Monday, July 12, 2010

Dday continued












These photos are of the bunkers that the Germans built in preparation for a battle. Eric is standing in the doorway of one. Inside is an empty shell of fear and death. "Cement" walls housed the big machines of war with wide "windows" to swivel and get aim.
Behind Eric in one of the rooms the Americans found 33 German soldiers. Three escaped to a small town nearby and all the others were killed. Looking in that blackened muddy room I recalled the words of a Veteran. In the museum I had heard him speak that he is still haunted by the sounds of a soldier "gurgling" in his blood. The German had attacked him from behind and the Veteran took his knife and sunk it into the German's temple. He then had to slit his throat. Because he could not bear that the man was dying a slow death, he turned him over and stabbed him in the back. That veteran is still haunted by those sounds and life for him was never the same.
Inside the bunker you can see a direct hit probably from one of our ships.
I don't know a lot about war. Standing on those bluffs, in the bunkers, and on the sand looking up at those bunkers I wept. I wept because my 18 years old boys were there with me and that is the age of most of those young men who died on those sands in 1944. I wept because I missed my father and his patriotism. I wept because I know those men storming the beaches of Normandy on that hellish morning felt alone and very scared. Scared of the unknown and the unsaid.

No comments: