We all have one. That point where even an exercise in futility becomes, well, an exercise in futility. Where you are stretched so taut that even the most inconsequential things can set you off, turning you into a raging, raving maniac, or turning you into a quivering, sobbing lump of pudding. Or both. There's always that one, too.
Everyone breaks.
There just comes that point where the facade crumbles, unable to support itself. Disappontment piles up on setback, adversity becomes the rule rather than the exception, then that first rock breaks loose and the avalanche can't be far behind. Everybody, it seems, wants something from you, but no one will do anything for you. There isn't even a you any more, because you are not you, but a symbol, an interpretation with no meaning. Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill that never ends, at least he coud look forward to getting a break when it rolled back down again. Atlas had it easy; no one expected him to do anything but bear the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Devolution in action, take three steps back for every two steps back you take. It isn't true that when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, because in the end you wind up losing yourself and that, I've been told, is something. But there are only so many times you can ride the rollercoaster before you lose the capacity to feel anything other than the icy fingers of incipient dread as they close on your throat, on your heart, a weight that can neither be endured nor denied. What use is it to fight, when nothing lies beyond it but more fighting?
It's more than just a psychic fugue, a temporary lapse of reason or judgment, a loss of hope. The only hope is that there will be no more hope, no more promises, no more no more. Just slink off into a corner before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already are, and please try not to gibber in front of the polite company.
Everyone breaks. It's only a question of when.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Living with Ghosts
If you live long enough, you can't help it. The choices you make, the things you do or don't do, say or don't say, inhabit you, define you, consume you. Memories, ghosts of the past, silent witnesses that shadow your thoughts, stalk your dreams, remind you of just what you are and are not. Like the ancient Furies, they are inescapable, and just as unrelenting in their judgments. You can hide your true self from your family, from your friends, but they are beyond the parlour tricks of self-deceit. You can not lie to the ghosts, only to yourself.
They are as intimately familiar as your own skin, these watchers from the shadows of your soul, relics of the blood and wreckage you've left in your wake. They gather in the small hours of the morning, when you can't run, can't hide from the things you've done, speaking to you with no words, just a silent scream that echoes through the chambers of your mind. Unbidden and unwanted, they remind you that "No fair!" doesn't count, that "Why me?" is the saddest question in the world.
I woke up once and knew that my living room was full of dead men, that I would have to go out there, cover them up, collect their tags. So I sat in bed, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the dream to pass as the ghosts gathered, filed by one by one. But the dream never does pass, no light ever comes to dispell the gloom as the spectres flit from shadow to shadow. The dead and the forgotten demand their due.
Grasping at air, wrestling with smoke, running from ethereal will'o'wisps you can't escape. Every day, every choice only adds more ghosts, lost possibilities, regrets that you struggle blindly to forget. Yet the more you fight, the deeper into the web you find yourself enmeshed, until you can't remember what it was like before the ghosts came.
They are as intimately familiar as your own skin, these watchers from the shadows of your soul, relics of the blood and wreckage you've left in your wake. They gather in the small hours of the morning, when you can't run, can't hide from the things you've done, speaking to you with no words, just a silent scream that echoes through the chambers of your mind. Unbidden and unwanted, they remind you that "No fair!" doesn't count, that "Why me?" is the saddest question in the world.
I woke up once and knew that my living room was full of dead men, that I would have to go out there, cover them up, collect their tags. So I sat in bed, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the dream to pass as the ghosts gathered, filed by one by one. But the dream never does pass, no light ever comes to dispell the gloom as the spectres flit from shadow to shadow. The dead and the forgotten demand their due.
Grasping at air, wrestling with smoke, running from ethereal will'o'wisps you can't escape. Every day, every choice only adds more ghosts, lost possibilities, regrets that you struggle blindly to forget. Yet the more you fight, the deeper into the web you find yourself enmeshed, until you can't remember what it was like before the ghosts came.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Suspended Animation
I once knew a man who had traveled a very long way in order to die.
It wasn't his idea, of course. He didn't just wake up one day and decide to die. It wasn't even his idea to go where he went in the first place, though in his line of work, personal desire is an irrelevancy. They ask, you go, and it is as simple as that.
