I have a couple of friends I've never met. They are here on Daily Kos. I just read a deeply-felt comment by one of them regarding the struggles of World War Two, and how this friend was/is affected. D-Day.
Ike knew he had to talk to the boys...follow me over the hill--uh, fold...
I don't know when he knew, but he knew. Ike had been exposed to what they called "mind-sciences". Metaphysical books surrounded his childhood like clouds of mysterious wonder. It is quite possible that one of the biggest metaphysical books of all time sat on a shelf in the Eisenhower White House.
So something in him, something from his childhood, beckoned Ike forward, out of the staff car, into the group of young eyes and bravely uttered words. He took a long pull off his cigarette, one hand on the open door, the driver glancing at him, unsure. Then Ike threw the butt down, crushed it under his boot, looked to his left, saw the distant sky through his smoke, and strode into the dark figures whose destiny he had helped forge.
He was responsible. That is what lay on his heart most. These were his boys, this was a monumental time, a world ravaged by events that challenged his faith, triggered his humanness, and vaulted him into history.
Ike kept it light, chatting with one here from Omaha, another from California, more than one from Ike's own beloved Kansas. Wheat fields filled his mind with remembered golden light...then with the intrusion of the blood he knew must come.
One hand in a pocket, the other knifing the air as he lowered his head to talk to the boys--the men--as if outside a barbershop. "Where ya from, son?"
And then they were gone. He stood watching after them, until they were no more than a dot in the sky. He took off his cap and rubbed his tightly cropped head with one big hand. Ike stood that way for a time, just holding his head, watching the morning sky.
He rode back in silence. He would write to Mamie. He would tell her what he could never allow those around him to know. He would ask her questions no one else could ever answer. For now, he would ask those questions of the planes and men that filled the blurred landscape as his car sped past. But they were shadows, mute as his own struggle to comprehend where the peace might come from once this struggle was at last ended. And was there such a thing as peace, really? Did his parents believe in the things they tried to teach him? Surely they did. Ike lay his head back, and the wheat fields of Kansas returned to him.
"Behind what appears, there is light. We need only look. As long as the world is turned away from it, what do we expect to find?" --We Who Dream, pg. 173.
May peace one day...how does the rest go?