Ha, ha. I know what your thinking….your thinking I had a wet
dream and it wasn’t with my old man. You’d be wrong. But I
do love the way you think.
Nope, I dreamed I was smoking. Which must mean that
sub-consciously all the old bad habits and triggers are still
there. I hate that, but I hate worse all the things about my life
that “having a smoke” controlled. I quit though, and I’m
still quit and I haven’t cheated, at least not while I was awake.
I’m so proud of me, childishly proud.
This is sad so quit reading now if you want:
Last Friday was Veterans Day, Armistice Day in France. We had a
three day weekend so we went to the Verdun Battlefields.
WWI……………..June 28 1914 to November 11, 1918 11:00 P.M.
I
knew of Verdun, I just didn’t know any details. In and around
Verdun there are 43 French, 29 German and 2 American cemeteries. There
are 153,969 identified people in those cemeteries. This is a
picture of the French National cemetery and Ossuary at Douamont.
This Ossuary contains bones from over 130,000 French and German
soldiers who couldn’t be identified. That is just one ossuary
there are others. It is still considered one of the bloodiest
battles in history. Nine villages were completely wiped off the
Earth, never to be rebuilt. The land along the front is still
riddled with mines and unexploded shells. The ground is still
pockmarked with trenches and deep mine craters. It is a place
that makes you sad. It is a place where even though 87 years have
passed since the war ended you can still see ghosts of the dead.
You can feel the cost of war. We went to some of the forts that
were so hotly contested. Sometimes being shelled for 10 or 12
hours non-stop. Day after day, month after month. The French countryside is so beautiful and quiet,
it’s hard to imagine how hellish it must have been.
Reading about spending 10 days next to a man blown in half is quite
different than being there in that trench. Seeing the green grass
cover the shell holes and then seeing the pictures from a day or so
after they were made, a lunar landscape covered in blood and body
parts.
We went in silence from place to place. When we talked it was in
hushed voices. And to either side of us on this Armistice day we
heard German, French and English. All of us come together in this
place of war to remember the sacrifice these men made for their
country. Some not even understanding why. Fighting only
because their country called on them to do so.
I remember in the
movie Forest Gump when
he is in Vietnam and his best friend is dying, Bubba
says “Forest, why did this happen?” and then just before he dies in his
best friends arms he says “I want to go home”. In how many wars,
in how many
countries over how many centuries has man said while dying in a war not
fully understood, I want to go
home? No matter how justified a war is there is always a
cost. There is always a price paid with the blood of our men and
women. In the case of the battle of Verdun, France the cost was
an entire generation of men dead. For a few miles of land more
than 500,000 died, I find that incredibly sad. Someday we
will all understand the futility of our endeavors, I hope then we can
live in peace. Honestly though I don’t see it happening in my
lifetime.
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