#FlashbackFriday: The Exchange D-Day Veteran Who Returned to Normandy—More Than 50 Times
Eighty-one years ago today, on the morning June 6, 1944, Staff Sgt. Ted Liska was among the thousands of troops storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
Lugging an 81mm mortar, Liska struggled onto Utah Beach. By nightfall, Liska and most of the rest of Company D, 32nd Regiment of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, were up to their waists in marshlands flooded by retreating German troops.
Liska survived D-Day and another year of fierce fighting in Europe, where he remained after the war. More than 30 years after D-Day, he and his wife lived in Belgium, where, in 1975, he was a senior clerk at the AAFES-Europe Chievres/Belgium shopping center.
But there was more to Liska’s World War II story than being in combat in Europe. The story had an epilogue. More than one, really.
Almost annually after the war, Liska made a one-man June 6 pilgrimage to Utah Beach, where he paid private tribute to “the real heroes of D-Day, the men who gave their lives in the liberation of a continent,” he told the Exchange Post in 1975. “Those men who fell during the first terrible hours of the invasion won the war in Europe.”
He would also visit the American Military Cemetery at St. Laurent, inland from Omaha Beach, another Normandy landing zone, where “about 75 of my buddies, who fell to enemy fire on June 6, 1944, rest in the quiet French countryside,” he told the Exchange Post.
In 1964, D-Day Veteran Ted Liska put on his sergeant’s uniform and served as an interpreter for former President Gen. Dwight Eisenhower when the World War II Allied commander led 20th anniversary ceremonies marking the D-Day invasion. in 1975, Liska was a senior clerk at the AAFES-Europe Chievres/Belgium shopping center.
Exchange Post archives have no record of when Liska left the Exchange or how long he worked for the organization—in fact, the 1975 story appears to be only time he’s mentioned. But his name comes up a few times in civilian media:
- In 1961, Liska appeared on an episode of “David Brinkley’s Journal,” in which Liska and a German veteran named Wilhelm Voigt were shown visiting Normandy battle sites and commenting separately on their experiences. The program aired Dec. 6, timed not for the anniversary of the Normandy invasion but for the near-anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
- In 1984, the Chicago Tribune reported on Liska’s near-annual returns for a 40th anniversary story on D-Day; he was about to return for the 37th Liska recalled his fear and prayers as he hit the beach, telling the paper, “I just can’t understand why I survived and all these others were left behind. I feel God or somebody must have been looking after me.”
- In 2002, when The Associated Press reported on President George W. Bush’s visit to Normandy shortly before the D-Day anniversary, Liska was there. First Lady Laura Bush greeted him upon her arrival at the Normandy American Cemetery to attend Memorial Day ceremonies. Their meeting was featured in an Associated Press photo that ran in multiple newspapers.
After a commemorative D-Day photo in 2004, information about Liska becomes hard to find. By the time he met First Lady Bush, he had returned to Normandy more than 50 times. One of the few years he didn’t return was 1975, the year he talked to the Exchange Post—he attended his son’s high school graduation, which took place June 6, 1975.
Sources: Exchange Post archives; “Enemies at Normandy 17 Years Ago, German and American Revisit Scene,” Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, Dec. 6, 1961; “D-Day of 1984: Americans ready to invade again,” Storer Riley, Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1984; “Bush pays homage at grave sites of those who died in Normandy invasion,” Tom Raum, The Associated Press via the East Oregonian, May 27, 2002; Newspapers.com