Time is a relative thing; Einstein tells us that. But if it is a relative thing, then it can have no objective meaning, for it depends on something else to provide it a frame of reference. Time exists and yet it doesn't exist, and for most of us, we never really notice it until it runs out. And all we are left with are frozen tableaus, ethereal things we call memories, events we can recall but never alter, a universe of things left unsaid or better never said at all.
He traveled a long way to die, so it seemed only fitting that I travel a long way to bid him farewell. But funerals aren't for the dead, they are for the living, and what is there really to say? Out of place, out of time, there is nothing that the living can say that the dead would wish to hear.
We are born alone, and we live alone, only fooling ourselves that we don't. We most certainly die alone, whether we are here, at home, or in the bitter mountains of a faraway land. What did you think of in those last moments, as your life ebbed away beyond recall? The desire to see a loved one's face just one more time? Regret over harsh words spoken heedlessly in a moment of anger? Bemusement at the encroaching darkness consuming you? The wish for just a little more time? I had the questions, he had the answers, and who is to say which one of us was the luckier.
His death wasn't fair, but in it perversely lay the ultimate fairness of it all, for time runs out for all of us and we come to our ends. We pretend that we are in control, that we can impose order on our lives, but in the end nothing but random chance really matters. Turn right at the corner, and you live; turn left, and you die. Rolling the cosmic dice, a momentary lapse of reason, life itself is a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was, and then he was not, and the world took no note of his passing. A memory as soon as he left home, with no time left except for the time to die. The dead have a lesson to teach us, so I traveled to say one last goodbye, to try and divine the message. But there was nothing left to ponder, save for the silence.
It wasn't his idea, of course. He didn't just wake up one day and decide to die. It wasn't even his idea to go where he went in the first place, though in his line of work, personal desire is an irrelevancy. They ask, you go, and it is as simple as that.
Time is a relative thing; Einstein tells us that. But if it is a relative thing, then it can have no objective meaning, for it depends on something else to provide it a frame of reference. Time exists and yet it doesn't exist, and for most of us, we never really notice it until it runs out. And all we are left with are frozen tableaus, ethereal things we call memories, events we can recall but never alter, a universe of things left unsaid or better never said at all.
He traveled a long way to die, so it seemed only fitting that I travel a long way to bid him farewell. But funerals aren't for the dead, they are for the living, and what is there really to say? Out of place, out of time, there is nothing that the living can say that the dead would wish to hear.
We are born alone, and we live alone, only fooling ourselves that we don't. We most certainly die alone, whether we are here, at home, or in the bitter mountains of a faraway land. What did you think of in those last moments, as your life ebbed away beyond recall? The desire to see a loved one's face just one more time? Regret over harsh words spoken heedlessly in a moment of anger? Bemusement at the encroaching darkness consuming you? The wish for just a little more time? I had the questions, he had the answers, and who is to say which one of us was the luckier.
His death wasn't fair, but in it perversely lay the ultimate fairness of it all, for time runs out for all of us and we come to our ends. We pretend that we are in control, that we can impose order on our lives, but in the end nothing but random chance really matters. Turn right at the corner, and you live; turn left, and you die. Rolling the cosmic dice, a momentary lapse of reason, life itself is a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was, and then he was not, and the world took no note of his passing. A memory as soon as he left home, with no time left except for the time to die. The dead have a lesson to teach us, so I traveled to say one last goodbye, to try and divine the message. But there was nothing left to ponder, save for the silence.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Saying Goodbye
Saying goodbye, letting go, is never easy, especially when you never actually get a chance to articulate the words. You get comfortable, settle into a belief that things are somehow immutable, a constant that has existed for as long as you can remember, and will continue to exist for as far into the future as you can see. But nothing exists in a stasis, frozen in amber and, like grains of sand running through your fingers, heedless of your wishes and desires, the world moves on as it is wont to do.
Then you wake up one day and something, someone, is missing, slipped away like a shadow in the night, and your fingers close on empty air, the sands finally having run out. You grasp and fumble for ghosts and memories, for that illusion of a comfortable sameness, a sleep-walker stumbling blindly in a curiously unbearable lightness of being. Days, years, pass, and still a small, hollow space you can never fill persists, that void where the things left undone and unsaid inhabits the small corner of your soul you keep carefully hidden away.
