D-Day veteran Irving Smolens at the Dodge Gathering 2014

[12th Air Force]

Hello Dodge owners,

as some of you might know was the first "real" Dodge Forum members meeting - the Dodge Gathering - last year at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy with more than 70 WW2 Dodge in place.

Our special guest at the meeting was WW2 veteran Irving Smolens: he came with a Dodge 3/4 ton truck to Utah Beach on D-Day.



He served in a artillery unit that used the Dodge for towing their howitzers. But the LST Captain was in panic because of the German defense fire and opened the ramp to early to get away as fast as possible - with the result that the water was to deep for the Dodge and killed the engine.
Irving told me, that all his personal equipment was on the Dodge and lost that way. So he was forced to fight two weeks only with the clothes he was wearing when he waded to the beach, his rifle (a 30M1 Carbine) and his ammo belt.
- Even after 70 years you could feel how angry he was about the behaviour of the LST Captain...

He was then following the frontline with his unit from Normandy to Germany and at V-Day his unit was south of Munich.



Today he is (still) visiting schools and telling the kid's what happened 70 year's ago to keep the memory of WW2 alive and to make them understand "that freedom is not for free" - as he told me. So true...

I have been in contact with him lately and - sorry to say so - he think's that his trip to Normandy 2014 was his last one...

But this trip was special - because he was sitting at the Omaha Beach War Cemetary behind the President and had the chance to talk to him.
- What a great highlight for this D-Day veteran.

I have prepared for all of you that could not be in place a small compilation of pictures with Irving at Pointe du Hoc and with the President at the ceremony at Omaha Beach. See:

http://www.steel-toys.com/ISM/
(Notice: click on "next picture" to see each next one - 41 pictures overall)

Keep 'em Rolling,

Joakim



About Irving at the ETO:

Documentary - D-Day and Beyond with Irving Smolens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Wkk6ICt64

About his unit the 29th Field Artillery:
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/msgfisher/ww2pic-4.html

War Story by Irving:
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/msgfisher/ww2pic-4.html

Irving's via in brief: http://melrosemirror.media.mit.edu/serv ... 6f6c656e73

Veterans In The Classroom: Irving Smolens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dTU4TIGnsE

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[Skyrookie]

Nice job weltmeister

[12th Air Force]

Nice job weltmeister

Hello Belgium!

- Thank's for the flowers.
Is your roof still in place after the storm?

Joakim


PS: Just to update you - Irving wrote about the meeting with the President this:

"...I maneuvered to get a seat in the front row. I sat at one end of that row behind the president and slightly to his right you can see me in one of the photos. When he finished his speech he turned to his position at the other end of the row and was shaking hands with Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State John Kerry and other dignitaries. I got up from my seat and walked across the stage to him and extended my hand to him and as we were engaging in a handshake I thanked him for keeping us out of war. I started to continue talking to him but he said."I'll be back" He finished shaking the hand of every veteran sitting directly behind him. I was the last of the veterans whose hand he shook. I thanked him for the Presidential Coin he had given me about a year ago and told him that since he is Commander in Chief that I consider it a Commander's Coin and why it is nick named a "Challenge" Coin. Ask John King for an explanation.

Many people saw me talking to the President and wanted to know what I had said to him. When they found out I received smiles and nods of approval from all.

Enjoy

Irving"

Irving recieved in addition in October 2014 special honours from the French gouverment: he is now a "Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor".

Here is the news + picture of him with the French Consul General:

http://melrose.wickedlocal.com/article/ ... e=printart

[12th Air Force]

Hello Folk's,

today I have sad news for you: Irving died of acute myocardial infarction on April 11 2015 in Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale.
He was 90 and lived in Melrose, PA more than 50 years.

His last email to me in January indicated that his health was not the best because he wrote that his last years visit in Normandy would be his last one.



I am thankful that I had the chance to meet him last year at Pointe du Hoc and looking back I'm still laughing about his dry humor.
I think that we have lost with Irving an outstanding person that tried since WW2 to make this world a better place.

During WW2 about 17 million US Soldiers have been fighting on all frontlines. Today - 2015 - are about 1 million of them still alive. Each day are about 800 of them passing away. - And with them the witnesses of WW2. Each of them with his personal story on what happened in those days between 1939 and 1945 - and after.

