Friday, June 6, 2014

our 10 thousand dead

70 years ago today 150,000 souls launched themselves from Great Britain to liberate Europe from tyranny.

So many Americans died in that invasion that the bodies had to be left behind, instead of bringing them home a cemetery was created there.

There are nearly 10,000 Americans buried there.



The vast majority of those who went into combat were children really, in their late teens and early 20's.  Some of them parachuted into the darkness of night, others ran on to a beach facing machine gun fire.

Some were children.  By today's standards they would still be in school.  On that day, they were the men challenged to save the world.

As I start my day, I'm watching an interview with two of them, and when asked what was the most surprising part of the invasion one replied, "when a man is shot and facing death, you think they'll be strong, but when they know the end is coming most of them cry out for their mothers."

And they heard that, a lot.

A few years ago, when sitting around the dinner table with my veteran father and uncle, the older niece shot her mouth off about how some newspapers were printing the names of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on their front page.  She commented about it, asking my father and uncle if the newspapers did that during their war.

My uncle just laughed, he didn't even look up from his meal.  "why is that funny?", my niece asked.  "It would have taken up the whole page" my dad finally replied.

Today my friends worry about important things, like making sure their toddler doesn't get scratched by a cat, if they can get their kids in the best schools, and on the best soccer teams, and have the best things.  The kids were raised on Teletubbies and now have iPhones, the girls are anorexic, the boys grow fat playing video games, and most don't have to work because mom and dad want them to focus on their education... which ends up being more about what they learn from starlets and sports heroes.

Back then, the 19 year old 'men' who parachuted in with the 82nd Airborne fought for 33 days without relief.  Today we worry about the kids getting too much homework and we complain about shortened summer breaks.

Our problems today aren't the mass genocide of jews and the crushing oppression of foreign armies across Europe while the Japanese run rampant across the East killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese.  We have terrorists that we ignore while we run around paranoid about what others think of us in our SUVs as we head to our social gatherings.

We as a people have forgotten what's important in life, because some things are so easy that we assume they will always be there.  We are so comfortable, we assume that we will never be invaded, our lives are great, we can now complain about important things like Common Core and kids caught sexting, and we are not scarred with the memory of our destroyed cities overrun by invaders.

We have forgotten what it is to be a people who know to do what's right, over what's comfortable.

The only soil kept by the Americans in Europe in World War 2 is the land needed to bury our dead, the rest was returned to those who lost it to tyranny.

There are only 8000 remaining D-Day veterans today, if you're lucky enough to meet one you need to thank him, because D-Day was as much about keeping Hitler from invading us as it was about pushing him back from what he had already taken.

And it cost thousands of American lives.

Try to teach your children the depth of their sacrifice.  Attempt to stop them long enough as they run off to camp or to the pool or to submerge themselves into video games, so they can understand that 70 years ago today, the beaches of Normandy were literally red with the blood of Americans.

Some parents will want to save their children from the horrific thought of this day, they will make excuses in the hopes of sheltering their young minds from such a horrific part of history.

Those parents are not doing their children any favors.

We cannot forget the sacrifice made by that generation, and why they are the greatest generation.  It's sad on some level that we have become a fat nation that chooses to treat the story of D-Day like an overlooked paragraph in a history book.

Do something.

Make your kids watch Saving Private Ryan, tell them without fanfare about the Americans that saved the world.  Make sure they understand that EVERY household in the country contributed to the war with 20 MILLION people in uniform.  Do something, anything, so that today they can understand the sacrifice made.

And maybe, you and them, will understand again what's important in life.