All you can do is try and box that part of yourself away, meticulously build a wall, brick by brick, fool yourself into believing that part of you doesn't exist. Better to feel nothing than to taste the exquisite loss that lives behind that wall, for if you set that beast loose then you will have to confront no one but yourself. But, like a phantom limb, it haunts you, stalks your dreams, speaks to you in a quiet, undeniable voice in the small hours of the morning, forces you to bear witness to what was, what might have been, what will never be.
She was the first love, the last love, but so much more than that. Companion, lover, friend, she was magic. Refuge from the pain and loss and chaos that had somehow come to be what passed for life, she coud banish the darkness threatening to engulf you, could heal you with a touch of her hand or just a look. She held your heart in her hands, and she guarded it fiercely, standing as a bulwark against the rage and the hurt and the fear, leading you from the night into the day, banishing despair with the music of a pure soul. She was magic.
Some wounds should never be reopened, some wounds never heal. No matter how many layers of scar tissue get laid down, they just fester, as fresh as the day they were inflicted. They are reminders of who you were, who you might have been, and of what you are not. You can try and box them up, store them away, fool yourself into believing that you are a good man, that you have hd a good life. But you are just lying to yourself and to the ghosts, and you can't escape from the things left undone, unsaid. You can't even say goodbye, because you don't have the words.
Then you wake up one day and something, someone, is missing, slipped away like a shadow in the night, and your fingers close on empty air, the sands finally having run out. You grasp and fumble for ghosts and memories, for that illusion of a comfortable sameness, a sleep-walker stumbling blindly in a curiously unbearable lightness of being. Days, years, pass, and still a small, hollow space you can never fill persists, that void where the things left undone and unsaid inhabits the small corner of your soul you keep carefully hidden away.
All you can do is try and box that part of yourself away, meticulously build a wall, brick by brick, fool yourself into believing that part of you doesn't exist. Better to feel nothing than to taste the exquisite loss that lives behind that wall, for if you set that beast loose then you will have to confront no one but yourself. But, like a phantom limb, it haunts you, stalks your dreams, speaks to you in a quiet, undeniable voice in the small hours of the morning, forces you to bear witness to what was, what might have been, what will never be.
She was the first love, the last love, but so much more than that. Companion, lover, friend, she was magic. Refuge from the pain and loss and chaos that had somehow come to be what passed for life, she coud banish the darkness threatening to engulf you, could heal you with a touch of her hand or just a look. She held your heart in her hands, and she guarded it fiercely, standing as a bulwark against the rage and the hurt and the fear, leading you from the night into the day, banishing despair with the music of a pure soul. She was magic.
Some wounds should never be reopened, some wounds never heal. No matter how many layers of scar tissue get laid down, they just fester, as fresh as the day they were inflicted. They are reminders of who you were, who you might have been, and of what you are not. You can try and box them up, store them away, fool yourself into believing that you are a good man, that you have hd a good life. But you are just lying to yourself and to the ghosts, and you can't escape from the things left undone, unsaid. You can't even say goodbye, because you don't have the words.
A Life in Slow Motion
It wasn't that he didn't care any more. To actually not care would have taken a level of energy and effort that he just didn't have left. Just getting out of bed in the morning wasn't even an act of will any longer, it was just something his body did because it didn't know what else to do. Not that there was even a real reason to get out of bed, just an empty day full of empty hours counting down an empty life. Wake up, shower, dress, eat, rinse and repeat.
It wasn't a life, yet it wasn't death, either, but some horrible hybrid of the two, a kind of nether world where time passed and yet really didn't, since every hour was exactly the same as the one that had preceded it. Death, at least, would have had a finality to it, instead of just the terminal ennui of being stretched so thin that even the capacity to recognize that stretching was lost.
He did nothing, and yet he was so tired. Tired of living, tired of dying, tired of being in that in-between world that was neither of the two. Most of all, he was tired of fighting. He had believed, once, that there were things worth fighting for, worth the effort and the blood and the tears, worth clawing his way back to his feet every time he'd been knocked down.
But he found, in the end, that he could only take so many hits. In the end, he would survive, or he wouldn't, and it really didn't matter much to him which one his fate would be. He was going to lose in the end, and he could look into the empty years looming in front of him and see that.
Would it really matter if that end came sooner rather than later? He didn't even think about that any more, just waited passively for what woud come next, staring blindly at the headlights bearing down on him. His friends were gone, now, some dead, but most just drifted away, and he no longer knew how to reach out to them, to any one. The girl he should have married was long gone, too, lost forever due to an incredible act of insensitivity or simply because he had been too blind to see the opportunity that had been offered him.
He had nothing, and he would leave nothing behind. It was funny, in a way, after a lifetime of helping other people, of wading through the blood an wreckage of their lives to put them back together, that there was no one there for him. A cosmic practical joke, perhaps, continuing proof that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
It wasn't a life, yet it wasn't death, either, but some horrible hybrid of the two, a kind of nether world where time passed and yet really didn't, since every hour was exactly the same as the one that had preceded it. Death, at least, would have had a finality to it, instead of just the terminal ennui of being stretched so thin that even the capacity to recognize that stretching was lost.
He did nothing, and yet he was so tired. Tired of living, tired of dying, tired of being in that in-between world that was neither of the two. Most of all, he was tired of fighting. He had believed, once, that there were things worth fighting for, worth the effort and the blood and the tears, worth clawing his way back to his feet every time he'd been knocked down.
But he found, in the end, that he could only take so many hits. In the end, he would survive, or he wouldn't, and it really didn't matter much to him which one his fate would be. He was going to lose in the end, and he could look into the empty years looming in front of him and see that.
Would it really matter if that end came sooner rather than later? He didn't even think about that any more, just waited passively for what woud come next, staring blindly at the headlights bearing down on him. His friends were gone, now, some dead, but most just drifted away, and he no longer knew how to reach out to them, to any one. The girl he should have married was long gone, too, lost forever due to an incredible act of insensitivity or simply because he had been too blind to see the opportunity that had been offered him.
He had nothing, and he would leave nothing behind. It was funny, in a way, after a lifetime of helping other people, of wading through the blood an wreckage of their lives to put them back together, that there was no one there for him. A cosmic practical joke, perhaps, continuing proof that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
That Light at the End of the Tunnel May Not Be What You Think . . .
Have you ever had one of those lifetimes where it really just doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning? I mean, you just know that no possible good can come from that act. You know what I'm talking about. Every one of us, at some point, has asked themselves the question "Does it really matter, cosmically speaking, if I just pull the covers back over my head and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist?"
The answer, of course, is no, it doesn't. A hundred years from this moment, no one is going to give a damn what you did or didn't do, whether you want to admit that or not. Nor is it very likely that anyone is even going to know you were alive, unless they are directly related to you, or you somehow wound up on the evening news with the anchor carefully pronouncing all three of your given names and your neighbours saying "But he was always so quiet . . ."
In the meantime, you get seventy or eighty years on this planet before the clock runs out and they throw dirt in your face. If, that is, you manage to avoid any of the truly delightful ways we've found for terminating our existences early . . . your mileage may vary. And what is it that so many of us choose to do with that time? Funny you should ask . . .
Casey Jones, meet the locomotive.
Most of us just seem to wander from one disaster to the next, and we call it "life." Not that we necessarily want to, but we just can't seem to help ourselves. Its what we do. Some people blame God for that, and then turn right around and pray to that same God for comfort and relief. Some people blame everybody else for their problems and misfortunes. What many of us don't do is put the responsibility squarely where it belongs: on ourselves. Life is chock full of drama, most of it self-inflicted.
Ever have a friend who just keeps throwing himself in front of the same train? It always winds up in a wreck, sometimes of biblical proportions and sometimes just of your everyday, city-razing variety, but they just keep on tossing themselves on the tracks. Whatever the pain, it seems that there's a bigger payoff and so the lemming-like rush goes on. And all you can do is watch from the sidelines, shrug, and remind yourself that the price of tuition just keeps going up.
For better or worse - mostly worse - we all make our own decisions. So, really, we have no one else to blame when that locomotive rolls right over us. If you don't want to get hit, then don't jump onto the tracks.
Maybe I'm just too detached. I certainly know I've been accused of that. Is it better to feel nothing than it is to feel everything? I don't know. I've been to both extremes in my life, though what most people mistake for detachment is simply the paralysis induced by feeling everything. That's my particular locomotive.
What I do know, however, is this. There are really only two rules in life. Rule Number One is that you can't change people. Rule Number Two is that you can't change Rule Number One.
