| 06 June 2006 Number of the Beast It is D-Day. There is far more reason to celebrate today than there is to cower below the bed. The celebration should be real, a tribute to men brave and not brave, who crossed the English Channel in small boats and climbed the sand dunes and began the long walk east to Paris and Berlin. In some places in Normandy there was no resistance. In others, the scene on the beaches surpassed human endurance in horror, a literal hell on earth. Uncle Dick was there, rest his soul, above the thousands of ships and the carnage. He rumbled down the tarmac in East Anglia to deliver a load of bombs to a key bridge behind the beaches. His numbered mission was to drop the span, and prevent the Panzer reserves from reinforcing the Atlantic Wall at the point of attack, throwing the Yanks and Canadians and Brits back into the sea. Dick lost one of his four engines on take-off, and heavily laden with high explosives and fuel, it is a wonder that he managed to get airborne at all. It would have been easy enough for the ground to reach up and clasp the struggling airplane back to its brown bosom, cart-wheeling past the threshold of the runway in a red blossom of catastrophe. The infernos happened all the time. There were procedures for what was to be done. An aircraft with three working engines could not maneuver and would be a sitting duck over the target area. There were designated areas over the water for aircraft with problems to dump their ordnance safely, and orbit until enough fuel was burned down to reach safe landing weight. Uncle Dick did not do that. He and his crew went to the target. People needed the presence of his airplane, healthy or not that long day. The significance of the landings is not forgotten, though the immediacy to the public is fading. A few cable channels that run the newsreel footage of that war all the year round. But due to the incidental numbering of this particular year, there is much apprehension of the numbers of this day. The sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium. Properly, it is 6-6-06, which is the number of nothing in particular, but some have taken this date as the Number of the Beast, as foretold in the book of Revelations. Something could happen today, and I agree that it would be safer to stay in bed. It would have been safer for all those involved in the landings sixty-two years ago. Much safer. But they had something significant to accomplish. I cannot contemplate doing anything like what they did, not today, and likely not ever. But I can remember to keep things in perspective. I know that rising and going about my affairs is the least I can do to honor the memory of shared sacrifice long ago. There are issues that need our attention. We must address the energy crisis. We must deal with the deranged extremists, the fascists of our day, who plot to build fertilizer bombs and destroy buildings and innocent life. We should remember the Canadians who waded up on those French beaches, and their grandchildren who have foiled a jihadist plot in placid Ontario. And we should stop worrying about the devil, since there are plenty of evil humans who walk among us, and have nothing of the occult about them. It also occurs to me that the Congress of the United States might want to stop wasting time debating what constitutes a marriage. If Charles and Harry want to be legally bound, or Beth and Sarah, more power to them. As citizens, they ought to have the right to enter into binding relationships and be as miserable as everyone else. The key to it is that you must be alive, as so many of those young men were not permitted to be. First things first. If we are going to save the West and smash a fascist conspiracy, you need to keep your eyes on what is important. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |