30 May 2010
 
Rolling Thunder

(Rolling Thunder staging area, Pentagon, Arlington VA)
 
The roar of engines is pouring in the open door to the balcony. The pool is placid far below.
 
The Streak is intact. I made it first in again, thank goodness, and it appears the competition has resgned themselves to it. The Banana was second, and little Jess from the fourth floor took the bronze this year.
 
There is a new lifeguard. She is Joanna, a Polish lady who is going to learn all about us on the pool deck this endless summer is in place. She hopes to be a landscape architect some day. Kuba, the dashing Pole who served us last year, has been elevated to a more active if less quirky facility.
 
He was asking about my lovely associate, hoping that she was back in Washington. I didn’t have the heart to tell him she had actually been to Poland and expressed no interest in him.
 
Joanna is an athletic young woman, a little on the stocky side, but quite pretty and with bottomless blue eyes. She said she is from Lublin. I searched my memory about the town. Was it in the part of Poland that had been Germany? The memories of the Berlin are still fresh, and the nearness of the Polish frontier still a little eerie.
 
I checked later. Lublin is an old town in the east, and was Russian almost as long as it was Polish. The city contained a vibrant Jewish community, which amounted to almost half the population. After the 1939 German invasion of Poland, the city found itself in the “General Government” area of military administration. The Germans had grand plans to transform the city into an outpost of Deustscher Kulture.

(Lublin Holocaust Memorial. Photo Wikipedia commons)
 
As such, Lublin served as a headquarters for Operation Reinhardt, the program of Jewish extermination. The Jewish population was forced into the Lublin Ghetto, established around the area of Podzamcze, and systematically the majority of the inhabitants were deported to the Be??ec extermination camp between 17 March and 11 April 1942. The remainder were moved to Majdanek, a large concentration camp established at the outskirts of the city. Most were killed by the time the Red Army rolled through to the west.
 
Joanna said she did not recall much about the city’s history. I can understand why, but this is a day for remembering. I am going to fire up the Harley and take a ride of remembrance with my pal Phil. He rides a nice tricked-out low rider that his brother owned when he was alive. It is a sort of rolling tribute.
 
Mine is much planer, completely stock, and Phil wants to change it. There are no memories in my machine, though I hope to make some myself. In the meantime, this is a day to celebrate the memories of those who perished in the campaign to destroy things like Operation Reinhardt.
 
My pal Paul is engaged in the fight against the Taliban. He reminded me of what Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great jurist, said about this day. Long before he entered the bar, Holmes had been a young officer in the Union Army, and he fought at Ball’s Bluff, the steep bank of the Virginia side that protects Leesburg. The Union troops had to ford the Potomac and assault the heights, where the Confederates had good cover.
 
There was a slaughter, and so Oliver Wendell Holmes knows first-hand about combat and sacrifice. He said it this way:
 
 "TO THE INDIFFERENT ENQUIRER WHO ASKS WHY MEMORIAL DAY IS STILL KEPT UP, WE ANSWER IT CELEBRATES AND SOLEMNLY AFFIRMS FROM YEAR TO YEAR A NATIONAL ACT OF ENTHUSIASM AND FAITH.   IT EMBODIES IN THE MOST IMPRESSIVE FORM OUR BELIEF THAT TO ACT WITH ENTHUSIASM AND FAITH IS THE CONDITION OF ACTING GREATLY.  TO FIGHT OUT A WAR, YOU MUST BELIEVE SOMETHING AND WANT SOMETHING WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT.  SO MUST YOU DO TO CARRY ANYTHING ELSE TO AND END WORTH REACHING.  
 
MORE THAN THAT YOU MUST BE WILLING TO COMMIT YOURSELF TO A COURSE, PERHAPS A LONG AND HARD ONE, WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO FORESEE EXACTLY WHERE YOU WILL COME OUT.
 
ALL THAT IS REQUIRED OF YOU IS THAT YOU SHOULD GO SOMEWHITHER AS HARD AS EVER YOU CAN.  THE REST BELONGS TO FATE.  ONE MAY FALL AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CHARGE AT THE TOP OF THE EARTHWORKS, BUT IN NO OTHER WAY CAN HE REACH THE REWARDS OF VICTORY.
 
OUR DEAD BROTHERS STILL LIVE WITH US, AND BID US TO THINK OF LIFE, NOT DEATH, OF LIFE TO WHICH IN THEIR YOUTH THEY LENT THE PASSION AND JOY OF THE SPRING.   AS I LISTEN, THE GREAT CHORUS OF LIFE AND JOY BEGINS AGAIN, AND AMID THE ORCHESTRA OF SEEN AND UNSEEN POWERS AND DESTINIES OF GOOD AND EVIL OUR TRUMPETS SOUND ONCE MORE A NOTE OF DARING, HOPE AND WILL."  
 

 

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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