70 years ago....lest we forget

I get emotional at times

     Sometimes I tear up.  Not ashamed to admit it.
     Jackie and I went to Omaha Beach on one of our early trips to Europe.  We had a chance to walk through the cemetery, read the names on the graves, and think.
     We also went to Pointe du Hoc, where 225 Rangers scaled a bluff to knock out German guns that were no longer there.  So the Rangers had to move inland, find the guns, and destroy them.  They did. I stood in a German bunker.  I stood in the "dent" of a shell hole. I looked over the edge of Pointe du Hoc.
    On a subsequent trip I had the chance to go down the bluff at Omaha Beach and to walk the beach.
    I tried to imagine what the boys and men felt that day.  Jumping of a landing boat in water that may be waist deep, or neck deep; carrying a 70 pound sack, facing German machine gun fire from the left, the right, the front.  The water is a long way from the bluffs.  The sheer terror that must have greeted them is hard to comprehend.
     We were able to visit with several British survivors of that day.  They were in the American Cemetery, just wandering and visiting with people.  A small crowd had gathered around them when I joined the group.
     This was in 2006 or so.  These guys were frail old men, one of them bent over, all of them with canes.  And stories to tell.
     One vet told of approaching a beach in a landing ship.  It wasn't Omaha, it may have been Gold or Juneau.  He said as they craft was approaching the landing  a shell hit the boat next to his.  The boat was destroyed and all of the men killed.  His friends.  His fellow countrymen.
      Another vet was asked his age.  I can remember the conversation.
      "I turned 21 five days before June 6,"  he told a fellow American in the cemetery.
       "21!  Weren't you scared?" she asked.
      He paused for a slight second, not long.   "By the time we hit the beach, I had been in Africa.  I fought my way across Italy.  Scared?  No, not by then."
     It was hard to imagine these gentle old souls in the fight for freedom's life.  But there they were, in their blue blazers and red berets.  Each one of them had a chest that was filled with medals.  They sobbed when they told of friends killed.  Or brothers.  Or cousins, uncles, townsmen.
     I don't believe in war.  I don't think violence is an answer.  But there are good wars.  And WW II was a good war, if war can ever be good.
     I've thought about the boys storming the beach, climbing the cliffs, dropping out of the sky in the dark of night.
      I have been to the American cemetery twice.  I have seen the seemingly endless rows of crosses and Stars of David.
     I have paused amongst the graves and said thanks to those who lie below those crosses and stars.
     And I do get teary.  These men, now grandparents or great grandparents, now finding themselves on the tail end of life.  These men, once boys serving their countries, truly were The Greatest Generation.