I can't stop you from throwing yourself in front of that train. You wouldn't listen to me even if I tried. Nor can I pick you up, dust you off, and tell you everything is going to be all right, because it's not. Not when every time you see that light at the end of the tunnel, you're going to rush right out to see if it's the 4:15 freight. I can't do it, not when I've already lost so many friends. I just can't watch any more train wrecks.
You'll understand, I hope, if I just pull the covers back over my head. I've seen this movie before. Oh, hell, I've lived movie before. Trust me, it never ends well. There aren't any happy endings in this life, just endings, the only variation being the amount of pain we inflict on ourselves and others. And that, too, is one of the choices we all have to make.
The answer, of course, is no, it doesn't. A hundred years from this moment, no one is going to give a damn what you did or didn't do, whether you want to admit that or not. Nor is it very likely that anyone is even going to know you were alive, unless they are directly related to you, or you somehow wound up on the evening news with the anchor carefully pronouncing all three of your given names and your neighbours saying "But he was always so quiet . . ."
In the meantime, you get seventy or eighty years on this planet before the clock runs out and they throw dirt in your face. If, that is, you manage to avoid any of the truly delightful ways we've found for terminating our existences early . . . your mileage may vary. And what is it that so many of us choose to do with that time? Funny you should ask . . .
Casey Jones, meet the locomotive.
Most of us just seem to wander from one disaster to the next, and we call it "life." Not that we necessarily want to, but we just can't seem to help ourselves. Its what we do. Some people blame God for that, and then turn right around and pray to that same God for comfort and relief. Some people blame everybody else for their problems and misfortunes. What many of us don't do is put the responsibility squarely where it belongs: on ourselves. Life is chock full of drama, most of it self-inflicted.
Ever have a friend who just keeps throwing himself in front of the same train? It always winds up in a wreck, sometimes of biblical proportions and sometimes just of your everyday, city-razing variety, but they just keep on tossing themselves on the tracks. Whatever the pain, it seems that there's a bigger payoff and so the lemming-like rush goes on. And all you can do is watch from the sidelines, shrug, and remind yourself that the price of tuition just keeps going up.
For better or worse - mostly worse - we all make our own decisions. So, really, we have no one else to blame when that locomotive rolls right over us. If you don't want to get hit, then don't jump onto the tracks.
Maybe I'm just too detached. I certainly know I've been accused of that. Is it better to feel nothing than it is to feel everything? I don't know. I've been to both extremes in my life, though what most people mistake for detachment is simply the paralysis induced by feeling everything. That's my particular locomotive.
What I do know, however, is this. There are really only two rules in life. Rule Number One is that you can't change people. Rule Number Two is that you can't change Rule Number One.
I can't stop you from throwing yourself in front of that train. You wouldn't listen to me even if I tried. Nor can I pick you up, dust you off, and tell you everything is going to be all right, because it's not. Not when every time you see that light at the end of the tunnel, you're going to rush right out to see if it's the 4:15 freight. I can't do it, not when I've already lost so many friends. I just can't watch any more train wrecks.
You'll understand, I hope, if I just pull the covers back over my head. I've seen this movie before. Oh, hell, I've lived movie before. Trust me, it never ends well. There aren't any happy endings in this life, just endings, the only variation being the amount of pain we inflict on ourselves and others. And that, too, is one of the choices we all have to make.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
History Lessons
There is a very important anniversary coming up this weekend, one which marks one of the seminal events of the 20th Century, a tipping point where, quite literally, the world as we know it hung in the balance. Pity we don't really teach History in this country any more, because I'm willing to bet that few of you have any idea what I'm talking about, and even fewer of you understand just how vital the event in question was to shaping the world we live in now.
This Saturday marks the 65th anniversary of Operation Overlord, more popularly known as D-Day. From the Second World War. You know, the one that was fought in black-and-white.
In military terminology, the phrase "D-Day" really has no meaning other than being the day on which any given operation begins, just like "H-Hour" simply designates the time at which it begins. There were a lot of D-Days in the Second World War, both in the European Theatre of Operations and in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. But the one that happened on 6 June 1944 has a special significance attached to it, and so we know it simply as D-Day. The D-Day.
