In the top photo, you will notice how close the cemetery is to the actual place where so many died. On the sandy area to the left, at the shoreline, are German bunkers one can still go down into. The cross above (see Jewish star grave marker, too...easier to see if you click on the second photo) says "HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY A COMRADE IN ARMS KNOWN BUT TO GOD." Amen.
I hope all of you have been or can go someday. It's quite an experience. I thank FrogBurger so much for these amazing photographs.
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine." Isaiah 43:1.
It's my fondest wish that all our soldiers were sure of their eternal rest with God. We owe them so much. Rest, our American fallen...we love and respect and will never forget you.
Have a good Sunday, GeeeZ readers.
me
31 comments:
I've never been to Normandy.
That said, I cannot drive by or visit Arlington National Cemetery without tearing up.
It's not only the dead that move me to tears. It's knowing that so many lives were ruined -- among them, the lives of the families of the perished and the lives of the living who returned from the battlefield.
In those days they really did not ship bodies home and the casualties
were numerous. Families went to local monuments instead of the grave.
Well done Frogburger
Safe in their alabaster chambers --
Untouched by morning, and untouched by noon --
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection --
Rafter of satin and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine --
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear.
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence!
Ah! What sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them.
Worlds scoop their arcs and firmaments row.
Diadems drop, and Doges surrender --
Soundless as dots on a disc of snow.
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Madame Jeanette, when the sun goes down,
Sits at her door in the rush of the town,
Waiting for someone each close of the day --
Someone who sleeps at St. Pierre, they say.
Madame Jeanette, when the moon shines bright,
Looks through her window to watch through the night
Listening for someone to pass down the way --
Someone who sleeps at St. Pierre, they say.
Madame Jeanette, she will wait there I know
Till her yes have grown dim, and her hair white as snow.
Wait there and watch there till one of these days
They take her to slumber in Pere Lachaise -- in Pere Lachaise.
I don't know who wrote those words. They were beautifully set to music long ago. Our high school choir sang Madame Jeanette in 1957. Though I can't remember the author or the composer's names, the words, themselves, have stayed with me all these years, and never fail to bring tears to my eyes whenever I am reminded of them.
~ FreeThinke
_________ KILLERS _________
I am singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:
Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.
And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing
and killing.
I never forget them day or night:
They beat on my head for memory of them;
They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
To their homes and women, dreams and games.
I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines--
Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,
Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of
killing.
Sixteen million men.
~ Carl Sandburg
Thank you, Geeez, for this reminder. I fear our four who fell in Benghazi are not at peace.
It is a sobering experience visiting those battlefields.
While stationed in Germany we visited a few, but not Normandy. We did go t Hamm, Belgium, where General Patton is buried. As befitted him, and the brave soldiers he led, his grave marker is no bigger or different than any of the soldiers'. You have to work to find it.
I really hope all the soldiers are in peace, too.
Have a wonderful, peaceful Sunday, Z!
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'' Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died. —Ronald Reagan
Thank you, Frogburger and Z.
Andie
Looking back to the 2008 campaign of sugar plums and raining gum drops if you know who is elected, one might get a little sentimental about the donkey take over of yesteryear, but not me. I feel less than vindicated and can only take solace in that Obama by all accounts, is the worst President of all time. We knew he would be....and by we I mean me, but I don't want to be a completely stuck up know it all. But a lot of you voted for the Obama machine, including a lot of Republicans. You really can't blame the poor bug eyed fish. I mean, it was the plastic stinking cheese on the hook that made them swim towards the light and then bite the fake food only to get bloodied by the hook. Truth is, Obama never should have been President, period. I guess I could go back and regurgitate Barry's record of do nothing and vote for nothing while he was a junior Senator for a year who wrote a shitty book about his dead beat dad. Or how he was a sorry community organizer who organized bingo games for old people. Or how he was some dingle dorf who went to HAAAHRVARD and pretended to be poor, but smart and sold dirt just to survive. I guess he was a state senator in the corrupt and evil state of Illinois and a grand daddy political mobster in the Chicago crime errrrr political scene. He played the game well, but in the end you can't fake reality. The truth will always come out. The truth will always prevail. The truth will always show itself....eventually. The ugly head of not handling it has poked up out of the ground only to say hello to us Americans. We have a President who NEVER should have been....President. I suppose he knows a few things about it now, but it's too late. Barry is not a problem solver, he is a rhetoric spewer and a word whore who whistles when he pronounces his S's. Barack is not a leader, he is a publicity prostitute with no core value system. President Obama is not a statesman, he is spot-light seeking celebrity and a Move-on.org bitch. Puppets need strings and Muppet's need hands up their asses so they can talk. They sing about rainbows and what's on the other side. But never, ever, ever do they have new innovations that will truly lead us to the promised land of prosperity in America. The philosophies of the left and Barack have been given the ultimate test and they have failed. No more can democrats say that they have the right stuff. No more can they offer up a shiny, new toy. Their credibility is shot to economic recession hell. Seriously, the next time the democrats say hey look at this guy he is so "articulate" run like a pimp at church. All democratic Presidential candidates should be highly scrutinized mainly because the stupid in America are no longer the fumbling word murderers from the Bush family, it's the glazed over romantic fools called democrats and their pretty speech giving President that did NOT save the peeps. Thanks for nothing donkey's. Your President sucks. Your Congress sucked and never forget that you are an epic fail. I'm not gonna lie. Most politicians are tools. They are manhandled by many and quite frankly, it's like a big fat Greek wedding when you punch a chad. You elect one guy and you get the whole family of tools. But this misnomer was catastrophic. Barry never should have been President and democrats....you are fired!!!
