As Diane and I negotiated the small streets in Vernon, France a few years ago, we heard yelling ahead. As we turned the corner, we saw an older woman waving three large flags out her second story window and enthusiastically proclaiming, “Merci, Merci!”
As we paused she continued earnestly, “Etes vous Americain? Anglais? Canadien?” When she learned that most of this group was American, she switched the flags to display the Stars and Stripes as she shouted in French, “Thank you for our freedom! Thank you for our freedom!”
We didn’t know what to think, but our guide’s explanation touched our hearts. This woman, he explained, waits for occasional passing Western tourists to loudly display her gratitude for their country’s involvement in the D-Day Normandy invasion that liberated the French from German occupation in World War II. The woman isn’t crazy, and she isn’t senile. She just wants to do her small part to tell the world that she has not forgotten that seventy five years ago, young men came to help strangers release her country from the strangle hold of tyranny. How can the children and grandchildren of those who put their lives on the line so long ago, be unmoved as they continue past this small but profound connection?
The next day, our tour moved on to those Normandy beaches. Gentle English Channel waves lapped fine sands where, on June 6, 1944, transport after transport deposited groups of young men tasked with crossing a mine and barrier filled expansive sand tract and climbing up a bluff on which concrete German bunkers protected with rapid firing machine guns. You may have seen the movies, Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day, but, let me tell you, the distance between water and bluffs is significantly longer than you imagined — impossibly longer than you imagined.
Just beyond the bluffs which you can’t imagine anyone climbing, let alone someone weighed down with packs and military gear, is the American cemetery, where 9,000 of the 30,000 casualties rest. Rows of granite crosses make the sunny field a place of poignant remembrance. A short film within a small museum offers a bit of information about those interred: One boy put himself in harm’s way helping a wounded friend … who came home. The parents of another chose to bury their son in France rather than home in America to keep him close to his buddies and the land he sacrificed himself to liberate. The average age of the fallen is 24. And a woman a few miles south on the Seine River waves three flags in the peaceful sun and shouts, “Merci! Thank you!”
America and her allies have sent young men to help in world conflict after world conflict, and we are blessed that many of those young men have returned home. Those young men have become fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers, and they carry the memories of those conflicts with them. November is the month of Thanksgiving. It is also the month of Veterans Day. On this Veterans Day let us all wave our heart flags and say, “Thank you” to those who have served. Thank you for our continued freedom.