Musings 43--Dad on D-Day

Last Monday it had been sixty years since my father, Dennis Murdock, had participated in the D-Day invasion. We were sitting on his porch watching the cat mess with the dog.

"Do you know where I was sixty years ago today?" asked Dad. Now I'm not one to look at a calendar, so I did not have a clue as to when the anniversary of D-Day was. So I ventured a guess, "Ah, in a C-47 flying around somewhere."

He just kind of shook his head and said, "We were preparing for the D-Day invasion." Well, it did not take long for the lights to come on in my head. Sometimes it is a distinct disadvantage not being the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Dad has remained in touch with many of his buddies from World War II. He had just gotten a letter from his best friend who lives in Texas. Apparently, his buddy had written an article about the D-Day invasion from an airman's point of view. He and Dad were radio operators in the same group of C-47's that carried the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. I had heard these stories before, but this night he was interested in talking about a fellow radioman who did not come back.

"My buddy in Texas wrote about our best friend, Bacon, who had a vision that he would not come back," Dad said. "It wasn't the first mission...it was the second. He came back from the first mission and got all his stuff in order and told us that he would not be back. You have to wonder how he knew, but he did know that he wouldn't return."

Now I have heard Dad speak of this before, and I had pretty much dismissed the idea of pre-cognation or predestination or visions of the future. In my mind, the future is evolving and we make choices that change the direction we go every day. It is not, to me, a good feeling to think that there is an appointed time for us to check out--a time that we cannot alter by actions. However, the story of Dad's buddy knowing he was about to die is sobering. It would be less so if I had not experienced other such events, which I will not go into at this time.

Dad said that when the planes returned from that mission that his buddy was dead, hit by a bullet from a German anti-aircraft gun. I guess it gives credence to the saying, "I've got a bullet with your name one it."

The Bible says, "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment." I always thought that this meant that we all die eventually. Maybe I was wrong. To me, the verse is not so clear as it once was.