D-Day and The Tomato

Dad: Red Beach-Dieppe, France 1942

I had intended to write and publish this post on the date of the 80th Anniversary of the now legendary D-Day invasion on the coast of France, but I wasn't quite ready yet. It is the story of two men who greatly influenced my future exploits in the garden. It is part of the reason why I do what I do. When I work in the garden as I often do during these warm summer months, my thoughts are occupied by these two. These two family members did not take part in the D-Day invasion that took place on 6 June 1944. But they were both in this war. They were both either in, or a witness to, combat. They both played the crucial roles that they did.

Later, as a small boy growing up in 1960's California, I noticed the gardening efforts of both men for the first time. My first memory of a ripe tomato on a tomato plant comes from the garden that my father planted and nutured at the home of his second third wife, a lady named Clara. That garden, as I recall, contained corn, cucumbers and tomatoes. The round, red and ripe tomatoes from that misty childhood memory would become a treasured part of a backyard barbecue, as would the corn and cucumbers. It is one of those summer childhood experiences that I've never forgotten. That, and the memory of my brother and I attempting to impale each other with the sharpened metal tips of a well-tossed lawn dart from the infamous game: Slider Jarts.

By the way, that photo above right is a picture of my father. I don't know who took that photo. I just know it was taken at the moment he was captured. That moment came late in the day after a tremendous battle called The Dieppe Raid. This photo was taken shortly after the battle on one of the invasion beaches, known as Red Beach, came to an end. The date was 19 August 1942. It would be the end of dad's war against Adolph Hitler and the German forces that Hitler unleashed across Europe during World War II. D-Day would come and go while dad was locked up in a German Prisoner of War (POW) Camp in what is today a part of southern Poland (Stalag Luft VIII-B, Lamsdorf, Poland).

Francis Doran: Merchant Marines

The second gardening influence in my life would come from the man to my immediate left. His name is Francis Doran. He is (was) my uncle. Francis played the role of older brother to the sister who would later become my mother. His gardening exploits are rather legendary, because he chose to grow his gardens in the worst spot that any gardener could possibly choose: the bitter cold of a Bay Area location where no vegetable in its right mind will grow. Despite those bitter cold summers, Uncle Francis would manage to coax well-shielded tomato plants to grow and produce small pieces of treasured garden fruit. He would also employ the magic of a greenhouse in his backyard to produce champion cucumbers, an exploit that he both relished and celebrated in his later years.

No meal served at his Bay Area home would be complete without a trek down a steep hill in his backyard that led to that greenhouse. That is where the magic of his garden exploits really took place. I have many memories of his triumphant emergence from said greenhouse, fat cucumber in hand. Later, as I began to borrow from the skills taken from him and my father, he would show a tiny bit of jealousy at the garden cucumbers and tomatoes I would present to him each summer that I visited. He also knew, however, that those summer harvests were helped a great deal by the heat of a typical San Joaquin Valley summer season. He wanted no part of that heat and would take every opportunity to tell me so.

Uncle Francis probably would have taken part in the D-Day invasion that took place on the American beaches named Omaha and Utah, but there was one minor problem. He wanted no part of that, and for good reason. Francis managed to live into an old age because he managed to steer clear of the alcohol and cigarette habits that many WWII veterans adopted to cope with the horrors caused by wartime service. Because he did live for as long as he did, I grew to the age where he could speak to me about exactly what happened and what was going through his mind. Today, I treasure those conversations. It is a look into the mind of a young man who badly wanted to serve his country, but also knew he didn't want to become a wartime statistic.

Restored Liberty Ship

"I was not an athlete," Francis explained to me once. "I could not run fast. I would have been the slowest soldier in my platoon. I knew that some German sniper would have picked me out immediately as an easy target and 'POP,' that would have been the end of me."

It is a common belief today that the invasion of France by the Allies in WWII was a well kept secret. Nothing could be further from the truth. Millions of American boys and young men knew as early as 1942 that the Allies would be forced to invade France in order to drive the Nazis out and back into Germany. Francis, who was finishing his final year at the University of Oregon in the spring of 1942, knew this all too well. The moment he received his diploma on the day of his graduation, he also knew he would also receive his draft notice from the U.S. Army Recruiter who was stationed on campus.

So, the day before the big event could take place, Francis and his best friend from college, a young boy named Robert, took proactive action.

"We pulled a fast one on that recruiter," he explained to me, chuckling the entire time. "The day before graduation we went out and joined the Merchant Marines. When that recruiting officer discovered what we had done, boy he was mad! But there was nothing he could do."

