D Day remembering in 2011
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011Normandie is awash with D day festivities. This must be the largest party in Europe right now. The beer and wine are flowing, the cheers and laughter pierce the air, lots of toasting and well wishes.
In the midst of this, I am traveling with my brother, and we accompany a few of the surviving D day veterans who return every year. The remnant of veterans is lost in the circus of re-enacters, food stands, souvenir vendors, all of it awash in alcohol.
There is a lot of pain here. The surviving veterans are the kernel of it all, but the children and grandchildren of the English veterans swell their ranks.
At the Pegasus bridge cafe, Madame Gondree welcomes the returning vets who liberated the place decades ago. She was five years old when she opened her window in the morning to see what the noises were outside as the british commandos scurried across and around the bridge to disarm the explosives the Germans had set on it.
Today, the cafe welcomes a group of bicyclists, riding to raise money for injured Afghan war vets in Britain. It seems that carnage is determined to continue.
Last night we had dinner in an 800 year old farmhouse. The family that owns the farm, and has for six generations, offered us excellent steaks from the family business of raising beef cattle. The parents of our host entertained both German and British troops after D day. The house was in no mans land, the family trapped in it. The Germans spent the nights, the Brits spent the days. I wondered if they ate the fine steak. The stand off lasted 85 days, somehow both the house and family survived.
History is very real here, but so is the present. Talks include the current banking mess that appears to be pervasive. It seems that banks in the UK also got bailed out, but are not lending money either. The current Middle East wars are sucking the British dry also, though at least the rich seem to be paying their fair share in United Kingdom.
One of the elderly commandos made a comment about the issue of gays in the military, assuring himself that he never knew any. That one set me off, and I politely suggested that he knew and served with many.
At least one of the other elderly commandos had spent some of our shared time commenting on the pretty little faggot boys of his youth, as well as the nipples poking up under my knit shirt. It was our special bond as he winked at me. We truly are everywhere.
My brother and I make a full compliment. He is a retired Sgt. Mjr. Airborne, Special Forces, Black Opps. I am semi retired from decades of working as a psychotherapist, child welfare worker, addictions counselor and Gay Rights activist. We both understand that freedom is not given, but must be fought for, that all the generosity in the world means nothing without respect.
On a very personal level, the cost of freedom for both of us, has been high. I live with the hundreds of friends and peers who died in the AIDS plague years, the ongoing struggles of having basic rights and freedoms tossed around in dozens of ballot initiatives (during my lifetime) and other political games, mostly by so called “conservatives” who have no problem spending this country into massive debt, while telling me and my kind that we shouldn’t exist. My brother has given his left hip, his right knee, and the bottom of his back to protecting freedom, not to mention living with PTSD for all the death he has seen.
Though the content of our lives has been very different, what we both share is a life lived that only peers can really understand.
This trip has been more than worth the cost. My brother and I have never felt closer, I have met some wonderful people, and I have spent time with many veterans. The young ones from Iraq, Afghanistan and such are living in as much or more pain than the old ones. On the bicycle ride, I see many young men with no legs, or an arm missing, or both. I wonder how their lives will fare in the coming world. The older vets came home with bodies more intact. Medical technology then did not allow for saving the lives of the almost dead. There were no “Medi-vacs”, just dump trucks filled with bodies. The American cemetery on a bluff above Omaha beach goes on for acres and acres.
The WWII ones returned as heroes in 1945. The D day vets were in units that lost 70 to 90% of their members. Most of the carnage stayed in Europe in the enormous cemeteries that are part of the landscape. We visited the British cemetery and the German cemetery as well. In each of them, the special bond among the soldiers, which easily crosses national and political lines, is apparent. Old men who once fought as enemies, now easily embrace and sob together as brothers, remembering their fallen comrades.
The bond remains the same, maintain the mission, protect your buddies, bring everyone home. The old vets generously salute the young ones, they understand and honor their sacrifice. Not too many others do these days.
The current crop of veterans return to a world that rarely remembers there is a war going on, much less that these young men and women left behind their innocence, along with arms, legs and shattered lives in some desert in the middle east. The stories of being haunted by the faces of those they killed, often children and civilians, are rampant in their confessions to me. Their scars are deep, and few people take the time to listen to them. All of the beer and bravado fails to remove the faces that haunt their dreams. Self forgiveness is often elusive, and few beyond their ranks understand.
Will we honor them as we honor the old ones? Will we have events for their fellowship and renewal? Or will we prefer to forget them, like we have so effectively forgotten our Vietnam veterans? As I write this, newly elected Tea Party members of congress are trying to privatize the Veterans Administration services. How quickly will our greed make these new veterans political orphans in their youth?
Our last night in France, Gene and I were sitting in the bar at the IBIS hotel with a friend of his who is a historian. He was on his way to Poland to tour Aushwitz. Joe is as “conservative” as it gets, probably a Tea Party supporter, who lives in Alabama. A well dressed woman from Canada joined us, a retired teacher and principal, and we had a somewhat restrained conversation about the current state of the world. She was holding a copy of “Time” magazine with the story “What Recovery” on the cover. We spoke of the current state of things in North America, and she basically said the real problem is that no one seems willing to work together anymore. Her father was a union organizer, she was a teacher, and then a principal. When she became a principal, many of her friends had to stop speaking to her because as an administrator, she became the enemy.
She noted that Germany had similar economic problems a few years ago, and then leadership started working together to renew Germany’s industrial assets so that they could start making things that could be sold worldwide. In other words, they started working together, not apart.
So it seems that we live in a very divided America these days, and the real reason we can’t seem to fix anything effectively is that we are working apart, not together.
If the D Day veterans have anything to teach this current world, it is that differences, even extreme ones, are temporary. Today’s enemies become tomorrows allies. What is essential is meaningful dialogue, forgiveness, and a vigorous commitment to common goals. All of these elements seem absent from the current leadership landscape in our country these days, and the Europeans are genuinely baffled by it. They remember an America that forgave Germany, helped it rebuild, and welcomed it into full partnership in NATO. The current isolationism and arrogance of our immediate past leadership (Bush/Cheney) genuinely baffles them because they know Americans to be hospitable, generous of spirit and resources.
The next question is, will we remember and renew that generosity as well?
Edward Garren