There was a lot riding on Operation Overlord. Not just the effort of the Allies on the Western Front - which, really, did not exist until Overlord - but the entire war in Europe hinged on that invasion. Had it not succeeded, it is entirely likely that Europe would still be in the throes of a new dark age, with Hitler's Third Reich still extant. Had there been a Cold War, it would not have been with the Soviet Union, but with a Germany in control of the European continent.
Imagine what would have happened had D-Day failed. There would have been no lodgement in France, from which the Allies could liberate Western Europe. There would have been no way for the Allies to mount another invasion attempt before 1947, at the earliest. By 1944, the British had reached a manpower crisis; part of the reason for Montgomery's slow movements after the invasion was because the British couldn't afford to take massive casualties. They simply couldn't replace them. Had the invasion failed, the loss of troops involved would have weakened the British to the point that they might have been knocked out of the war.
The Americans, too, faced a manpower crisis in 1944. The U.S. Army only fielded 89 Divisions in the war, and from 1944 on there was a severe shortage of men at the cutting edge - tankers, artillerymen, and particularly riflemen. Casualty rates and the under-estimation of personnel needed for the USAAF strained the system to its limits. Divisions in combat were maintained at something approaching their authorized Infantry strength only by ruthlessly stripping training Divisions and forcibly transferring personnel from the Army Air Forces. Had Overlord failed, the U.S. wouldn't have been knocked out of the war, but it would have been rendered incapable of conducting ground operations in Europe until the Army had been rebuilt.
If Overlord had failed, then Germany's western flank would have been secure for at least two years. Which means that many of the Divisions stationed there would have been unneeded, and could be transferred elsewhere. In other words, they could have been sent to the Eastern Front to face the Russians.
Infused with fresh Divisions, German strength on the Eastern Front would, at the least, have been doubled. That would have given them an essential parity with the Russians. Even with Hitler's notoriously stupid direction, that would have been enough to stabilize the Eastern Front. No Russians smashing their way across Poland, no Russians crossing the Oder, no Russians taking Berlin. Not a very pretty picture, is it?
So June 6 is, indeed, a very important day. The day, if you will. A day when the world hung in the balance, and didn't fall off the knife's edge. But for most of us, it will be just another day, and we will think nothing of those young men who sleep peacefully, at last, in foreign lands. Nothing that those men did, after all, who gave all of their tomorrows for our today, affects us, right?
We really do owe a debt we can never repay to those young men who parachuted into the Norman fields, who waded ashore at Utah Beach, and at Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Sword Beach, who bled at Omaha Beach, where the waters turned red. There aren't very many of them left, for we have reached that point in time where they are departing us swiftly, to join those who never left those places. Soon enough, the men who gave us these gifts we have will all be gone.
Really, Saturday is not just another day. It is one of those days that we should never forget.
This Saturday marks the 65th anniversary of Operation Overlord, more popularly known as D-Day. From the Second World War. You know, the one that was fought in black-and-white.
In military terminology, the phrase "D-Day" really has no meaning other than being the day on which any given operation begins, just like "H-Hour" simply designates the time at which it begins. There were a lot of D-Days in the Second World War, both in the European Theatre of Operations and in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. But the one that happened on 6 June 1944 has a special significance attached to it, and so we know it simply as D-Day. The D-Day.
There was a lot riding on Operation Overlord. Not just the effort of the Allies on the Western Front - which, really, did not exist until Overlord - but the entire war in Europe hinged on that invasion. Had it not succeeded, it is entirely likely that Europe would still be in the throes of a new dark age, with Hitler's Third Reich still extant. Had there been a Cold War, it would not have been with the Soviet Union, but with a Germany in control of the European continent.
Imagine what would have happened had D-Day failed. There would have been no lodgement in France, from which the Allies could liberate Western Europe. There would have been no way for the Allies to mount another invasion attempt before 1947, at the earliest. By 1944, the British had reached a manpower crisis; part of the reason for Montgomery's slow movements after the invasion was because the British couldn't afford to take massive casualties. They simply couldn't replace them. Had the invasion failed, the loss of troops involved would have weakened the British to the point that they might have been knocked out of the war.
