BOSTON — The 11 months Cornelius Francis “Fran” Healy spent in active duty “between D-Day and V-Day” in World War II is something the 101-year-old couldn’t talk about until he was 80 years old.
“I got a ride back to North Cambridge and walked down Massachusetts Avenue to my house. Walked in, there was no one there. It was the middle of the day. Felt very strange,” Healy told the Herald Thursday from his apartment in The Gables at Winchester, a senior living community.
It was August 1945 following the end of the war when he and fellow American GIs got onto a boat near Antwerp, Belgium, to return to U.S. soil. He landed first in Fort Dix, N.J., before shuttling up to Fort Devens, where he stayed for a week before discharge.
