Done with D-Day?
Two callers asked why we snubbed the 64th anniversary of D-Day. Not a word in the paper this morning.
Editors on our National desk and Metro desk say they weren’t offered stories — by the various wire services or our staff reporters. No local commemorations to advance — no speeches or ceremonies.
At this point, a lone story is being offered by our wire services today — Veterans gathered at the D-Day museum in New Orleans to mark the date.
Once again, here’s an explanation offered four days after Pearl Harbor Day 2005 by retired Post-Dispatch senior writer Harry Levins in his Military Matters column. (I reprinted this column after callers protested last December that we didn’t have enough Pearl Harbor coverage.)
Levins’ column:
“Scan the microfilm of the Post-Dispatch for July 3, 1924, and you’ll find such items as:
- A lead story on Page 1 about a deadlock at the Democratic National Convention.
- A tiny story on Page 1 about the birth of triplet calves to a dairy cow near Belleville.
- A story that as of press time, baseball’s Browns held a 1-0 lead over the Cleveland Indians.
What you won’t find in that issue of the Post-Dispatch is any mention of the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg. July 3, 1924, was the 61st anniversary of the climax at Gettysburg, perhaps the single most important battle in U.S. military history. Even so, that evening’s Post-Dispatch rendered no journalistic salute to the Gettysburg veterans.
Last Monday, I scrolled through the pages of that long-ago Post-Dispatch. I did so after word came down that several readers had complained about Monday morning’s paper. Their beef: The paper lacked any word about the D-Day landing of World War II — even though Monday was the 61st anniversary.
Conclusion: The Greatest Generation is not going gently into that good night.
No journalism school dictates hard-and-fast rules for anniversary stories. But generally, newspapers run such stories only on anniversaries divisible by five — typically, on the 10th anniversary, then on the 25th and finally on the 50th.
After the 50th, such stories appear only rarely. The thinking: After 50 years, only a small slice of a paper’s readers remembers the event, much less took part in it. After 50 years, journalists hand off events to historians.
Some vets complain that younger generations need to know about the sacrifices of WWII. Maybe so. But you could make the same case for the sacrifices of the Americans at Saratoga, San Juan Hill and St.-Mihiel — and these days, no papers run anniversary stories about those battles.
Anyway, back in 1989, the Post-Dispatch started running 50th-anniversary WWII stories. For the next six years, the paper ran three, four or five stories each year. I know, because I wrote all of them.
The D-Day anniversary rated more than a mere story. In June 1994, D-Day filled an entire 12-page section of the Sunday paper.
These 50th-anniversary stories continued through the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Missouri. And at that, in September 1995, I told myself, “Well, WWII is behind you at last.”
But I spoke too soon. I spoke before Tom Brokaw and Pvt. Ryan. In 1998, Hollywood released a D-Day epic, “Saving Private Ryan” — good entertainment, dubious history and an awful primer on infantry soldiering. But the movie put D-Day front and center in the public’s mind.
Later that year, Brokaw profited from “The Greatest Generation,” his book-length salute to the Americans who fought in WWII. That aging band promptly appropriated Brokaw’s title as its own.”
Pretty sad that D-Day doesn’t even garner a mention in the post.