The first memory is of a conversation I had while playing pool in
Battersea, on the south side of London. I was temporarily living above The
British Flag pub and I'd gone downstairs one night to drink a few beers with
the old men of the neighborhood. I ended up playing pool with one of them, a
retired janitor named Ron. He and his friends had lived in Battersea for
some 65 years. He was about 7 or 8 during the air raids of WWII, they all
had been. One day he and his friends went to the cinema and chose to go
across the Thames River to the Chelsea cinema rather than the one to the
west. That day a rocket hit the other cinema killing almost everyone inside,
but luckily he had chosen the other movie house. He went on about the noise
the rockets made. If you could hear the whistling overhead you were safe
because the rocket was still burning fuel and would drop beyond you. But
when you heard it in the distance you took cover because when the whistling
stops the rocket falls from the sky uncontrollably, striking where it may.
He lived thorough the war but his brother did not. I think about Ron's story
a lot. I'd never talked to a civilian during that time before and Ron made
me realize that the tragedies of WWII are hardly history. The war is still
fresh in the minds of millions of people that live with the thoughts every
day.
The other memory is a cab ride I took shortly after 9/11. In the weeks
following the terrorist attacks I was confused and frightened, and I ended
up leaving the country for good on October 1st. I didn't know any other
Americans and longed to be surrounded by the apparent patriotism and safety
of the U.S. Some of the more liberal English were of the attitude that
America got what it had coming in the terrorist attacks, and that we
Americans should not be surprised at the response to our years of support
for Israel. The debates at work largely consisted of me half-heartedly
defending the U.S. policies, and doing it alone. The empathy and emotional
outpouring of the day was completely absent from my life and it finally came
during a cab ride to work. My morning cab ride ritual with my co-workers had
left me especially exhausted that morning. As I exited the car the cabbie
grabbed me by the arm and held me. "I remember what you did for me in World
War II," he said. He held me for a few seconds and said again, "I remember
and I'll never forget." I broke down in his cab that morning.
I now have a third memory that will be with me forever, as real and close as the day it happened, and that is visiting Omaha beach in Normandy. It wasn't the names chiseled into the walls of the Missing Garden, and it wasn't the cross after cross marking American dead. And it wasn't the guide's story of her father, forced into a labor camp by the Germans, fleeing to the Soviet front in hopes of liberation. What finally personalized the war for me was looking down on the beach and seeing the channel, seeing what the Germans would have seen. And walking down the path to the beach and seeing how green the land is and how beautiful the beach is. Exactly how it must have been sixty years ago. And most of all standing on the beach at low tide and seeing what the Americans had to cross. Such a short stretch of land. I didn't have to imagine the German defenses or the allied landing craft or the refuse of war strewn on the beach because I couldn't not see these things. My mind wouldn't let me not see the war machinery and it filled in the missing pieces for me. I couldn't see the beauty or the lushness, and that is the way it should be for all visitors. We must never allow ourselves to envision this place without seeing the horror of what happened here. The modern Europe is tied by this shared experience of the war, and now after visiting Normandy I am tied by the experience. It is our human duty to never forget what happened here and live our lives so that it never happens again. I filled my pockets with sand from the beach to serve as a reminder of where I was every time I wear my jacket, and I vowed that when I put my hand in my pockets and no longer feel the sand that I will come back to this beach to start over again. And in this way I will not ever forget and the war will never be a memory but instead be part of my experience.