A fitting monument to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for liberty.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
I hope you all enjoyed FB's pictures...I figured some of you haven't seen Normandy in person and would want to see these...
ConservativesonFire...how could our four heroes be at peace when the last thing they remember is wondering where the HELL America was? You know they had to believe help was coming...
and it never did.
Thank God they never had to hear the lies of this president and his minions covering up for him.
I hope the parents of these people scream from the rooftops...Only one is trying hard to get Americans to realize what happened.
Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
Very nice pictures. I've never been there either, but my hubby would love to go. He is a huge military/history person.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
"Rest, our American fallen...we love and respect and will never forget you. "
Well, that's some of us anyway.
Note that the kenyan in the White House didn't bother even going over to toss a wreath on the beach at the anniversary(s) like the POS clinton did.
That was a humbling post, Z. It is impossible to imagine what those men went through, or what went through their minds as they knew the odds were against them on the Normandy beaches.
Those men were, indeed, heros.
Note that the kenyan in the White House didn't bother even going over to toss a wreath on the beach at the anniversary(s) like the POS clinton did.
Clinton is astute enough to recognize his betters; the Kenyan is not.
Thank you too, Freethinke, for those three poems. Each was very different, but altogether they make a great accompaniment to the photos and the poignant emotions that come to mourners who visit the graves of loved ones who have passed on.
Anna
Clinton is astute enough to recognize his betters; the Kenyan is not.
A trait of all incompetents.
Kid, you said "Well, that's some of us anyway."
I can only speak for me and (most of) my readers....but, you're right; not Obama and not many liberals.
Bob, you brought tears to my eyes saying it's a humbling post; I so wanted to touch hearts with it, thank you. I wanted to remind us all of the HUGE sacrifice these dead made for us and their families.
I had a friend who lived in the condo above mine whose brother Jimmy died in WWII over there...she was about 88 when she died and she'd never ever forgotten her dear brother...ever.
I will try never to forget the name of Jimmy McGoneghal. It's the very least I can do..to continue on for my dear old lady friend who died a few years ago.
Makes me want to cry.
HOW the heck did those men leave those boats while being shot at? The front lines surely knew they'd probably never make it.
Debbie, your husband would FLIP for the history...I got to go down into a tiny bunker with a long horizontal slit for guns to fit through so the Germans could kill our boys from the safety of their concrete surroundings; talk about moving. Of course, I loved my German who was with me very much. Talk about a mixed moment...
There are STILL divots in the sand there .. and the French literally can't dislodge some of the German concrete structures they're THAT well built.
It really moved me beyond words...being there and seeing how MANY died for our country AND for people they'd never met; LIke Condi Rice said the other night "a country is EXCEPTIONAL when it sends their boys to fight for people they've never met before."
Amen, Condi.
a country is EXCEPTIONAL when it sends their boys to fight for people they've never met before.
Z, which other countries have ever done that. I guess you could include England, Australia, and a few of the countries like Iceland, Sweden, who have sent people in to assist in Iraq, and A-Stan and WWII. But it's not many.
You know what? I'm going to disagree with Condi. It's not so much "send their boys in to fight for people they've never met before" If that's a quote. I know enough of these guys and it's Very Much "a country that has boys, men, and women, who are Eager to go and fight for the freedom, comforts, and relief from abuse in countries that they've never seen or met anyone who lives there."
They weren't sent. They went, albeit with the sanctions of those in charge at the time.
Kid, I was paraphrasing.......don't remember how she put it exactly, but she WAS RIGHT!
You make a good point there..thanks.xx
And yet, somehow --
We -- AMERICA -- cannot find it within ourselves to LEARN from the history of Europe?
From their history?
From their Socialism?
Thank you kindly, Mr Obama.
You simpering Toady.
BZ
In my high school graduating class...we lost about 10% of our classmates in our war...Vietnam. Around 15 so far that never came back. We had little choice between getting a rare scholarship or a high draft number in the lottery. So there we were ...volunteer or wait to get drafted.
Most of us chose the former. Yes...we were the "selfish, self absorbed" baby boomers...but we still knew our obligations and duty and we wanted to protect our country. After all...we were the children of those of the greatest generation. And as such we knew of our fathers sacrifice and commitment to duty, family, God and country.
So we wanted to follow their lead and do what they did.
We were no different as point men...in a TAC unit or a FAC unit. Marines, soldiers or airmen. We too did our job...our duty.
We did the same as those in the generation before us.
And on November 11...I intend to honor and pay tribute to all of them. WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
This writer nailed it about the Obullshitter..
"Obama’s soaring rhetoric enticed me at first, and I agreed that a restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a bad idea. Still, I got a jolt of Messiah Alert when he said his rise marked the moment “when the planet began to heal.”
Where he totally fooled me was his claim to be a pragmatist, not an ideologue. He spoke of uniting the country and I believed he was capable and sincere. That he won 70 million votes and more than two-thirds of the Electoral College spoke to his appeal.
He failed as president because he is incompetent, dishonest and not interested in the actual work of governing. His statist policies helped consign millions of Americans to a lower standard of living and his odious class warfare further divided the nation. He had no intention of uniting the country — it was his Big Lie.
I don’t hate him. But I sure as hell don’t trust him.
As for the desperate charge that opposition to Obama makes me a racist, let me note that he was black when I voted for him."
I apologize for the multiple comments. Phone issues. My comment would appear and then disappear.
Thank you, Geeez, for this reminder. I fear our four who fell in Benghazi are not at peace.
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