D-Day

Four thousand people died on the Normandy beaches 80 years ago, in an invasion that began of June 6^th, 1944. The terror of that attack is mostly forgotten now, the way old battles eventually become, as the number of survivors dwindles towards zero.

It is normal to set aside the horror and remember only the outlines.

In France there are graveyards full of soldiers from the United States and all the European countries. Young men, then, mostly. They are military graves, indistinguishable one from the other, stretching out in seemingly endless rows.

But for a few artifacts, rusting away in the surf, the beaches at Normandy have largely returned to their usual recreational purposes. Time and tide wait for no man, rather, they are the great erasers on the landscape of history.

Much is being written today comparing that war to  one many see as having recently begun – the war against democracy, the battles to be waged against authoritarian forces and oligarchs who seemingly subscribe to a kind of modern fascism. Christian nationalism is on the march, a surprisingly popular and resilient form of hatred and contempt for those to do not, cannot or will not join their cult. Hitler would be proud.

All those dead in the Second War to End All Wars, and here we go again. I can only wonder at how surprised I feel. I’m not as naïve as I was only a few years ago, but I clearly have some dusty corner of my brain where I continue to believe, against all odds, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. It’s really just a hopeful thought, after all, from a man who was assassinated. Plus, it assumes facts not in evidence.

Photos by the author. War (then and now) courtesy of the crippled minds of the “Unified Reich.”