An audience of about 100 took in the play ‘D-Day Again.’
Someday, the world will have no more World War II veterans left to tell the story of the largest armed conflict that the planet has ever seen. But it will still have Martin Lentz’s play, D-Day, Again, and one would hope, myriad other artistic accounts.
After all, younger generations must be taught the events and the lessons of the war, those who lived it maintain. Five of those men, all World War II veterans, were among an audience of about 100 at the Ashburner Inn in Upper Holmesburg on Sept. 19 to witness a live performance of Lentz’s one-act drama.
The playwright, an 82nd Airborne vet of the post-war era, chose perhaps an atypical, yet profound and vital aspect of the war experience to chronicle in D-Day, Again. The four scenes take place in a single day more than a half-century after the legendary Normandy invasion. Its two principal characters, Pop Taylor and Dooley (played by actors Fred Jackes and Don Gimpel), were paratroopers at Normandy, but are now aged widowers living in a retirement home.
By any measure, their existence is dull. Juxtaposed against their recollections of June 6, 1944, it’s downright dismal. For obvious reasons, the men spend most of this day contemplating how they might recapture their past glory, if only for one more fleeting moment.
The play is frequently comical, albeit with a prevailing overtone of bleakness. To a man, the five real war vets on hand understood those generally contradictory conditions. After all, they — more than anyone — know the anticipation, thrill, fear and loathing that comes with confronting a lethal enemy. Like the characters, they also know they likely will never again experience those emotions to those extremes.
“I thought it was great,” said Joe Driscoll, 90, one of the guests of honor. “It was different than I expected. I thought it was going to be heavy, but it was lighter. It showed what it’s like when you get old.”
Four of the vets at the Ashburner that night still call the Northeast home. They included Driscoll; Sir Stanley Wojtusik, 89; Leonard DeFinis, 94; and Alex Horanzy, 92. Mount Airy resident Bertram Levy, 92, joined them.
“These men were part of the greatest generation. The most horrible day was their greatest day,” said Philadelphia Family Court Judge Pat Dugan, who also attended the performance. “They’re the greatest generation. They have that title and I think the people that have served since then have carried on that tradition.”
Dugan is one of those people. As a sergeant in the Army Reserves, he served in Iraq under the command of Maj. Bryan Lentz, the former Pennsylvania state representative who is the son of the playwright. Martin Lentz’s daughter Kim directed the play, which also featured actors David Campbell as Pop’s son and Clare Golden Drake as the retirement home’s social worker.
Previously, the program played at a community theater in Chestnut Hill and to a veterans group in Bridesburg. Philadelphia Federal Credit Union sponsored the latest performance. There are no immediate plans to perform it again.
“I hope we do get to do more performances to acknowledge (the veterans),” Kim Lentz said. “Sometimes, I think the younger generations don’t realize the sacrifices made by these guys. We are humbled to be able to put on the show for such an honorable audience.”
The five living veterans in attendance represent the wide array of duties carried out by the nation’s military during the war. Horanzy survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and is president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Association, which has just five living members. Wojtusik fought in the epic Battle of the Bulge. His efforts during the war and to honor the 19,000 American casualties of the battle earned him knighthood in Belgium and Luxembourg. Levy, as a “documented original” Tuskegee Airman, served with the first group of African-American military aviators in the nation’s history. DeFinis served with an artillery unit that blasted its way across Europe. Driscoll manned anti-aircraft cannons on a ship at Leyte Gulf and Okinawa in the Pacific.
“I think it was a good gathering of veterans and friends of veterans. They were listening and very much tuned in,” Wojtusik said. “(The artists) injected into the program some very beautiful words about the behavior of the veterans at Normandy and (in general).”
Asked what inspired him to write the play, Martin Lenz politely declined to elaborate. “I like to let the play speak for itself,” he said.
Indeed it does. ••
Pat O’Brien, commander of Tacony Memorial American Legion Post 735, presents citations to Mike Driscoll of the Ashburner and the artists.
Five World War II veterans were among an audience of about 100 at the Ashburner Inn in Upper Holmesburg on Sept. 19. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTOS
