Yesterday, September 3rd 2016 I went to the beach. The date is not significant; I didn’t go for any anniversary. I didn’t go alone. I went with family, some of my nearest and dearest.
I cried because I suddenly became aware of how I would go on with my life if any of these beloved people were to go from home and never return. Of course I’d be devastated, but if they were to go from home for the benefit of someone else, someone they had never met and were never likely to meet. If they were the smallest cog in a massive, mighty machine and the chances were exceptionally high that they would be killed? That is unimaginable, I couldn’t imagine it, I don’t think I want to. I certainly never wish to experience it.
Yet, yesterday I stood on the beach where so many did exactly that.
Yesterday, I visited Utah Beach in Normandy, France.
I didn’t sense any souls or presence, even though, if anywhere, that would be where I imagine souls of the departed to linger; at the place they drew their last, terrified breath.
The beach stretched out to the sea as beaches tend to. Great stretches of standing water waiting for the tide to come back and reclaim them. A wind-powered kite/sailboard thing splashed through the temporary ponds on the sand and the sky hung over us, a breath taking blue as only late, lazy summer’s days seem to capture. There were no clouds, just sparsely shredded wisps of white, like a small piece of cotton wool eked out to try to cover and dilute the concentrated blue of the sky.
And while three generations of my family wandered around, the younger ones carefree and not capable of understanding yet, the older ones stunned by the poignancy of the sacrifice, I stood at the top of where so many foreign men fought and died and all I could do was stand still and quiet while tears slipped from my eyes and down my face.
Those men, brave, selfless men, died to free a country from the insidious grip of tyranny. A country they had probably never visited, possibly had never even heard of. Yet they ran from the landing craft ready to kill and die for the liberation of the French people. They died in their hundreds – men not old enough to have many experiences in life at all, men who would never be fathers, grandfathers – so many died. Just the thought of those young men who died that day is heartbreakingly, wretchedly harrowing. It is incomprehensible that someone would die for another, without pause, without a second thought but for so many to die in that one place – I can’t even imagine.
I can’t watch war films, not because I’m not interested, but because of the thought that the terrible events are based on actual events and my heart can’t bear to think of the terror they faced without balking. I cannot bear to imagine the mothers, wives, girlfriends, cousins, friends, family grieving for their losses without hope of even saying one final goodbye.
Yesterday I went to Utah Beach and I cried and today I’m crying again just typing this up.
Thank you for the sacrifice of so many unnamed men, women, children. The best we can do is to be worthy of that sacrifice.