The Americans, too, faced a manpower crisis in 1944. The U.S. Army only fielded 89 Divisions in the war, and from 1944 on there was a severe shortage of men at the cutting edge - tankers, artillerymen, and particularly riflemen. Casualty rates and the under-estimation of personnel needed for the USAAF strained the system to its limits. Divisions in combat were maintained at something approaching their authorized Infantry strength only by ruthlessly stripping training Divisions and forcibly transferring personnel from the Army Air Forces. Had Overlord failed, the U.S. wouldn't have been knocked out of the war, but it would have been rendered incapable of conducting ground operations in Europe until the Army had been rebuilt.
If Overlord had failed, then Germany's western flank would have been secure for at least two years. Which means that many of the Divisions stationed there would have been unneeded, and could be transferred elsewhere. In other words, they could have been sent to the Eastern Front to face the Russians.
Infused with fresh Divisions, German strength on the Eastern Front would, at the least, have been doubled. That would have given them an essential parity with the Russians. Even with Hitler's notoriously stupid direction, that would have been enough to stabilize the Eastern Front. No Russians smashing their way across Poland, no Russians crossing the Oder, no Russians taking Berlin. Not a very pretty picture, is it?
So June 6 is, indeed, a very important day. The day, if you will. A day when the world hung in the balance, and didn't fall off the knife's edge. But for most of us, it will be just another day, and we will think nothing of those young men who sleep peacefully, at last, in foreign lands. Nothing that those men did, after all, who gave all of their tomorrows for our today, affects us, right?
We really do owe a debt we can never repay to those young men who parachuted into the Norman fields, who waded ashore at Utah Beach, and at Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Sword Beach, who bled at Omaha Beach, where the waters turned red. There aren't very many of them left, for we have reached that point in time where they are departing us swiftly, to join those who never left those places. Soon enough, the men who gave us these gifts we have will all be gone.
Really, Saturday is not just another day. It is one of those days that we should never forget.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Oink, Oink . . .
Ah, it is finally June. The days are getting warmer as we move toward Summer, soft breezes gently ripple through the newly-green trees, and the girls . . .
Okay, I'll be the first to admit it. I am a walking HR specialist's nightmare.
It occured to me this afternoon, as I was wandering through the grocery store and noticed all the women decked out in chest-hugging shirts that they must have painted on, and little almost-there shorts with cutesy slogans emblazoned across their bums, that I must be the kind of man that sends HR people screaming for the Valium and seriously reconsider their profession.
Not that I need a sign hung around my neck that reads "Caution: Pedophile At Work," but I really don't seem to remember teenage girls being built that way when I was that age. Curves in all the right places, sure, but not that curvy . . . nor that eager to show said curves off. And then there are the twenty- and thirty-somethings . . .
Oy.
The thing of it is, we men are constantly told not to objectify women. We are constantly told that putting a woman and the idea of sex into the same thought is a bad thing, the greatest of social sins, and that only a severely intellectually-handicapped, knuckle-dragging pig - in other words, a man - would do something like that. Humans, after all, are intelligent beings, right? So, naturally, political correctness trumps evolution.
Oops. Guess I'm just a pig, and a rather unevolved one, at that. Reality, meet political correctness. And do try not to drool on the floor, please.
Women, I suppose, should hate Lycra. Because, when a man sees a really cute woman in the grocery store wearing bike shorts and a sports bra that do absolutely nothing to conceal all the right curves being in all the right places, just what does she think that guy is going to think about? Biking? Please . . .
And, really, is just looking cause enough to scream "Animal! Off to sensitivity training with you at once!"? I mean, if you don't want us looking, why do you wear those little tube-tops and wonder bras? Or the little low-riding shorts with the writing on your butts? I'm so confused. My little porcine brain hurts.
Personally, at this point in my life, I've been through quite a few HR specialists. I'm sort of the Mount Suribachi of that profession, only the Marines had an easier time of it with theirs than HR folk have with me.
Q: "What do you think about when you see a woman?"
A: "She's cute. I'd like to meet her."
Q: "What do you think about when you see a woman's breasts?"
A: "Umm . . . sex."
Q: "And why do you think about sex?"
A: "Because I'm a man?"
Q: "But don't you think about that woman as a person?"
A: "Sure. I think of her as a person I'd like to have sex with."
Q: "No! Bad dog! No biscuit! Thinking of women and sex is wrong!"
A: "If it were that wrong, neither you nor I would be here . . ."
Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of things I value in a woman, such as intelligence, wit, a sense of humour, the ability to carry on and hold her own in a conversation . . . But, let's face it. When a man first sees a woman in a thong bikini, that's not what he's thinking about. All due apologies to the sensitivity trainers out there, of course.
Yet it still seems to me that there's a double-standard out there. It seems that it is perfectly acceptable for a group of women to look at a man and talk about how cute his buns are, or what a ripped six-pack he has, and so on. But, if you reverse the genders of everyone involved in that scenario, all of a sudden it's like the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbour.
I'm all for equality here, really. But at times it seems like as soon as a man looks at a woman, sirens start going off, red lights start flashing and you're sitting in a class about sexual harrassment before you even know what's going on.
Ah, well. I can't help it. It's a hard-wired thing, I suppose. Personally, I'd be ecstatic if a woman looked at me and thought "Sex!" But that's just me. I mean, just looking never hurt anything, did it?
Looks like it's going to be another long Summer . . .
Okay, I'll be the first to admit it. I am a walking HR specialist's nightmare.
It occured to me this afternoon, as I was wandering through the grocery store and noticed all the women decked out in chest-hugging shirts that they must have painted on, and little almost-there shorts with cutesy slogans emblazoned across their bums, that I must be the kind of man that sends HR people screaming for the Valium and seriously reconsider their profession.
Not that I need a sign hung around my neck that reads "Caution: Pedophile At Work," but I really don't seem to remember teenage girls being built that way when I was that age. Curves in all the right places, sure, but not that curvy . . . nor that eager to show said curves off. And then there are the twenty- and thirty-somethings . . .
Oy.
The thing of it is, we men are constantly told not to objectify women. We are constantly told that putting a woman and the idea of sex into the same thought is a bad thing, the greatest of social sins, and that only a severely intellectually-handicapped, knuckle-dragging pig - in other words, a man - would do something like that. Humans, after all, are intelligent beings, right? So, naturally, political correctness trumps evolution.
Oops. Guess I'm just a pig, and a rather unevolved one, at that. Reality, meet political correctness. And do try not to drool on the floor, please.
Women, I suppose, should hate Lycra. Because, when a man sees a really cute woman in the grocery store wearing bike shorts and a sports bra that do absolutely nothing to conceal all the right curves being in all the right places, just what does she think that guy is going to think about? Biking? Please . . .
And, really, is just looking cause enough to scream "Animal! Off to sensitivity training with you at once!"? I mean, if you don't want us looking, why do you wear those little tube-tops and wonder bras? Or the little low-riding shorts with the writing on your butts? I'm so confused. My little porcine brain hurts.
Personally, at this point in my life, I've been through quite a few HR specialists. I'm sort of the Mount Suribachi of that profession, only the Marines had an easier time of it with theirs than HR folk have with me.
Q: "What do you think about when you see a woman?"
A: "She's cute. I'd like to meet her."
Q: "What do you think about when you see a woman's breasts?"
A: "Umm . . . sex."
Q: "And why do you think about sex?"
A: "Because I'm a man?"
Q: "But don't you think about that woman as a person?"
A: "Sure. I think of her as a person I'd like to have sex with."
Q: "No! Bad dog! No biscuit! Thinking of women and sex is wrong!"
A: "If it were that wrong, neither you nor I would be here . . ."
Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of things I value in a woman, such as intelligence, wit, a sense of humour, the ability to carry on and hold her own in a conversation . . . But, let's face it. When a man first sees a woman in a thong bikini, that's not what he's thinking about. All due apologies to the sensitivity trainers out there, of course.
Yet it still seems to me that there's a double-standard out there. It seems that it is perfectly acceptable for a group of women to look at a man and talk about how cute his buns are, or what a ripped six-pack he has, and so on. But, if you reverse the genders of everyone involved in that scenario, all of a sudden it's like the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbour.
I'm all for equality here, really. But at times it seems like as soon as a man looks at a woman, sirens start going off, red lights start flashing and you're sitting in a class about sexual harrassment before you even know what's going on.
Ah, well. I can't help it. It's a hard-wired thing, I suppose. Personally, I'd be ecstatic if a woman looked at me and thought "Sex!" But that's just me. I mean, just looking never hurt anything, did it?
Looks like it's going to be another long Summer . . .
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