D-DAY

The last just war. Maybe one of the few. Seems true to me, but what a concept.

As a boomer who came of age during the Vietnam madness, it's sometimes been hard to acknowledge and thank those who indeed gave the ultimate sacrifice for us in WWII. My father was too old at the time to go into the service, and my family was not personally touched by the Holocaust, but to this day I get shivers and tears at the thought of it.

On both of these fronts--the war itself and the shoah--it's Steven Spielberg that has re-created some of the most lasting images, outside of the actual photos from the death camps.

Schindler's List. Saving Private Ryan.

An image from each haunts me. In Schindler's List, it's the Nazi idly shooting the little girl, an act of such insane evil, performed perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, incomprehensible, too much to countenance, yet of course it must be.

But, surprisingly, it's an image from Saving Private Ryan that I can't get out of my mind, and it's the one that reminds me to be grateful to all those who fought and died in that war. It's in the opening scenes of the landing on Omaha Beach. One of the Higgins boats reaches the shore, the landing panel opens, and before any soldier--any scared-to-death teenager--in the boat can even move an inch, every one of them is killed instantly from machine gun fire.

I heard a vet on NPR today describe what seemed to be that very event. Or another one just like it. How many were there?

Nevermind. There were many.

And we are here now because of those events. I'm taking a moment to reflect on that obvious point, and how lucky I was to be born when and where I was.