Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

    I heard that spring break is happening now down in Florida. It's a wild time for college kids to go hang out, drink a lot, do drugs, have sex with strangers and let their hair down. In some towns, the residents have had enough of the rowdiness that comes with spring break.   Some time back, my older brother Mark forwarded me this picture as a reminder that someone else paid a high price for the freedoms that we enjoy. A day on the beach can mean different things to different people. It's food for thought.

Today, as many of you know, is the 75th anniversary of D- Day, the day that the allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy. It was a decisive day in the war against Germany and was the beginning of the liberation of France and the rest of Europe and led ultimately to the defeat of the Nazis. When I was a kid, I just assumed that all of the men who were in the army were like super heroes, strong, brave, unafraid. I didn't realize that the majority of the men who stormed the beaches were young; many just out of high school, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old men who hadn't even gotten a good start on life yet. They were like young men everywhere with dreams and aspirations, perhaps with wives or girlfriends. I'm sure they had plans for a future that didn't include storming a beach in a foreign country with the noise and the smoke and the terror all around, watching their friends and fellow soldiers bleeding and crying out and dying on those blood soaked beaches...