Author: Reporter

One of Idris Elba’s grandfathers fought in World War II, but he does not know what he endured. No pictures or stories survive. “That part of my family’s history has been erased somewhat,” said Elba. That helped fuel the actor’s push to narrate and executive produce the four-part National Geographic docuseries “Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color,” which premiered on June 3 ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Episodes will be available later on Disney+ and Hulu. More than 8 million people of color served with the Allies, and the series digs deep to focus on...

When Associated Press correspondent Don Whitehead arrived with other journalists in southern England to cover the Allies’ imminent D-Day invasion of Normandy, a U.S. commander offered them a no-nonsense welcome. “We’ll do everything we can to help you get your stories and to take care of you. If you’re wounded, we’ll put you in a hospital. If you’re killed, we’ll bury you. So don’t worry about anything,” said Major General Clarence R. Heubner of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division. It was early June 1944 — just before the long-anticipated Normandy landings that ultimately liberated France from Nazi occupation...

On D-Day, Marie Scott experienced British forces landing on the Normandy coast through her earphones. Stationed in an underground tunnel 100 feet below the south coast of England, Scott was safe from the carnage. But she heard it all. As a 17-year-old radio operator in the Women’s Royal Naval Service, she relayed messages to the Normandy beaches and waited for the recipient to open his channel and reply. “And when he did, in my earphones, in my head, I was in the war because what I heard was machine gun fire going continuously. The heavier ones, like cannons. Men...

Dorothea Barron got a preview of the D-Day invasion from a watchtower on the coast of Scotland. During the spring and summer of 1943, she and her colleagues kept watch over the troops as they tested the prototypes for two portable harbors that would be used at Normandy to ease the delivery of men and equipment to the battlefield. Whenever someone got into trouble, Barron would unfurl her semaphore flags and signal for help. “We were watching over them, shall we say,” she said. “If they got into difficulty, we would then inform their headquarters, their people on the...

Pat Owtram did not need to go to war. It came to her. As the Nazis took control of Germany and Austria, her father hired Jewish refugees to cook and clean at the family home in Lancashire, where the Owtram family raised pedigreed shorthorn cows and Pat rode a pony named Dolly. One refugee, Lilly Getzel, was a cultured woman from Vienna who told stories of concerts and the opera — exotic fare for Pat, who rarely left her rural home because of fuel shortages. They spoke in a combination of German, Austrian German, and English. “Wartime evenings, with...