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'.
I miss the talks we had.The long,sometimes rambling,talks of how we got here as a Nation...and perhaps where we will end up at.
The long talks of the desire of a people wanting to be Free...and the Iron Will that must be attached to that desire.....if for no other reason than for all of those who have been laid out...their faces covered.
For them.
P.S....I miss my friend...although,sometimes late at night ,I think I can still see him walking his old man walk...with that darn long eared beagle attached to his side.
redrock
MEMORIAL DAY....for them.
redrock
redrock
redrock
redrock
redrock
redrock
Thank You for standing tall in WWII.
This Vietnam Vet appreciates what you did.
redrock
redrock
I'm starting a collection of the Memorial Day threads by redrock.
I'll ping you when the new one is posted.
This way you'll have the whole collection also.
MEMORIAL DAY--Thread One--"Discussions With a One-Legged Man"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1141564/posts
MEMORIAL DAY--Thread Two--"My Daddy's Finally Home..."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142082/posts
MEMORIAL DAY--Thread Three--"The Bodybags of Afghanistan and Iraq"--(Roger's Story)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142776/posts
redrock
Tonk, thanks for the ping. These are all good essays. Pinging my short list.
CG, KT, & TWS; I think you'll enjoy these.
Bumping for a later read....cooking today for my neighbor....the husband died a few days ago.
I'll never forget.
bump
Fighting to make men free, fighting evil, fighting for the comrades that have died,...I will remember those who have gone before and those who have come home too soon....
Thank you redrock. Again.
I'll walk two small graveyards,one from Revolution,in Maine.
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