June 6: Did We Earn It?

June 6, 1944 – This date resonates with students of the Second World War as the date of the “beginning of the end” of German occupation of Western Europe.  We remember the great sacrifice made by men who stormed those beaches in France, now 70 years past, and we are thankful.  We give thanks for their great courage, for their loyalty, their lives and their deaths.  We will wave flags, we will hear speeches and we will lay wreaths at the graves and monuments that mark the places of this great battle.

However, I find myself wondering about the sacrifice and how we remember it and honor it.  Stephen Spielberg’s cinematic paean, “Saving Private Ryan”, tells a story that includes the incredible battlefields of the Normandy beaches.  In the last scenes of the movie, as the squad of men sent to save the title character lay wounded and dying, the movie’s hero – Capt. Miller – orders Pvt. Ryan to “earn this”. The implication of such an order being that somehow the death of soldiers can be earned. 

Remembering this scene on the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of the invasion of Europe sparked a pang of guilt.  What have we, who never saw any conflict, done to earn the epic sacrifice of those we send to war?  How dare we, who sat safe at home, compound the injuries of those who stand in our stead?

We bicker over the budget for fighter jets the Air Force doesn’t want, while we cut benefits for veterans and the VA.  An American POW finally comes home and we vilify him for political points.  We walk by people who are homeless, not acknowledging that a large percentage of these people are veterans.

More than just this horrendous treatment of vets, we continue to trample on the gift we have yet to earn by putting petty politics ahead of building up our society. We allow our bridges and roads to crumble and our cities to fail for political gains.   We gut our education system and destroy the dreams of children, all to gain nothing greater than profits for billionaires.

 

I ask myself today, “How can we say we honor vets, honor service members, and allow our county to be sold off to the highest bidder”?  Since WWII, more than 100,000 Americans have died in armed conflict.  Thousands more risked their mental health and well-being.  How many came home, wounded and scarred?  We act as if the cost they paid, for us, is just to be expected.  The loss of their youth, in the name of our benefit, is normal and unimportant.

Ultimately, the short answer is that we fall short of the nobility of their sacrifice; we fail to live up to their great gift.  However, this can change.  We are capable of a great conversion, a redirection of our energy to create a new great beginning, to recapture the nobility of spirit embodied in the offering of their lives, their health, and their well-being. First, we must acknowledge the largely unearned nature of what we have been given.  Then we must be the changes we wish to see.  If we want to honor their gift, we must work to make this country the place our young people believe it to be when they volunteer to gift us.

To earn this, we must work for it.  We must find a sense of honor and respect for our fellow Americans. We must find our own loyalty – to our country, to the men and women who serve in every capacity, to the functionality of our government – and we, ourselves, must make sacrifices.  Only then will we earn it.