Lynn and I have spent the last 5 days touring The Beaches, Museums, and Cemeteries in Normandy. This has been a pilgrimage planned for most of my adult life and it did not disappoint in any way. We spent all but the last day with a guided tour group, but we wanted to “decompress” the last day because much of what we saw was overwhelming and will take months to unravel in our minds.
The nature of the cause and the immediacy of the moment is able to be written about. Movements of troops, ships, and planes can be depicted in words and photographs and in various forms of art. Historians by nature are empiric and strive to be “scientific” in their methodology—they never are especially those who write their own biographies. The emotions that each one of us brings to the “moment of observation” whether reading a book, or watching a play or an athletic event, or sharing a moment with a loved one, are all based within the context of our previous life’s experiences and the traditions of our faiths and philosophies.
Not surprisingly in our group of twenty-one Americans our feelings were all different but broke out into three factions of thought. Those who were able to feel the moment, those who were able to comprehend with deduction the moment, and those who were not moved at all by the undertaking. I know Lynn and I were moved from the same space, place, and context, but even members of my own family—my own children, have expressed different thoughts about the events of June 6th, 1944—”D-Day.”
From the military perspective—logistics, tactics and final strategy there has been nothing happen in the history of the world on such a scale. The chances for success were very small, especially when one sees the Cliffs of Point du Hoc or the embankments of Omaha Beach or the Hedge Rows that had to be traversed in each direction by Rangers and Paratroopers. Englishman and members of the French resistance were fighting for their homelands and survival. Americans were fighting for liberty and the soul of Western Civilization.
There are two images that come to mind that from a distance of space and time—years and geography, that I will never forget and that have hauntingly stayed with me for the last 4 days:
The first is the image of a group of young infantry men the moment before the door of their Higgins Boat is about to go down and they will see for the first time the task that they are about to face, and almost immediately they will plunge into the waters of the cold North Sea—many drowning on the spot and others being killed by a barrage of machine gun fire coming from cement fortified embankments from the top of the sand dunes. Their “courage of the moment” had to come from both within—God, and from without—from their comrades. How else could soldiers and warriors since time in memoriam mount charges from Leonidas at Thermophili—”ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ“—”come and get us”, to David with Goliath, to Crazy Horse “Today is a very good day to die” at Little Big Horn. I have never been in battle or even close to being in harm’s way in my military career, but it seems to me at the “moment of truth”. the warrior’s soul goes to a place none of us have ever visited. They place their mortal destiny in the hands of their leaders who planned their attack, into the hands of their fellow warriors, and their immortal souls into the hands of their God.
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The other side has warriors who may be similarly motivated—or not. As Mr. Lincoln opined when asked if God was on our side—that is not the question madam the question is” if we are on God’s side.” I have always wondered with the holocaust well established, and the occupation and subjugation of Europe well at hand, what were the thoughts of our enemies? What were their motivations? What was the bases of their faith? Surely fascism and Nazi-socialism was and is evil. In my heart and I know in the hearts of the brave kids at Normandy they trusted that they were fighting on the right side and against a great evil. I pray that in itself that gave them an inner peace.
But they also fought for us: for our liberties and for our souls today. We seem today to have forgotten, like a few in our tour group that the evils of despotic fascism, Marxism, and even progressivism, all grounded in humanistic atheistic political and economic philosophies, that have brought nothing but the yoke of poverty, subjugation, and slavery—political or otherwise, wherever they have been allowed to emerge. It is our job to fight evil wherever it appears—just like Jesus did at the Temple. We are in urgent need of a new GREAT AWAKENING, and I hope it happens before our next election, or the heart and soul of our great Republic will be lost. The sacrifices at Bunker Hill and Washington’s Crossing, Gettysburg and Shilo, Verdun and all the battles since then, that our brave military has fought in will be lost. And let’s not ever forget that unlike any other wars, ours have not been over territory, but over ideology, political philosophy and about our right to believe in whatever God we choose to believe in. What did we do when we won the war in Europe—we helped rebuild Europe. What did we do when we won over Japan, we rebuilt Japan and helped to establish a modern civil democracy in that country.
The second image that sticks with me is the image of THE STATUE OF THE AMERICAN YOUTH RISING FROM THE WAVES by Donald de leu at the Omaha Beach American Cemetery.
At the base of the statue are the words from the Battle Hymn of The Republic—one of Mr. Lincoln’s favorite songs and verses:
“MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD”
As the door of that Higgin’s Boat Opened, at their moment of truth and destiny, it is my prayer and hope today that those young boys for at least a brief moment, caught a glimpse of our Lord’s coming. Live or die, in my humble opinion they earned that brief moment in time, that if we are lucky enough, we can someday share with them.
For today—all I can say is THANK YOU. It seems so little. WE NEED A GREAT AWAKENING
