer trips from eastern Massachusetts to the Gateway to the West in Buffalo to visit family. This was in the mid-fifties, and travel was more picaresque than it is now, and so were the vehicles on the road.

Dick had purchased a Studebaker President, black as ink. The front end was a Chromium festival of beveled bars and dignified headlights, swooping gracefully to the taillight pods on the rear. Dick did not buy the car because of the styling, though. He bought it for the heritage of the mighty President Straight Eight engine which had dominated the 500 mile contest at the Brick Yard out at Indianapolis .

Studebaker had been off to war, too, and was having trouble adjusting to civilian life. The company had constructed military trucks, aircraft engines and a curious version of armored personnel carrier called ‘Weasels’ by the Army.

One model was amphibious, and was useful for ascending a beach gradient at places like Gold, and Sword and Omaha .

Studebaker merged with Packard Corporation in 1954, but the writing was on the wall. Even the combined company could not compete with the Big Three companies, that were now aggressively selling throw-away vehicles not intended to last much longer than the finance contract. They were squeezing the second tier of suppliers, too, the carriage makers and the tool-making shops.

The company might have been doing business for a hundred years, but its future, as legendary pitcher Satchel Paige might have said, was almost all behind it. But no one in the long sedan knew that during the long trip to Buffalo .

Heading west on Route 2, near Leominster , Mass, the car developed what pilots call a “down gripe,” or a problem which meant the vehicle could no longer be operated properly. That meant a stop at the Studebaker-Packard dealer.

Dick had already made the determination that they were “beyond the point of no return,” and were committed to the mission. It was a bit like the John Wayne movie “The High and the Mighty,” the aircraft halfway to Hawaii, low on fuel, the bags and seats being thrown out the door to lighten the weight.

Dick understood that situation perfectly well. My cousins were little. All they knew was that it was a long trip.

Dick asked how long it would take to fix the problem. The answer was not acceptable. Then he asked how much the President would be worth in trade for a shiny new turquoise-and-white Packard sedan in the showroom window. 

Papers were signed and the luggage was transferred. They finished the trip at a stately pace, Dick carefully and precisely driving the car at low speed while breaking in the motor.

They arrived to cheering crowds, or at least to the oohs-and-aahs of the grandparents.

That was the kind of guy Dick was, and he was the archetype of the generation that landed on the beaches of France . Once committed to the mission, there was no stopping them.  

Copyright 2005 Roxanne Gile and Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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