Passages: One final salute for D-Day veteran Donald A. McCarthy
Providence JournalAug 08, 2017
It was a farewell to one of the few left who were part of the storming of the beach at Normandy on D-Day.
I came in part because I'd had the honor of interviewing McCarthy a year ago to ask something I'd long wondered about: Was that beach scene in "Saving Private Ryan" accurate?
His response: Every second of it.
What he saw that day remained so deep in him that seven decades later he still went daily to the chapel at the Villa at Saint Antoine, where he lived, to pray for the souls of the lost.
And now,
As a priest recited familiar words from Ecclesiastes -- "a time for war and a time for peace" -- I thought back to McCarthy's words to me last year.
How he was 20 and a private first class when he dropped down the side of the big troop-transport ship into a small landing boat and headed toward shore in the dark.
How, as he got close, his boat swamped and many in it disappeared. One reason he survived: his strapped helmet caught an air pocket and kept him afloat.
Inside that helmet was a picture of his future wife,
The priest read from Romans, saying those baptized in Christ will be united with him in the resurrection, and then a familiar face came to the pulpit to offer reflections.
It was the Most Rev.
Gelineau said the two often shared dinners together, and the trait of McCarthy's that struck him most was his selflessness.
It made me remember what McCarthy kept stressing as he told me about
Like the injured soldier he grabbed in the water, telling him to keep swimming, and then they were on the beach and he saw the man was dead -- but he paused to tie him to an obstacle to give him the honor of not being swept back out.
McCarthy's watch told him it was
"Ever forward," a sergeant kept yelling, and McCarthy pressed on.
He told me that one difference from "Saving Private Ryan" is that it went on not for minutes but hours. Finally, mortar shrapnel went into McCarthy's hamstring and he went down, pulled by a buddy into a sandy foxhole.
I was amazed at the detail he remembered, and from the pulpit,
"He lived that every day of his life."
Then the bishop said McCarthy's greatest wounds weren't his own, but the sadness that stayed with him for the loss of so many others.
Indeed,
"I want to be back there with my guys," he said.
He didn't make it physically, but in the beliefs of the
Finally, Gelineau addressed his friend directly: "We will never forget you."
After more prayer, the service ended and those who'd gathered here, including McCarthy's four sons, went outside into gray skies that reflected the mood.
Now it was time for the military to offer its own goodbye. An honor guard gave a three-gun salute. Then two soldiers in white gloves folded the flag and presented it to
Then
May he have good rest.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
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