Fifty-eight years ago, my beloved Uncle Beto landed with the other Allied troops at Normandy. As the nation marked that anniversary earlier this month, my uncle died in Laredo, in his sleep, serenely, in contradiction to his small but dramatic role in history. He was one of thousands who were born Mexican but who went to war in the 1940s as Americans. His war photos show him as a roguish, handsome Errol Flynn-like character, down to his thin mustache. On the rare occasion when he spoke of the war, he avoided talk of battle. Instead, he would speak glowingly of the beauty of Paris, its art, its monuments, its lights, its women, its bread, its eggs  all of its food  and his memory that the French shared what little they had with the Americans who had liberated them. He long dreamed of going back, but by the 90s, he had lost his sight. He never returned to Paris.

     One Saturday in June 1994, as the country was marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day, I took him to breakfast at La Mexicana, our favorite Houston hangout. We went there regularly and argued over huevos rancheros about politics. We exchanged jokes, talked about family, described wonderful meals, and he would tell me about growing up in Mexico where his father had almost been killed during the Revolution. At one of those breakfasts, perhaps this very one, he smelled the chicharrones, the Mexican chitlins. "I sure would love to have some," he said, "but it would truly be bad for my cholesterol." His health was already failing him. And I saw him denying himself a favorite treat. "Uncle Beto," I said, "you'll turn 80 next week. It will take those chicharrones 20 years to kill you." He laughed and had two. It was that Saturday that I asked him about D-Day, and it was that Saturday that he opened up. I believe he said he landed on "D-Day + 3." He spoke of the training in Great Britain, of the secrecy, of the storms, of the seasickness among his mates, of the I almost wrote "fear." But he never spoke of fear, although he must have felt it. He described the horror of men who could not swim in water so deep that the Germans didn't have to shoot them, of men who accidentally dropped their weapons inthe water and had to hit the beaches without any defense and of men who were promptly picked off by German fire when they did hit the beaches. It was a terrifying scene. But his voice never betrayed emotion. It was his right eye that betrayed him. One single and solitary tear kept streaming down his face. He never tried to wipe his eye dry. I tried to avert the glistening cheek, but it was witness to a great moment in history. How could I look away? He seemed to be silently crying for all the friends henever saw again, for all the blood spent, for youth suddenly interrupted and forever lost. My Uncle Beto had seen to it that I would never forget what his generation had sacrificed and endured. My uncle survived the Germans on the shores of Normandy and later on the march to Paris. When he returned home, he moved to Houston, began a family, earned a degree and tried to get a job downtown as an accountant. "We don't hire Mexicans," he was told more than once.

    My Uncle Beto enacted his 1950s brand of affirmative action. He founded his own business, built it up, supported his family and sent his children to Notre Dame and the University of Miami. One become an attorney, the other a teacher. My Uncle Beto, like so many of his generation, medals or no, was an American hero. Today, I want to believe, he is finally back in Paris with his comrades in arms. His name was Humberto V. Trevino. Lest we forget. Fernando Dovalina, formerly an editor at the Houston Chronicle, is a playwright. His two-act play, "The Man in the Trunk," recently had a six-week run in Houston.)

06/23/2002