Every so often I attempt an exercise: to understand what it must have been like, what fortitude it took to face Nazi forces, on the beaches of Normandy 71 years ago today.
As I've briefly mentioned before, I served two combat tours in Afghanistan, totaling 27 months. I lived a relatively cushy lifestyle, quartered in comfortable lodging and stationed on large mega bases that were, in many ways, bastions of modern western civilization. It was still a far cry from home, but I was comfortable far more often than not.
But a handful of times I was in the thick of combat. We had the upper hand in most circumstances with air, weapon, numbers and position superiority. But there were a few skirmishes within the larger battles that the playing field felt uncomfortable level. We're incredibly fortunate no good guys were hurt or lost.
Needless to say, combat in Afghanistan is nothing to scoff at. It left an unforgettable impression on me that forever altered my worldview and how I approach life, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
Even in the context of being one of the few Americans (percentage wise) to experience the trials of combat, I logically know that what I experienced and, quite frankly, most others who served experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't even come close to the magnitude and scale of trials WW2 vets faced in battle. That doesn't diminish or take away from what 21st American service members overcame, but its inarguable WW2, especially those on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, went through more. Even knowing all this full well, I simply can't fathom it.
The initial invasion of D-Day was a fucking meat grinder, pure and simple. Men went in by the thousands and got came out the other side a tangled mesh of what was once a man. Brutal, yes, but it was the all-too harsh reality. How did those men move an inch forward toward the barrels of machine guns honed on them? How did they not freeze up, instead themselves into the very mouth of the monster? All that violence, death and stimuli had to be overwhelming to senses, incomprehensible to the mind.
But, in spite of all those daunting, deadly obstacles, they never thought it as insurmountable. With death reigning down on them, their brothers in arms being felled in droves, they crushed the monster of Nazi fascism. Those brave men denied Hitler his foothold in Western Europe he would never regain, and, after much more sacrifices and thousands of lives lost, domino after domino would fall as US troops marched eastward to the heart of Nazi Germany.
What a toll it surely exacted on those men can never be found or understood. So little was (and still is) known about PTSD. How many went on to fight other history-altering, brutal battles while coping with those trying symptoms? How many came back and hid their condition in the shadows from a generation who saw PTSD symptoms as a sign of weakness and lacking character and not a borderline inevitable, natural consequence of battle? So little is mentioned of that.
While I'll never accomplish the goal of my self-imposed exercise of understanding what they went through, I do comprehend -- and am eternally grateful -- to be part of a world where all seven-billion citizens are the beneficiaries of the heroism and sacrifice of thousands of brave, young men from seven decades ago. The least we can do is keep their memories and stories alive. Father Time is doing what Nazi bullets failed do on Normandy, felling our grizzled veterans in droves.
They've done their duty in both fighting evil and keeping their story and fallen comrades' memory alive. It's our generation's turn now. Let's never let them down. The world owes them that much -- and infinitely more.
