It is summer 1995. My immediate family -- two parents, three living siblings (don't ask, and don't worry) and I -- have headed off to Normandy, France, for what my parents will later tell me was, they figured, the last and first family vacation we'd take while we could all enjoy it.
We were staying in a house I've written about before, months after an experience I've written almost nothing about, and on one day my siblings and I were able to enjoy something precisely because we didn't -- couldn't -- understand fully what we were doing.
For Brig. Gen. Albert Edward Hunter, U.S. Army (Ret.), who served but did not see action, and because he did not see action, for the 14 people alive today.
Including your humble diarist.
There are plenty of beaches in America that do not have bunkers.
In fact, I have never seen a beach in America that has them, though there may well be some.
There are plenty of beaches in France that do not have bunkers.
But if you are looking at a beach in Normandy, you are probably looking at a beach that has seen more death than any human has and, one can only hope (however uselessly), ever will.
And in some cases, ignorance is bliss.
Oh, we knew about where we were. We'd heard about D-Day. (Ask me some time and I'll tell you about George Clifton -- not his real name, and I'll probably forget and use a different fake name.) We knew some about the Holocaust, we'd had a Holocaust survivor talk to us (a school event, and one I've written about here).
But it's one of those things where you really hope the average 7- to 13-year-old doesn't understand it all.
Can't.
And so on that day, a random day in June on a random beach in Normandy, the wind carrying hope and enthusiasm -- and, a romantic might say, the names of those who'd died to give the language and people back to the land -- we ran about and looked at bunkers that had become part of a massive effort, at least a quinticontinental (I love making up words that work) steadfast pledge, to not let people forget.
Because 51 or so years before, boys not much older than I had shot and killed boys not much older than I, and boys not much younger than I had been killed like so much less than boys not much younger than I.
And nowhere in my mind was that thought. It would have ruined that beautiful, cold, carefree, windy, sandy, indescribably strange day -- a day where you knew something was off, but you couldn't place it and didn't care to.
I took a course in developmental psychology when I was 19 or so. I think it's where I learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (which explains so much of human behavior so very simply; you understand it without even realizing it). And it's also where I heard the most unusual story about D-Day that I think anyone has.
One of the things about teenagers is they generally think they're invincible. (I still think I am.)
So if you take a bunch of teenagers and put them through basic training, they're going to go into war, many of them, thinking they'll live just because ... they will. Oh, sure, other people may die, but they'll live. They just ... will. It's on the one hand like a belief system and, on the other hand, the scientific hand, like their brains have not yet developed the ability to understand that they can and may (and will) die.
Or so my professor told me. (And I have yet to encounter a good reason to doubt her.)
She went on to say that on this date 65 years ago, as relayed by various of those young men and some of their commanding officers, so many thousands of young men were getting ready to storm those beaches, and so very many of them thought nothing of the notion that they would be coming back to see ... everything. That they wouldn't die.
Today we remember those young men, their superiors, their families, and the millions and millions who discovered that yes, you will die.
But as I have argued before, you can't die long as someone remembers you.
So really, you're right, in the end. You won't die.