Oh, how the anniversaries pass! We have had a week of them. The struggle at Midway Island was almost complete 80 years ago. We were surprised to see that two aviators from that day were honored- as still-living men- on the decks of a ship named to commemorate the victory. Some of us sailed in her steel flanks, and ‘Midway’ was part of our mailing address for a couple years. The round numbers associated with that battle have overshadowed the one that comes today. There are those alive- very few now- who participated in the greatest amphibious landing in history and lodged a force in occupied France that drove on to Berlin and toppled a dictator.

There have been three magnificent days in Virginia’s Piedmont, and with them talk of campaign seasons going back centuries. This is the time of renewal. The seasonal warmth is now reliable for long walks and sleeping out in the countryside with sufficient time to shake off the winter doldrums, accumulate stocks of supplies and move out to accomplish something. Sometimes it was for things good, and this a morning to remember one of the greatest of them.

Our Uncle Dick Gile was part of a mighty effort by thousands to cross the Channel and return to Europe. He was a handsome young man in those days. He also had the character of courage that never was common.

Captain Richard “Dick” Gile, U.S. Army Air Corps, spent his time in England as a member of the Mighty Eighth Air Force 487th Bomb Group (Heavy), Station 137, Lavenham, Suffolk. This morning, 78 trips around our sun past, there was something important to be done. Thousands of young men were engaged in the enterprise. Dick and his crew had been to the pre-flight meeting. Ridden out to where the aircraft waited, dawn still gathering its strength. Performed the checks, started engines and taxied to the runway that would enable them to hurtle into the sky.

Something went wrong. Dick lost one of his four engines on his B-17 on the take-off roll this morning. The deficit in power left him just enough thrust to get “Buzzin’ Betsy” airborne. His fuel-and-explosive-laden bomber lurched slowly, slowly into controlled flight. It was a slowly moving mass of aluminum and steel that could have blown up an English village if he could not wrestle it into the air.

Dick had the option, with good conscience and doctrinal support, of dumping his bombs in the sea, burning off fuel to safe landing weight, and returning to the base at Lavenham.

He did not. He uttered an expletive and told his crew they were headed for the target, a bridge that would have enabled the Panzers the Germans held in reserve to strike the fragile Allied toehold on the landing beaches.

A hoard of young men we now know as “Private Ryans” were below in their bobbing landing craft. They would soon know the closest thing to hell that exists on this spinning Earth. Dick and his crew were not going to let them down. They pressed on and did what they had been instructed to do. They hit the assigned target. They delayed the Panzers and helped the landing to succeed. Thousands of young men came ashore in a dramatic demonstration of resolve against a murderous tyranny.

That is the number of words we have to describe a morning of violence in the name of good. Of thousands of young people who gathered courage and overcame fear in a place along a coast called “Normandy.”

Remember them and give a toast to their courage if you can. It helped to change a world. And make it a better place for us all. We have our challenges today. It is worth remembering what was done before about such things. A muttered expletive, perhaps, but then the right thing. Put the throttles forward and accomplish the mission.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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