Sacrifices of soldiers not forgotten

For James Theriault

I visited the beaches in Normandy this past August.

I prepared myself for the experience the way you do when you're about to encounter the sacred.

I read.

I pondered.

I made myself silent ...

When the time arrived, I was ready to be awed.

It was high summer when our bus pulled up and disgorged us in Arromanches, which was already bloated with a thousand other tourists.

They clustered on the narrow streets, in the shops bursting with cheap souvenirs, on the beaches themselves.

I noticed the families in particular — parents reading newspapers and sipping coffee from thermoses as children wrestled and ran at the water's edge, laughing like gulls.

Meanwhile, the clattering sounds of engines, rap music, other languages and tour-guide voices rose and fell with the ocean breeze.

I waited for my solemn moment — that moment when chills chased down my back because I was standing in a spot where wave after wave after young human wave once rolled upon the shore to crush a spreading evil.

I've had those chills on battlefields before — at Gettysburg and in Ypres, where I repeated the first haunting lines of John McCrae's poem to my husband and our oldest son.

In Flanders field the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead …

But that yearned-for moment didn't come. I was too distracted there in Arromanches by present sights.

A child's balloon.

A scooter.

Shabby T-shirts.

Faded postcards printed in China.

I wondered in disappointment.

Was this what all those sons had died for over 60 years ago? The carnival atmosphere of a summer day at the beach?

And the surprising answer came to me quickly.

Yes!

This is exactly why men and women fight — so that others can meander down a street. To buy an ice-cream cone. To sit peacefully in the sun. To eat a packed lunch. To read the news, sports page first. To look up and see that the children are fine. To wave at them and shout, "Don't get your clothes wet!" as if that's the worst that can happen.

I received an e-mail from a lovely reader last spring who expressed polite disappointment in my Memorial Day column because I didn't write about the real reason we observe it — to honor our war dead.

The same, of course, is true of Veterans Day, when many Europeans still pin a paper poppy on their lapels and remember those haunted fields of Flanders.

I made myself the promise that when November came, I would correct my mistake.

I am and always will be moved by the sacrifices of our soldiers — the ones who return and the ones who do not. The ones who are honored by name and rank in their final resting place, and those who (as the marble crosses say) are known only to God.

Thank you.

e-mail: acannon@desnews.com