I knew
and am related to several men who crawled through the carnage of Omaha beach, and survived. I saw them age, and die. The ones I knew are all dead now, taken by time or by their own demons or a combination of the two. I have friends who are standing on that beach right now, who have made the trip to honor the memories of their loved ones, now passed.
Evil is a force in the world. It disguises itself as progress. It wears a mask of happiness and rainbows and wondrous things for all. Just as it has so many times before.
We remember those men who left their homes and families to die on foreign soil fighting evil. But evil is never vanquished for long. Like rust, it never sleeps. Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak.
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Amen. Lucifer and all his pomps don’t look like the comic books portray him but rather shining and beautiful. Therein lies the danger. Remembering my grandpa Tommy today, who, despite flat feet and coke bottle glasses, picked up a rifle and stormed Utah beach. Ave atque vale.
They truly were (and are) The Greatest Generation.
I thought I knew all about D-Day but I have been educated further by this PBS show. It’s well worth your time.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/dday-sunken-secrets.html
Jenny
Thanks, Jenny, I watched that and you’re right, it’s a great program.
I’ve been watching that show as well.
It does honor the sacrifice made by so many to stop evil. I know some of those veterans as well. they do not talk about it at all.
Evil always looks tempting. If it showed its true self, it would not be tempting, there in lies the eternal lie about evil.
Also had family who were on that beach. Both came back and were, if not the finest members of our assorted clan, certainly two of the most interesting. I miss them both.
I note a good portion of “my/our generation” was born within the 10 years immediately after the war’s end. We grew up seeing on television both in fictional form (Combat, Red Ball Express, The Rat Patrol) and documentary form (The Twentieth Century) what that war was like. And perhaps we saw glimpses of it’s after-affects on those who were there.
And yet, at least partially because of the “forth columnists”, the progressive cancer already in place in our universities, and the (though not in all cases) misplaced good intentions of parents, many from “our generation” (again, perhaps with good intentions….the superhighway to Hell was completed during the late 60’s after all) embraced the shiny, sparkly evil(s) presented.
The Greatest Generation won the battles. It took the next couple of them to bring us to the point of quite possibly losing the war.
I had the great pleasure of having a neighbor that was a paratrooper that jumped into Normandy. He never talked about it at all when sober and rarely when he had a few. One of the best human beings I have ever known. He felt guilty about surviving when so many were lost. He went through all that with just scratches and on the way home from Norfolk bought a motorcycle, crashed it and lost a testicle. He still fathered five children and lived to 85. All the children turned out to be good people as well. Not sure they make them like that anymore?
Well said sir.
Dad was 8th Air Force and didn’t see land battle but saw many of his comrades and close friends die right in front of him. Like those fine men you all have mentioned here he rarely spoke of it but the trunk of photo, letters and pictures of men now gone, spoke volumes.
By the time they adopted us the war was but a memory we read about in school so many lessons learned and lost.
Evil is a force in the world. It disguises itself as progress. It wears a mask of happiness and rainbows and wondrous things for all. Just as it has so many times before. Quote of the Day material right there. Very well said.
Remember the “Highlander” series? There was one episode where he asked a priest, an old friend, if he believed in the devil. Answer was something like “Do I believe in a Devil with horns and a pointed tail? I do not. I DO believe in evil; I have seen it, and it often looks very nice. At first.”