IN GRATITUDE TO ALL THE SILENCED SOULS

I represent a lot of men and women who fought in wars.  They always remember their fellow soldiers, especially the ones who never came back.  

Do you ever wonder how you'd hold up under fire, in the trenches?  I do.  It's the ultimate gauge of courage and resolve in the face of a greater purpose. I don't think I'd have what it takes, which only heightens my respect for those who've actually faced the reality.  But I continue to hope that I would.  

D-Day, in particular, has an icy grip on me.  All those young men. So much loss.  I can't begin to imagine what went through their heads when their feet hit the frigid water, rifles overhead.  Then the gunfire.   Everywhere.   No place to hide.  

Years ago, Duncan and I took our oldest son, Ian, to the D-Day beaches.  At first, I thought I was in the wrong place.  Something wasn't adding up.   All the pictures and film clips I'd seen of the invasion were in black and white.  But there I was, engulfed in the beauty of an exquisite turquoise seashore, surrounded by powdery white sand.  

I guess war doesn't lend itself to technicolor.  

I felt guilty, enjoying the splendor of the beachfront.  I knew that, beneath my feet, bloodshed lingered.  Even tides can't erase that kind of tragedy.   So many had died right where I was standing.  "Visitor" seemed incongruous, and silly, in the face of such human valor and sacrifice.  

It is the D-Day cemetery, however, that continues to haunt me.  Rows and rows of perfectly aligned white marble crosses.  Each denoting a silenced soul.  And the progeny who would never be.  

It's eery to think how many of us would not be here, but for the rogue trajectory of an enemy's bullet or a delayed footstep in the sand on Omaha Beach.   

Just as we were getting ready to leave the cemetery, Duncan and I saw Ian in the distance, walking quietly amidst the markers.  It was dusk, and a slight fog was drifting in.   We realized that he was the same age as most of the 9,383 men and 4 women buried there.  In that moment, time stood still, and life never seemed more precious.  Or fragile.  I wanted to run to Ian, and hold him.  To protect him in a way that the mothers of the fallen had been unable.  I grieved for them too.  

This Memorial Day, I'm reminded of a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic novel, The Lords of the Rings.  Elrond, one of the wisest of all characters in the book, eloquently reassures Frodo that he has made the correct decision in undertaking a seemingly impossible task.  Frodo has been called upon to enter into enemy territory and destroy the ring of power, thereby saving all the free peoples in Middle Earth from the evil Sauron. 

                "If I understand aright all that I have heard, I think that this is the task      

                appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will. 

                This is the hour of the Shire–folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to

                shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have

                foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the

                hour has struck?"

Tolkien knew that, when tested to the utmost, sometimes extraordinary courage is revealed in so-called 'ordinary' people.  

On the bluff overlooking the now peaceful beaches of Normandy, surrounded by the graves of common 'Shire-folk' American soldiers of that generation, it struck me that there was nothing in the least 'common' about the young men who'd stormed the beaches.    Somehow, incredibly, they met the challenge of the 'task appointed' to them, and swept into Fortress Europe with resolve and valor.

Some brave solders never make it home.  We have the honor of remembering them this weekend.  Souls silenced, but never forgotten.