FAIRFAX : D-Day Reality Comes Alive for ROTC Cadet

To 17-year-old Charles Butler, generations removed from World War II, D-day was something that lived only on a page in a history book.

But after touring England earlier this month and taking part in events commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-day, Butler says the massive military offensive mounted by Allied forces on June 6, 1944, lives in him now.

“A lot of people lost their family and friends,” said Butler, a Southwest Los Angeles resident and Hamilton High student. “They stood around me crying. . . . It’s very real for them--like it happened yesterday.”

Butler was one of 24 ROTC naval cadets from the American Southwest chosen by ROTC officials to make the two-week trip earlier this month.

The group traveled to several English ports from which the invasion of France was launched, saw President Clinton and French President Francois Mitterand at D-day events and heard testimonies--many of them eyewitness accounts of the battle that turned the tide of the war in Europe. One veteran told Butler he parachuted into the wrong spot, about 20 miles north of the appointed place on the Normandy beach in France.

And while the cadets performed military drills for such royalty as the Queen Mother and Prince Philip, they were getting the red-carpet treatment from the British.

Said Butler, the only African American in his group: “They saw us as diplomatic guests, even though we’re young. It was kind of a shock to come back here and be treated like a kid again.”

Butler and the cadets stayed on the Bristol, a British destroyer, and toured Southampton and London.

But Butler said the most enduring experience will be honoring D-day. “If it wasn’t for D-day,” he said, “the Germans might have won the war. And the world would be a very different place today.”