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Passages: One final salute for D-Day veteran Donald A. McCarthy

Providence Journal - 8/8/2017

Aug. 08--The congregation at Warwick'sSt. Francis of Assisi Church turned toward the entry door as the old soldier's casket, draped with an American flag, was brought in for the final goodbye.

Donald A. McCarthy, of North Smithfield, died last week at age 93, and though his funeral was a humble gathering, it was also a historic moment.

It was a farewell to one of the few left who were part of the storming of the beach at Normandy on D-Day.

I came in part because I'd had the honor of interviewing McCarthy a year ago to ask something I'd long wondered about: Was that beach scene in "Saving Private Ryan" accurate?

His response: Every second of it.

What he saw that day remained so deep in him that seven decades later he still went daily to the chapel at the Villa at Saint Antoine, where he lived, to pray for the souls of the lost.

And now, Don McCarthy's church was bequeathing his own soul back to God, and to the peace he never fully knew because of the scars left on him on Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of all D-Day landing spots.

As a priest recited familiar words from Ecclesiastes -- "a time for war and a time for peace" -- I thought back to McCarthy's words to me last year.

How he was 20 and a private first class when he dropped down the side of the big troop-transport ship into a small landing boat and headed toward shore in the dark.

How, as he got close, his boat swamped and many in it disappeared. One reason he survived: his strapped helmet caught an air pocket and kept him afloat.

Inside that helmet was a picture of his future wife, Elaine O'Shea, who was there in the church yesterday, in a wheelchair, to say goodbye to her husband of almost 70 years.

The priest read from Romans, saying those baptized in Christ will be united with him in the resurrection, and then a familiar face came to the pulpit to offer reflections.

It was the Most Rev. Louis Gelineau, now 89, bishop of Providence from 1972 to 1997. He was here this day because of the friendship he'd shared with Don McCarthy as chaplain, and fellow resident, at St. Antoine's.

Gelineau said the two often shared dinners together, and the trait of McCarthy's that struck him most was his selflessness.

It made me remember what McCarthy kept stressing as he told me about June 6, 1944 -- not what he gave up, but what others did.

Like the injured soldier he grabbed in the water, telling him to keep swimming, and then they were on the beach and he saw the man was dead -- but he paused to tie him to an obstacle to give him the honor of not being swept back out.

McCarthy's watch told him it was 6:45 a.m., and a nearby wounded voice was crying, "Mama," and he saw a mortar blow off a radio-man's arm.

"Ever forward," a sergeant kept yelling, and McCarthy pressed on.

He told me that one difference from "Saving Private Ryan" is that it went on not for minutes but hours. Finally, mortar shrapnel went into McCarthy's hamstring and he went down, pulled by a buddy into a sandy foxhole.

I was amazed at the detail he remembered, and from the pulpit, Bishop Gelineau in part explained it:

"He lived that every day of his life."

Then the bishop said McCarthy's greatest wounds weren't his own, but the sadness that stayed with him for the loss of so many others.

Indeed, Don McCarthy told me last year he hoped to return to Normandy one more time to pay respects at the American graveyard there.

"I want to be back there with my guys," he said.

He didn't make it physically, but in the beliefs of the Catholic Church, he has now gone to join them in eternity.

Finally, Gelineau addressed his friend directly: "We will never forget you."

After more prayer, the service ended and those who'd gathered here, including McCarthy's four sons, went outside into gray skies that reflected the mood.

Now it was time for the military to offer its own goodbye. An honor guard gave a three-gun salute. Then two soldiers in white gloves folded the flag and presented it to Elaine McCarthy, in her wheelchair, on behalf of a grateful nation.

Then Donald McCarthy, husband, father and veteran of one of America's greatest moments, began his final journey to the cemetery, followed by those who knew and loved him.

May he have good rest.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7370

On Twitter: @MarkPatinkin

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