‘History in front of you’: World War II veterans honored in D-Day commemoration at Spokane Falls

Joseph “Pat” Tully, a veteran of the Army Signal Corps, remembers watching with some puzzlement as ships loaded with troops in the harbor at Weymouth, England, in early June 1944.

“They never told us anything,” Tully, now 104, said earlier this week.

Those troops landed at Omaha Beach, launching the Allied offensive on French soil that eventually beat the Nazi forces back into Germany. An estimated 4,400 Allied troops, including 2,500 Americans, died in 24 hours of fighting on June 6.

Tully, a Sprague, Washington, native who later landed at Normandy as part of a tour of service that took him to Paris and beyond, said the soldiers who took the beach were the ones who deserved the attention.

“Those are the guys you got to thank,” he said.

Tully was the eldest member of a trio of World War II veterans that also included Bill Beckstrom and Chuck Cato, both 98, honored in person at Spokane Falls Community College on Monday. Larry Hogan, also 98, had to stay away because of a bout with the flu.

All are members of an ever-dwindling community of men and women that served during the global conflict that ended 80 years ago. The Department of Veterans Affairs reported in January that an estimated 66,000 such veterans were still alive, of the more than 16 million who served in World War II. Washington and Idaho combine for roughly 2,200 remaining veterans of the conflict.

Each year, more voices are lost to time. Ben Brooks landed on Omaha on D-Day, and described the landing in an interview with The Spokesman-Review in 2014.

“When the gate came down, we were very lucky, because we were at high tide and we had gone over the mine ramps,” Brooks said at the time. He died in 2020 at age 97.

Eddy Cuisiner, a native of Paris and adviser to Spokane Falls Community College’s French Club that sponsored the commemoration event this week, said it was important to hear from the veterans who still can share their stories. The club has sponsored a D-Day event for several years, but only recently began involving actual veterans so attendees could thank them personally.

“This is history that you have in front of you,” said Cuisiner, whose grandfather told him stories of living through World War II while aiding the French resistance in the countryside. “We hope that the students, and some of our faculty, employees here, are able to see that their sacrifice was not for nothing.”

Tully’s company, the 980th Signal Service Company, was stationed at Weymouth with a British regiment. Many of its members had been airlifted from Dunkirk as part of a massive evacuation four years prior. He learned from them that the “invasion was on,” he said.

Ships returned to Weymouth, Tully said, carrying the wounded from the beaches.

“They brought them up to the British fort, and they had a keg of rum,” Tully said. “And as they came through, each of them got a shot of rum.”

As Tully awaited departure for France, Cato and Beckstrom were on the other side of the world, focused on action in the Pacific theater.

Cato, an Army veteran who served as a combat engineer in the 43rd Division, said he was likely on the boat from San Francisco when the European invasion occurred. He’d been drafted “the minute I turned 18,” he said.

Cato’s father served in France during World War I, but Cato spent the war in the Philippines and later as part of the occupying force in Japan.

“I just did what was asked of me,” said Cato, a Missouri native who moved to Seattle before the war. “I was no hero.”

But the assembled group of faculty, students and veterans of Vietnam and other conflicts gave him a standing ovation on Monday anyway.

Beckstrom, who earlier this year traveled to Washington, D.C., to see the World War II memorial for himself as part of the annual Honor Flight, also took in the applause. Beckstrom, who enlisted in the Navy at 17, said he probably learned of the invasion from a military newspaper. He was bound for Okinawa on the USS Curtiss, which had been damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor. While Beckstrom was aboard in Okinawa, the Curtiss was again attacked on June 21, 1945, killing 35 crew members.

“We stopped the boat in Guam, to get repairs, but the ship was so bad, we had to go to dry dock. So we went to San Diego,” Beckstrom said.

Beckstrom said being one of the limited remaining World War II veterans draws attention in public.

“I have a thing on my license plate, and people notice that. Then I go into the store, and when I come back, people want to ask me about it, the war,” Beckstrom said.

His companion on the Honor Flight was Mike Jones, a Vietnam veteran who told the audience about the bravery not just of the men who took the beaches on June 6, but the women who supported them. That included his mother, then known as Jorina Pentler, who served in the 392nd Signal Company and arrived in Europe on June 5, the day before the invasion.

Like Tully, Pentler landed at Normandy before making her way to France and the Eiffel Tower, which became an important radio relay during the war.

Pentler, who married Estes “Lucky” Jones after the war, was baptized at Notre Dame cathedral, her son said. She, like many of her generation, didn’t talk much about the war or her role in it, and Mike Jones pieced much of it together through documents after her death in 1990.

“I just knew mom was in the Army. I knew she’d been in England,” Jones said. “She didn’t say much, unless I asked her.”

Cuisiner said the event, and commemorations across the world remembering the actions of the Allies on this day 81 years ago, showed the strength between America and France that should not be forgotten.

“The bond between our two countries is strong,” Cuisiner said, “and sometimes we forget.”

Kip Hill is an assistant professor of journalism at Gonzaga University and a former Spokesman-Review staff writer. He can be reached at kiphillreporter@gmail.com.