The Senescent Man

It’s Saturday night, and Memorial Day “observed” is not for a couple more days, but the cable stations are playing old war movies.  I came across the last of the HBO series “Band of Brothers” Episode 9 when they liberated a concentration camp on their way into the heart of Germany near the end of the war.  HBO did a remarkable job reenacting a true event, the incredulousness of the American Army as it discovers the heinous and criminal inhumanity of the Nazis.  On the other channel was an old 1949 movie about the Battle of the Bulge and the 101 stuck in Bastogne.  When the Germans told them they were surrounded, the commanding officer had only a one word response: “Nuts.”

Episode 9 of “Band of Brothers” was entitled “Why We Fight.”

A reminder of why we fought in past wars, and why we will fight wars in the future assuming Western Civilization lives on.  Young men have given their lives; young men will give their lives again.  As a father of a young man, I grieve bitterly with only a shadow of a sense of the cost. To those we remember this weekend:

“When they shall die, take them and cut them out in little stars and they will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Wm. Shakespeare

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 10:32 PM