Simply astounding.
Mr. Rockie Blunt's testimony during his interviews with the History Channel for 'WWII in HD' has left me in awe. To imagine the dreadfulness of the emotional torment Mr. Blunt (and his fellow soldiers) endured during their heroic efforts throughout WWII is to push the human mind to the very limit of sanity.
Blunt was a jazz musician, thrust forth into the bloody rampage of one man's (Hitler) horrific and murderous quest for acceptance, met with the full atrocities of war, yet was lucky enough to escape the throes of such idealistic madness. To be there, to hold within one's grasp the final breath of his fellow man, rising with premeditated remorse to the challenge of murder, ultimately fulfilling a promise no man should ever have to make...
Mr. Blunt is a man, if ever there was one, and he and his comrades deserve the full recognition and appreciation of my generation, a generation lost in an orgasm of the senses. His confessions of Darwinian weakness shatter the illusion of what one can be capable of during times of unparalleled duress. Saying thank you simply isn't enough, for what Mr. Blunt (and his fellow soldiers) sacrificed was far greater than their lives.
That war and those experiences took with it a part of their minds, a part of their universal human innocence that otherwise would be left undisturbed, and trying to convey my appreciation by simply saying "thank you" would be an insult to Mr. Blunt and the memories of the men he served with.
And although I know nothing of the sacrifices these gentlemen had to make, I watch the footage of their darkest hours with pools of sympathy collecting in my eyes and a broken heart sinking in my stomach. These men were men, and long after they have gone, it is our duty, and the duty of future generations, to ensure that their stories live on...
"He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother..."*
Please permit me, