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| Pointe du Hoc, Normandy Beach, September 2008 |
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| Omaha Beach, Normandy, September 2008 |
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| Omaha Beach Monument |
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| American Cemetery at Saint Laurent, Normandy, September 2008 |
I was looking at one of Diane's many photo books the other day. She does them to commemorate significant family events, trips, reunions, milestones, and whatever else she deems worthwhile to capture for posterity. They are time consuming to complete but the results are always worth the effort. Diane does the photo selection and layout and Kodak prints the finished product.
I was perusing an album she created on one of our trips to France and I lost myself in her photos of Normandy, France. We made our first trip there on June 6, 1995, 51 years to the day of the Allied invasion. It was a day I will never forget. For a few brief hours, I was there. I saw it. I felt it. I was transfixed by it: Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, and the American Cemetery at Saint Laurent. I've seen the old newsreels of the D-Day landing and the sacrifices that were made that day, but to be there in person was a profoundly moving moment unlike anything I'd experienced before or since. I stood on the water's edge at Omaha Beach. A steady rain pelted my face as I looked into a cold, unforgiving north wind. Adrenalin surged through my body, and I had goose bumps everywhere. Why, I asked myself? There was no withering machine gun fire, no exploding shells, no cries of pain from fallen comrades, no living hell, just the beach and me. The eerie silence of that day was in stark contrast to the incredible chaos and terror of June 6, 1944.
I tried to walk away once, twice, three times but I couldn't. I just stood there alone with my thoughts and cried. I, a 49 year-old man without a care in the world and I simply couldn't control my emotions. The sense of history was overwhelming. My legs were like the iron pilings that remain to this day, sunk in the sand. My mind said it was time to leave but my body called out to me to stay and ponder the magnitude of what had happened there. I'll never know the men who died that day for you and me, but what, if I had the chance, would I say to them now? Could I find the words to thank them? Could I tell them their sacrifices changed the world?
I wondered out loud, how HAD they managed to secure a landing against such withering odds know that certain death was everywhere around them? The courage displayed that fateful day in 1944 was most extraordinary. They didn't ask what was in it for them, they had a job to do and they did it. As Lincoln said after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, "they gave the last full measure of devotion...” The soldiers of D-Day did just that. These heroes died so I could play baseball in the park with my sons, enjoy a sunset with Diane, play a set of tennis on a summer afternoon, and do a million other things we all take for granted. The 9,000 young men who lay beneath the crosses in Saint Laurent were denied all these privileges of life. Their lives ended before they'd had a chance to savor life's pleasures. But for us, we can worship where we please, live where we want, attend the college of our choice, and live in the greatest country on the face of the earth.
I am not a political activist but I look at the state of our nation today, and I wonder. Whether you agreed with them or not, Nixon, Kennedy, Dole, Bush 41, and so many more faced the crucible of tyranny and were shaped by it causing them to put country ahead of personal gain and ambition. I can only hope that our current leaders find a way to work together for the collective good of our nation.
There are no doubt lessons to be learned from history and I hope we are all listening. The beaches of Normandy are quiet now. May they remain that way forever.
