Two Words



As I have grown more mature (not "older,") June the Sixth has taken on much more meaning for me.  The remembrance of D Day, June 6, 1944 affects many people very deeply.  I've come to be one of them. 

Imagine, if you will…

It’s been raining for days, but the weather has finally broken.  In the foggy mist, however, it is still cooler than you had expected.  You now find yourself hunkered down in a long, steel landing craft with the rest of your platoon… guys you have come to know quickly over the last several weeks.  The craft is being piloted over the choppy waters of the English Chanel which seems filled with more floating vessels than you ever knew existed.  Ahead, you see in the distance a sandy beach guarded by high cliffs that appear insurmountable.  The cliffs loom larger as the petty officer guides the craft ever closer.  The bombardment of the beach and cliffs has been underway for as long as you have been able to make them out. 

You glance around.  Your buddies all look just like you even though you may be a farm boy from the mid-west and the fellow next to you is a barber from Brooklyn.  You have come to know and appreciate each other.  You trust one another.  You have to.

Your lieutenant looks like he is still in high school as he moves about the craft slapping your pals on their shoulders… bucking them up.  He seems to be shivering.  Is he shaking from the cool of the salty spray that blows up from the waves and over the sides of the craft?  Surely he is not scared… not afraid of what lies ahead.

Nearer to the shore now.  The bombardment from the ships far behind has stopped.  The crafts have begun landing on the beach, disgorging their troops.  Splashing through the shallows they go, charging the beach.  There are flashes from the cliffs above.  Gunfire is pelting down on the beach like a strong summer’s rain.  You see soldiers fall.  Some stumble, continuing to move forward.  The noise from the battle is deafening but you can still discern what may be soft weeping.  Your buddies lean forward, anxious to dismount and do what they have been trained to do.

You feel the abrupt halting motion as your craft runs aground.  It throws you forward and to your feet.  The ramp at the front of the craft drops to the beach.  You watch as your platoon sergeant leads the way off of the craft, motioning with his arm for all of you to follow.  Your lieutenant, now moving forward beside you looks to either side, to you, and to your buddies. 

“Courage, men… Courage,” he says.

 

Off the craft and onto the beach those brave men did go.  They scratched and they clawed their way across the beach, up the cliffs and across Europe.  The liberated the oppressed under the tyrannical Nazi regime.  They freed human beings who had been kept in conditions worse than animals.  And, when it was all over, they staked no claim.  It was not a conquest.  They returned what they had freed to those to whom it belonged and gladly returned home.

And it all began, for Europe, on D Day… June 6th.

I’m told that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the evening before this largest invasion in human history, sat down and wrote a letter. In his letter, he stated that the decision to conduct the coming operation was his and his alone.  In it, he stated that, should the maneuver be deemed a failure, the blame should be placed squarely on his shoulders and nowhere else.  In this modern time in our nation, what a refreshing notion it is for a leader to step forward asking to be held accountable for something that may not have gone well. 

My two words on this anniversary of D Day:  "Courage," and "Leadership."  Indeed.