(This one is for my new Twitter friend Ann Bell Feinstein.)
I just can’t imagine the carnage at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, although I admit Saving Private Ryan got close. Photographer Robert Capa got even closer, landing with the first wave and taking pictures that are now some of the most iconic of all time. I look at these photos now, of young kids storming the beaches, what, 19, 20 years old? A lot of them — 2,400 to be exact — didn’t make it past that day. And it makes me wonder. I wonder what happened to the guy in the photo.
I would guess many/most? of those guys wanted to be parents, and it bothers me to think that their own children died with them on the beaches. What if even one survived? Could that person have come up with a cure for diabetes (I’m Type 2) or become the voice for a generation of Baby Boomers?
It’s an existential question. What happens before we’re born, and when we die? I get that. But there’s a story there, and I’ve been pondering that for years now.
What if these children, these souls, were able to congregate somewhere in the beyond and lament the fact that they were denied an opportunity to join us here in this plane of existence? Or did they find another way to make it here?
Really heavy, far-out idea.
Recent Comments