75 Years Ago

I am thoughtful of 75 years ago and the invasion of France that was scheduled to happen on June 5 but weather pushed it back to June 6.

On Memorial Day, we had just gotten back to Kanab from Zion National Park and to our room and turned the TV on and the movie, “Saving Private Ryan”, was beginning.  After watching the beach landing, I left for the Kanab cemetery a few blocks away and some time there.  I walked down main street, found a small Baptist church with no one home, picked up a couple of food items, and returned to Janet.

The movie was still on – now at the battle for the bridge.  The movie ends with Private Ryan, now 50 or so years older (70ish) bowing at the burial marker in the cemetery in Normandy of the captain who died saving him at the bridge and then standing and saluting.  What a scene!  It was so appropriate for Memorial Day and now so appropriate for these opening days of June.  Our boys took a terrible beating to get a beachhead in order to get an army on shore to begin the eradication of the Nazi plague.

April Buttermore’s grandfather was involved in that invasion on June 6 and was captured and stuffed in a small French boxcar with about 60 other men (boys around the age of 20) and over the next days moved deeper and deeper into France keeping them away from rescue.  After nearly three weeks, the Germans opted to abandon the train but one German came back and unlocked the car doors.  April’s grandfather was one of only three still alive in that car.  It was a horrible injustice!

To not have our hearts rent over the evil caused by evil men with powerful personas and terrifying ways (such as crystal night in Nov. ’38) is to not have a realistic grip of the world in which we live.  God has declared – Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?  Men are capable of great evil!

Oh, how God must be grieved and angered at the antics of mankind!  We must ever be thankful for men who have stood up against evil at the risk of life and limb.  Our freedoms and blessings exist because of the sacrifices of others but mostly due to the mercy and grace of our God.  May we be humbled and thankful!

PK

[Today is the 30th remembrance of Tiananmen Square when the Chinese army used tanks to remove protestors – you have seen the picture of the student standing in front of a tank.  How many were executed for taking such a stand?  Only God knows!]