300 WORDS OR LESS: 06.06.09

D-Day: 65 Years Later
Does anyone else look at events like D-Day and wonder if they could I have participated?
Assume you're generally physically capable, and have a functioning memory. You take in any event, a lecture, a book, a movie, a piece of software, a bit of derring-do and figure: I can/could do that, if I went through the training and paid the required dues.
With combat, in contrast to most other pursuits, you don't really know until you've been there. I can guess, based upon past experience, that I'd do OK (notwithstanding the lead allergy). To say more would be to talk trash. Consider a Hollywood example. I don't think the anxiety (men in the Mike boat puking) or the chaos has ever been better captured than by Spielberg. Note that the sound drops out ~5:00 in. That's no glitch. That is your simulated combat deafness.

The real veterans are the ones who don't talk about combat much. The heroes lack a Sean Penn complex, and the cowards, when they live, are usually too ashamed. The vast bulk in the middle do what they have to do.
Nobody sane craves war. The Marines, even when they say "Pray for war," are talking trash. It's in character for them. No, those who stand first in line to go to war appreciate the value of peace the most, in a way that the pacifist cannot grasp. If it was not for the men and women of the Greatest Generation, especially these William-the-Conquerors-in-reverse, the Utopian crowd would not enjoy their luxury of protest.
Hopefully, none of us will have to participate in something like D-Day. And hopefully, should it come, we shall stand unashamed with those who went before us.

-- CLS