OPINION: How Madame X helped win D-Day

On this day, June 6, 75 years ago, my dad was awakened early — or, more accurately, late.

Just about midnight, he and his crewmates were stirred roughly from a much too short sleep and told to get ready for what would be Mission #10 of the 25 expected for their B-17 bomber.

The time alone was a signal that this might be the day most of their base at Nuthampstead -- indeed most of England — had been waiting for. Their mission the morning before, on June 5, had been bombing German placements along the coast, instead of deeper into France or Germany -- a pointed hint that the big show, the Allied invasion of Europe, was due any day.

After they had returned on June 5, they found their plane's name on the list -- a crowded mission list -- for the next morning. Like most young men of that time, the fliers of the 398th Bomb Group -- one of the B-17 bomb groups stationed in England and part of the 8th Air Force -- had signed up to serve their country in what they understood was a war for the survival of freedom. It wasn't a sophisticated or complicated choice they were making; it wasn't even really a choice. It was a duty.

The men in the infantry who had been massing on Britain's coast felt the same way. Young lives, lives just beginning, would be lost, they understood and accepted, simply and honestly. These days we look at these men as heroes. They never thought of themselves that way. They were just Americans, ready to do what was necessary to accomplish a goal they never questioned.

This account is based on the recollection of service from my dad, Richard Carter, and details from an account written by Paul Roderick, the extraordinary pilot of dad's bomber crew.

By the time the crew made it to the briefing room on June 6 it was about 1:30 am. The sprawling briefing area was filled as always with tense, sweaty airmen — boys really. The 398th Bomb Group was made up of guys from every corner of America, all in their late teens and early 20s. Dad had turned 20 four months earlier, while still in training, learning his job as radio operator.