Guest Editorial

War documentary shows harsh realities

EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is a story written by Audrey Cole, a 17-year-old senior at Neosho Christian Schools. She is the daughter if Jim and Emily Cole. She penned these thoughts after seeing the documentary “Lest They Be Forgotten” sponsored by Clark Funeral Home. It was submitted by her teacher, Eric Wilson.

The images flashed through my mind - the Normandy Beach littered with the dead and wounded; German crossfire shattering the calm of that once peaceful place.

June 6, in all its realities and horrors, is now firmly implanted on my mind. Tears came to my eyes when I listened to the shaky accounts of the old veterans, how their friends were cut down right beside them - the utter helplessness they felt when they had to pass by the soldiers screaming in pain. Some were 18 years old, some 40 years old; it didn’t matter to the Germans.

I cringed when one veteran belonging to a tank battalion told how he had been commanded to drive forward, and how he had to drive over many of the wounded soldiers in the process.

I was there as they described it. I saw the carnage and the bodies being heaped in mass graves and I heard the explosions that took the fellows right next to me. In reality, though, I was just sitting, watching, but I felt it. How horrible would it have been for those people in the audience who actually went through that experience??

I looked around at their faces - wrinkled with age, many with canes propped up beside their seats. I saw them nod to each other as the details of the attack were described, and then I realized something. THESE men were actually in the war! Some of these very men might have been fighting on that Normandy Beach! I saw how they dabbed at their faces, trying unsuccessfully to hide the tears. I wonder if they were thinking of a buddy they had lost - who had been fighting right beside them one second and was lying gasping on the sand the next? I wonder, and I am sure many of them were, if not about the invasion of Normandy, then some other place or battle.

I am ever so grateful for those men. They said they were not heroes, but I believe they are. Being able to live with that playing in your mind over and over and not be bitter about the loss of your friends is something that only a hero can handle.

Every soldier on every wave of every ship put their lives on the line - it was not up to them if it was taken or somehow spared! No matter if they were killed in action, or have passed on since then, or still remain, their sacrifice has made our country a better place to live.

I am forever indebted to them and I know that I will never take what they went through for granted!

God Bless our Veterans!!!