The Silence of Respect – Thoughts on Veterans Day

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Source: Ken Cynar, Executive Vice-president, Governance and Accountability Institute

It was an angry sky! Storm clouds were billowing and near gale force winds whipped the waves against the harbor wall of Arromanches, a small town on the coast of  Normandy,  France.  Just offshore you could see the remnants of “Harbor Winston,” the artificial harbor build by British and American combat engineers to support the Allied forces invasion of Normandy on the 6^th of  June, 1944 -- 65 years, two months, ten days, and two hours ago.

The dark skies and gusty winds were a fitting greeting to what started out as a personal visit, but ended as a pilgrimage to the beaches of  Normandy.  For the better part of a day I drove the 100 kilometers of beaches, cliffs, fields, forests, hedgerows and villages that in many ways seem frozen in time...stopping frequently to witness the sites of one of the great conflicts of the 20th Century where more than 500 ships and 150,000 Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen assaulted Hilter’s supposedly impregnable Fortress Europa.

Wherever you turned there were reminders of the conflict – old gun emplacements (damaged cannons still in place) with sweeping views of the English Channel below; pill boxes, thick concrete underground  bunkers and storage rooms; and the small villages doted with Allied nations flags, plaques, memorials, museums, inns and shops. All were reminders of the conflict a seeming lifetime ago. 

Whether it be the remaining newsreel footage of the invasion, Hollywood’s treatment embodied in “The Longest Day,” “Saving Private Ryan” or “Band of Brothers,” the images captured on film and video all came alive to me that day.  The narrow streets have lines of stone houses built right up to the roads’ edge many with markings that you can easily imagine were made by stray bullets or explosions. As the images became incredibly real so does the enormity of the conflict and those that landed, fought and died here.

I had the radio on in the car listening to the BBC from London as we started up the long road to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. But the scene just wasn’t right. I quickly turned off the music until the hum of the engine was all you could hear. We parked the car, entered the doors of the visitors’ center, went through the security checkpoint and down the stairs to the exhibit hall. 

Here, there was a great silence...a silence as if you were entering the most sacred of shrines.  

People spoke, not very often, but always in hushed tones. There were rows of exhibits with pictures, artifacts, films and narrations about the conflict.  You quickly realized that the story they were telling was not about war or battles, but about people – soldiers, sailors and airmen mostly young, but older as well who came from towns, villages and cities across America to this place to fight for freedom for themselves and to secure freedom for others they did not even know.

Some engaged in great acts of courage and died in action; others survived the landing only to lose their lives later in the conflict.  There were still more suddenly killed as they stepped off their landing crafts onto the beach in hails of bullets and explosions. They were fathers and sons, uncles, brothers, cousins, and friends who died that first day and in the weeks after.  The stories of many of them are recounted here in the visitors’ center. 

More than 9,000 participants of the D-Day invasion are buried here overlooking Omaha Beach.  Rows upon rows of white Christian crosses and Jewish Stars cover the acres of grass that are meticulously maintained.

Walking from the visitor’s center to the cemetery you come upon a memorial garden dedicated to the more than 1,000 veterans whose bodies were never found. Their names are carved into the garden wall...all that remains of their service to their country.  As you walk the rows of white markers and read the names, they are a melting pot of the American character...veterans from more nationalities that you can count all sharing this patch of earth that is literally and legally American soil in a far-off foreign land.

People who visit the Normandy beaches, especially Americans, come here on holiday or on a vacation, but many (like me) realize afterwards that it is really a pilgrimage.  It is a pilgrimage to a place in time when young Americans gave their all to fight a real, genuine and menacing tyranny that was poised to destroy our country and rule the entire world as totalitarian despots.  

The silence that hovered over that cemetery on the wind swept bluffs of Omaha Beach was a silence of respect for those WW II veterans, their loved ones and families who sacrificed so much. Their sacrifice allows all of us to live here today in a nation, that far from perfect, is still a glowing light of freedom and democracy for all other nations of the world.

As we argue and fight over health care reform, immigration, federal spending, global warming and excessive executive compensation, take time this Veteran’s Day to think about that cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach and the silence of respect we should have for all our countrymen and women who have and are serving in our armed forces around the world.

That’s the way I see it!  Have any of you ever been there?  Leave a comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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