Posted on 05/26/2004 2:59:17 PM PDT by redrock
He had an old mans walk.
Slow steady pace...deliberate.
He would walk the neighbourhood 2...3....4 times a day with his aged beagle Fred at his side...always ending up for a least a few moments at the bottom of the hill in the graveyard sitting by his wife who had passed on a few years before.
He didn't talk much to the rest of us. But he was friendly enough to always say "Hi!!".
He was friendly enough...and patient as he would stand still as the neighborhood children gathered around Fred.(That beagle had the biggest ears I have ever seen on a dog...or anything for that matter......)
Then one day, and I don't know why to this day, but he stopped and began to talk with me as I was working in the front yard.
Just small talk really...but it was as if he was searching for something...some connection ...something that maybe we had in common.
He started to talk a little more each time...adding bits and peices of his life. Born here....married in this place...1 son...1 daughter.
Then one day....he sat down and began to talk. Of when he was 19....and a rifleman in the 29th Division...frightened..heading towards a beach in France.
He told me of how once in a great while (he was in the middle of the landing craft) you could actually see the beach.....and the huge explosions that were happening there....and how he hoped that no Germans would be left. He told me of the sound of the shells going overhead....sometimes so loud that you couldn't hear the guy next to you...of how you could always tell the rounds from the Battleships...as they sounded like boxcars going by.
...and when the ramp lowered of how the men in the front half were killed in a blink of an eye... the German machine guns concentrating on the front of the craft. Of how men next to him...climbed over the sides of the landing craft...and drowned ...they were so weighted down with equipment.
...of how he tried to step sideways to avoid the machine guns....of how somehow he ran and found a tiny bit of safety behind a small bluff....his rifle left somewhere 'back there'. Of how he tried to make himself just as small as he could.....and tried to pretend that he wasn't where he was.
On a beach...with the dead and the dying.
And how,gradually, he became more and more aware of what was going on .
The repeated attempts to get past the beach.
The number of men huddled, just like he was, against that small bluff...or hiding behind the beach obstacles....or ,sometimes, trying to hide behind the body of someone already dead.
Of how the Germans would keep firing into the dead and dying...just to be sure.
He said he became gradually aware of one of the officers telling them that they would have to get off the beach. That those without weapons would have to find one....that they had some killing to do. He knew who the officer was.....he had seen him before but he couldn't remember his name at that time and place.
He told me of how he found a rifle....and got ready.
I asked him how, in the middle of all that death, could he find the heart and courage to want to keep on fighting.
He said that one of the things he noticed was how,even in the middle of battle, the dead were being laid in a row...with whatever cover those doing the placing could find...covering their heads and faces. Sometimes just the helmet.
And then he said that the officer told the men getting ready to make a last ditch effort to get off the beach...that they were going to get back into the fight if for no other reason than for those men laying there with their faces covered in death....that NO man of the 29th ...NO American.....would be allowed to die in vain....for nothing. That they all had come here to fight and defeat evil....and that for 'Those men'....for 'Them'...they would have to continue on.
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"This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. I don't.....this hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army going out to set other men free."
Joshua Chamberlain
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So...here we are.
In a war...fighting to set other men free....and to fight another facet of the Evil that ,once again, is trying to enslave us. Fighting against an Evil that sends men out to kill small children on a bus......or to crash aircraft into tall buildings in an effort to dishearten us...to make us afraid.
...and each night we are visited by the news that more of our sons or brothers or fathers are dead in that war. That they are being put into bodybags (lets not sentimentalize it...lets be abrupt about it) and sent home to their loved ones....to their wives or parents or children.
And each night we are visited with the notion (put out by those who co-operate with that Evil) that we need to withdraw...to place ourselves at the mercy of the appeasers...at the mercy of the Evil...that it is too difficult a task for us to continue on with.
And each night we are visited with the idea that it is us...who are at fault. That somehow it is our love of Freedom...and our desire to pass that love of Freedom down to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that makes us wrong...that somehow makes it our fault. That somehow we have created those who would send bombs to schoolyards or Synagogues or Business Centres to kill and maim.
That somehow...we must end this war against the Evil.....that we are not strong enough to withstand any more deaths.
And when I think of this...I think of Roger's story.
Of the bodies of his friends...lying in a row...and of how the sight of them helped him, and others, to continue the fight. I can imagine him telling me that all you have to do is to think of all those Americans in bodybags....and how we must go on with the battle if for no other reason then for 'them'.
So that none of them died in vain.....
That none of them have died for nothing.
That we must continue on in the war against the Evil.....if for nothing more than for 'Them'.
Thank you oh so very much for these!
Thanks Redrock!
A Memorial Day Thank You, to all the Vets who never came home from all the wars and those who did.
Amen
BTTT!!!!!!!
Thank you redrock. For them....indeed.
The nursery had to come to the house to replace a tree that'd kacked & I'd told 'em *not* to send the same team out as they had, before. (~the first guys didn't know their butts from holes in the ground, as a result my beloved tree died due to the imbecile's carelessness...)
Anyway, three guys in their late 20s to early 30s show up with the new tree, & one of the guys has a Marine E5 tattoo, the kind of insig one'd see on a Marine's Class A?
The young man's the quiet type, rarely making eye contact with me, so I take the initiative & ask, "You a Marine, Mister?"
He says, "Damned straight I am." ~very matter-of-factly.
I tell him I'm ex-Army & he says, "That right, well OK."
I asked if he'd seen any combat in the War on Terror, & he tells me he'd just returned from a year in Iraq.
Was stationed outa Fort Campbell, KY, with a small Marine Reserve attachment located there.
I told him, "Welcome home my friend. Job well done!"
He looked at me (& my outstretched hand) kind of incredulosly, slowly extended his soiled hand to shake, & said, "Thanks." n Abrams M1 tank commander, no less, & then the stories start.
As it turns out his "Boss," the guy with him & the other fella -- an even quieter guy -- are Marine EOD; &, the three are childhood pals who enlisted in the Marine Reserves, together.
Man-oh-man what a time I had talking with these guys.
Between 'em, they related many great stories of their experience over there, including tales of odd lizards & the Camel Spiders.
The tanker had a degree in Social Studies & due to the timing of his return was too late to catch on with a (High) school to teach so was working with his pals at the nursery to eat & pay the rent until next semester.
They came straight faced & left with the kind of smiles only an exchange of military experiences/stories can give a guy, y'know?
BTW, we *did* talk politics and these 3 were pretty damning of the 'Rats, the Liberal-Socialist mediots overall & in particular the fruad John Kerry.
We *all* howled at the guy's 3 Purple Hearts & what they knew he'd endured to recieve 'em.
Funny how the military people know about the Kerry louse but the public hasn't a clue.
Poor 'Rats.
Given what they'd told me of their opin & that of -- virtually -- every other guy & gal in uniform?
I sure in the hell hope the 'Rats aren't looking to our fighting forces.
...for votes. :o)
Thank you,Redrock.
I will NEVER FORGET!!
Thanks redrock!
Thanks for the ping, Tonkin!
Ping...
Thanks for the ping, BB!
I did enjoy them. Hard to read, though. I have an eye infection that makes my eyes water. Although, who would have known the difference while I was reading these.
KeyTapper
redrock
Memorial Day Bump.
redrock
redrock
redrock
But...I tend to believe that it's true.
redrock
5.56mm
True....but when that sand gets in there...it only brings out whats in your heart.
(Grin)
redrock
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