On Normandy's coast

They came ashore in endless waves, the Americans, Brits, Canadians and free French soldiers. Many died on the beach under heavy fire without cover. Many were so weighed down by their gear that they didn't even make it ashore. Some couldn't swim.

Militarily, it wasn't the best strategy. It simply threw exposed men against an enemy firmly entrenched in concrete bunkers and pillboxes. Its only hope for success was in sacrificing sheer numbers of lives on the gamble that enough would get through to finally establish a few beachheads that would enable more to come ashore. Men were expended because they were the cheapest and most plentiful resource available to the commanders.

So they went. And the telegrams started arriving all over America. No one involved ever saw their lives and history without the dividing line of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Rest well, brothers and the few remaining survivors. Thank you more than words can say.

Amen.

Pastor Roger

D-Day

A moment of silence, please!

June 6, 1944. D-Day. Sixty-four years ago over 6,000 Americans died on the coast of Normandy. More by nearly half than in 5+ years of the war in Iraq, more than in six months of 1967 during the costliest period of the war in Vietnam. Many didn't even get to fire their rifles. Some drowned. Many didn't even make it ashore. That was just the first day.

It seems a ghastly sum of butchered humanity. It was. It is. But alongside the commitment and loss leading up to that point it was a loss considered acceptable, one that could be absorbed.

June 6, 1944.

The Beatles song: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

I'll be that in just over two years. Those who were 20 on D-Day are 84 now. The ones still with us are dying at a rate of over 1,000 a day. Time marches for those long since beyond doing so.

A few moments of silence, please! Amen.

Shalom,

Pastor Roger