Re: O T Tail end Charlie

Jef. wrote:
"eightpans" wrote

It is my intension to take my 16 year old son to Normandy quite soon
just in the hope that some of the gravity of the past hits home
somewhat. You can but try.


We've never been invaded here, or suffered thru the Blitz, or had to fight on our beaches or alleyways. Never had to go underground to escape the bombing, or meet secretly in basements to make plans to blow up a munitions train. No foreign troops have enslaved us and dragged us off to prison camps, raped our women or bayoneted our babies on the streets for sport. We've been so incredibly blessed in our security. It's always elsewhere that *our* dead fall. So, it's hard for the average person to fully embrace the magnitude of human suffering and evil that's wrought in the name of policy, nationalism, socialism, democracy, expansionism, annexing territory, manifest destiny-- whatever the flavor of the month is when it comes to rising up and slaughtering your neighbors in record numbers. TV news can get you only so close-- and they're doing such a shitty, whitewashed, censored and sanitized job of covering the current debacle that it's hard to get an accurate reading. In excess of 3670 dead and 21,000 wounded, as of today, I think. No end in sight.

We have the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, http://thewall-usa.com/wallpics/wallatnight.htm down on the National Mall, which is a very sobering experience. The simple, stark, black stone wall with the 58,195 names of dead American GIs carved into it will simply... bring you up short. It's the one D.C. attraction where people don't seem to know what to do or how to act.

Frivolous posing almost never happens-- though tons of photos are taken. The usual high-spirited, touristy hubbub cease almost immediately as the gravity of what it represents sinks in. Most days you'll see bunches of flowers leaning against it at various spots, or the odd medal or insignia or shoulder patch or boonie hat left behind as a tribute. Mostly you see people staring, aghast, or touching a carved name very gently and reverently with their fingertips. Now and then someone brings a sheet of tracing paper and does a rubbing, capturing the image of the carved name on the paper. I see a lot of guys around my age-- Viet Nam era and other vets who, like me, are crying for friends we lost over there. It's a very special, almost religious environment and experience.

People need these places-- monuments, or the remnants of preserved battlefields or other historical sites steeped in storied bloodletting to both heal old wounds and to reflect on the absolute horrors we're capable of bringing down on one another. Take the lad to Normandy and try to impart a sense of its significance to him. Even if it does not sink in immediately, he'll "get it" one day-- and be glad of it, and maybe be one of the real thinkers who may help avert the next cycle of bloodshed.


Don and I have never been fortunate enough to see the real Wall. We did have the opportunity to see the traveling Wall when it came to a city near us. What an absolutely sobering sight. Thinking about it still brings tears to my eyes. Watching my husband walk up to the wall, find the names of his lost friends (some of whom he watched die) and then watch him start sobbing was one of the most heart wrenching things I have ever seen. Tents with pictures and Viet Nam era memorabilia were set up around the site. There were so many grown men walking around with tears spilling down their cheeks. Sigh.
Debbie VOF
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