It's up to us to preserve the heritage of those who liberated Europe from Nazi Dictatorship and those who have been fighting in the Pacific as well for upcoming generations. My recommendation: if you know veterans nearby use the chance to listen to what they have to say and write it down for generations to come.

My thoughts are with his family,

Joakim





cc:

Irving Smolens, 90; veteran opposed war
By Marvin Pave Globe Correspondent April 30, 2015

On June 6 last year, during the 70th anniversary observation of D-Day overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, Irving Smolens stepped out of the crowd, took the hand of President Obama, and spoke to him for a few moments.

“I thanked him for keeping us out of war,” Mr. Smolens told a writer for the The Daily Beast.

As a 19-year-old private assigned to the Fourth Infantry Division’s 29th Field Artillery Battalion, Mr. Smolens witnessed the horrors of battle during and after his unit’s landing. He crossed the English Channel separately from the main component of his Company B buddies. Dozens died in their smaller landing craft.

As a contributing columnist for his hometown Melrose Mirror , and in letters to the Globe editor, Mr. Smolens wrote about his fallen comrades’ sacrifice and he remembered them during visits to the Garden of the Missing in the American Cemetery in Normandy.

Mr. Smolens, a past president of Temple Beth Shalom in Melrose and a member of the Melrose Democratic City Committee, died of acute myocardial infarction April 11 in Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale. He was 90 and lived in Melrose more than 50 years.

“Over the years, I have pondered that had one of the members of my gun crew gotten sick . . . I very likely would have been on board ... and would not have survived,” Mr. Smolens said in “I Refused to Die,” a book by his friend Susie Davidson that collected stories of those in Greater Boston who survived the Holocaust and liberated concentration camps.

Mr. Smolens, whose unit helped to liberate Paris and Cherbourg, led the 21-gun salutes on Omaha and Utah beaches at the 60th anniversary D-Day observances.

In a 2003 Melrose Mirror column, he recalled that in May 1945, just before the official German surrender, an enemy bomber was shot down in the woods behind his gun position. “There were three young Germans lying dead,” he wrote. “I looked at them and said to myself, ‘what a waste.’ The futility of war was brought home to me once again by their fanatic last acts of trying to kill more Americans despite the fact that for them the war had no chance of ending in victory.”

A 2006 column detailed a trip to Luxembourg, where he was honored during Luxembourg-American friendship week, and he was struck by the sight of the children. “I suddenly seemed to have an epiphany,” wrote Mr. Smolens, who was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. “I started thinking of those youngsters as my legacy. . . . We had enabled those youngsters to be born and raised in the freedom and liberty they were enjoying.”

His daughter, Karen of Brookline, said Mr. Smolens did not visit Normandy until 1985, after his younger daughter, Joanne, died of leukemia.

“He had put the war in a place far away because it was so painful to recall,” Karen said. “Going back to Normandy with my mother and myself and seeing the Wall of the Missing was the beginning of his opening up about his losses.”

On April 14, the day of Mr. Smolens’ funeral, US Representative Katherine Clark, for whom he had campaigned, paid tribute on the House floor. “Irving took his experiences from the darkest moments of our past and advocated for a better, more peaceful world.”

An opponent of the Vietnam War and the invasions of Iraq, Mr. Smolens spoke for many years at assemblies at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. He also participated in discussions with students at Melrose High and at Malden Catholic High last fall.

“I do support the troops, by advocating stopping the wars and bringing them home while they are still alive,” Mr. Smolens said at a 2011 Veterans Day poetry series, cofounded by Davidson, during the Occupy Boston protest in Dewey Square. She called Mr. Smolens “fearless, principled, and true to himself and his convictions.”

Born in Boston and a 1942 graduate of Roxbury Memorial High School, Mr. Smolens received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Boston University in 1949.

A retired merchandiser and buyer in the clothing business, Mr. Smolens served for many years as president of the Boston Center for Adult Education’s retired persons association and was active in the Celtics’ Stay in School program.

He was “an everyman,” Rabbi Arnie Fertig of Temple Beth Shalom said in a eulogy, someone “who found himself in the midst of uncommon circumstances facing monumental challenges.” His life, Fertig added, “was dedicated to working for society to become ever more just, for the end to oppression and inequality and for the dignity of every human being.”

Mr. Smolens met Edith Roud on a blind date. They were engaged a month later and married in 1953. Their many trips included a 25th wedding anniversary celebration in New Orleans, where they listened to music and visited a different gourmet restaurant every night, Karen said.