Francis was under the belief that his service in the Merchant Marines would keep him safe from the dangers posed by a German sniper. Which it did. What he could not know, however, is it put him at risk from getting hit by a torpedo fired by an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine. It also exposed him to daily attacks mounted by Japanese pilots who flew repeated suicide missions against the U.S. Navy in 1944 and 1945.

Francis in WWII

In fact, the first taste of what he could expect came not long after his graduation. It took place during his service on the first of three of three Liberty Ships he would call home for the duration of the war: SS Henry L. Hoyt. A month after setting sail from San Francisco in July, 1943, my uncle found himself off the coast of a South Pacific island called Guadalcanal. Worse yet, my uncle was onboard an ammunition resupply ship that carried 10,000 tons of bombs and ammunition. His ship, like many other Liberty Ships built for wartime service was, in reality, a floating bomb.

At this point in the war against Japan in the South Pacific, the US Marines and the US Army had managed to drive Japanese forces off Guadalcanal. But that didn't stop the Japanese from retaliating with bombing raids launched from nearby Munda Point in New Georgia. Which is exactly what took place as my uncle worked feverishly to unload his floating bomb on a series of DUKW's. These were amphibious trucks that were used by the Army and Marines to ferry ammunition and equipment from liberty ships to ammunition dumps on islands that U.S. forces had won in battle. It's the same ammunition dump that Imperial Japanese Vals were targeting at the time of my uncle's arrival. He was uncomfortably close.

"All the while (during unloading) the Japanese were blowing up parts of the ammo dump in the hills," my uncle would write in a letter decades after the battle took place.

Unfortunately, for my uncle at least, it was a scene that would most likely be repeated during his service aboard another liberty ship called SS Hiram Bingham. He would spend the final seven months of the war in the South Pacific ferrying ammunition and supplies to islands liberated by either the Marines or the Army (or both) in 1944 and 1945. I am not sure where his service took him on the Bingham, but I do know that one of his last stops would be made in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland. He arrived via the SS Murray M. Blum, his third and final liberty ship assignment. He arrived in port not long after the city had been liberated Russian forces and WWII had come to a merciful end.

Dad (Right) in England

My father did not speak much about his experiences during the war. But then again, I was far too young to hear or understand this kind of detail. By the time I finally reached the age to realize where he had been (Dieppe) and what he had done, I was filled with questions that my father could no longer answer. He had been gone for nearly two decades. I don't know if he would have been able to say much had he managed to live to an old age like my uncle did. There are men who saw or did things during the war that they could never talk about, not even decades after the fact. The secrets they held died with them.

I can only tell you what I think. My father was an OG (Original Gangster), provided there is such a thing. He would become the very first American boy, or among the first handful of American boys, to charge up a beach under fire in Nazi-occupied France in 1942. In fact, dad joined the Essex Scottish Regiment of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division long before America was forced into the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

His country of birth and citizenship, however, is a fact that did not escape the attention of the Gestapo after he had been captured following the failed Dieppe Raid. A postcard he would send from his POW camp would indicate that the Gestapo had interrogated him about it. One of those questions might have been why an American citizen would join the fight against Nazi Germany in 1940. It is a good question. I did not know the answer. I only just recently discovered an article printed by the Windsor Star newspaper (Ontario, Canada) in July, 1945 where my father claimed to have joined the Canadian Army because he "craved excitement."

Dieppe Carnage 1942

Both my father and uncle would survive this war. I don't know what either of them were doing on D-Day, but I do know that both considered it important and a solemn event. My father's lone request to his youngest son during Veteran's Day parades was that I at least stand for them, and not plop down in the street with a sugary snow cone. Then, of course, there were the vegetable garden growth efforts that both were clearly proud of.

The one person who did not survive was my uncle's best friend from the University of Oregon. I don't know Robert's last name. Nobody in the family does. I do know that my cousin Rob is named in honor of him. I only know that he was on a liberty ship like my uncle was, except, he did not survive. It may be one reason why my uncle had a hard time forgiving the country of Japan following the war. It's an animus I noted in the 1970's, especially after my mother had the unmitigated GALL to purchase a new car that carried the model name of Mazda. He wasn't happy about that. He would not allow her to park it in front of his vegetable garden either.

Dad passed in 1972 following a long illness. He is buried at Lakewood Cemetery Park in Hughson, CA. Francis plowed right through some early health issues that bothered him somewhat. He lived to see his children marry and produce grandchildren, which he was quite proud of. He passed at age 91 in 2010. His final resting spot is in the city where he grew up, a family plot located in Eugene, OR.