“They were each other’s champion,” Karen said. “I like to think of my parents as connectors. They always liked bringing people together, inviting them to their home and connecting them with a community of new people.”

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Smolens leaves his brother, Daniel of Brookline. He was buried in Hebrew Progressive Cemetery in West Roxbury alongside his daughter Joanne.

A loyal Boston sports fan who attended the first Celtics game, Mr. Smolens was moved by art and music, especially jazz. He particularly enjoyed the singing of Billie Holiday, which “hit me like a ton of bricks,” he wrote in a 2001 Melrose Mirror column. “The emotional impact caused me to feel goose bumps.”

In September 1944, he wrote, his unit “liberated” a table radio from a German house, and on the Armed Forces Radio Network “the first song I heard was Billie Holiday singing ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ ”

The day before Mr. Smolens died, he and his daughter were waiting in his doctor’s office. “I had my iPad and I said, ‘What do you want to listen to?’ He said, of course, Billie Holiday or Ben Webster,” Karen recalled. “So we listened to his favorite, ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ and when the song was over he raised his arm in a gesture of enjoyment and completion.”

Marvin Pave can be reached at marvin.pave@rcn.com.


Link to the article at the Boston Globe online: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/ ... story.html

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[tazou]

Respect.

[12th Air Force]

Hello Folk's,

I just wanted to let you know about Irving's daughter Karen's latest email - showing how important our MV hobby is to preserve the memory of those who have been fighting in WW2.

Hopefully is her letter a motivation to you as well.

Keep 'em Rolling,

Joakim


cc:


Dear Joakim,

Thank you so much for writing. I had wanted to write to you and couldn't find your address.

The kind letters and tributes I have received about my father have been overwhelming. Your tribute is wonderful. There are a number of things that I will send to you.

I will share some photographs here but I also have a video interview done by a 13 year old friend for her school project two months before he died and a tribute made from the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by our United States Representative Katherine Clark, on the day of his funeral. It is actually on Youtube.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpa6UZTNlM

My father's illness was very short. He fell down the stairs three weeks before he died. He broke his neck but survived the fall without paralysis or loss to his wonderful mind. Unfortunately some kind of complication occurred very suddenly one evening after I left him. He had been watching his beloved Boston Red Sox baseball team in the afternoon and then something happened in the early evening. It was very quick as he would have wanted it and I was told there was no pain or suffering.

He was becoming more frail after his return from Normandy but he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in October 2014 for his service in the liberation of France. I attach a photo of him with Fabien Fieschi, French Consul General of Boston, Massachusetts and a photo of Irving with his wife Edith and with me on that day.



On November 3, we had a huge 90th birthday celebration for him. It was wonderful friends came from everywhere to help him celebrate his big day.

The third attachment is a photo of Irving at the 60th Anniversary of D-Day where he led the 21 gun salute at both the Omaha and Utah Beach Ceremonies on June 6, 2004. The next photo is of Irving in front of the 4th Infantry Division Monument on Utah Beach on the 60th anniversary of D Day on June 6, 2004.



The next photo is of Irving loading his howitzer during the war.



Thank you for sending all of the wonderful photographs to us. We all appreciated them.

In two weeks our synagogue will have an Irving Smolens Memorial Jazz Concert. My father was huge jazz fan and listened to jazz all of his life. We are all looking forward to it. On Memorial Day our local Jr. High School gave a tribute to Irving and an 8th grade student sang one of his favorite songs -- I'll Be Seeing You. I don't know if you saw that story when you were doing research on him. I will send it along.

You have made such a wonderful tribute. I will let other people know about it. Please do stay in contact and if you don't hear from me, send me a quick email. My life is very busy as I am also taking care of my mother and all of the things that must be done following my father's death.

Thank you for keeping the memory of my father and everyone in that generation.

One of my father's favorite quotes was something that President Bill Clinton said at the 50th anniversary of D Day in 1994.

"They may walk with a little less spring in their step and their ranks are thinning. But let us never forget, that when they were young, these men saved the world"

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llXClvoozw (at 31:17)

That is why what you are doing here is so important. As you said we must never forget the stories of these men and women who saved the world.

We will try to keep Irving's facebook page active and share the links there as well as well.

Always,

Karen

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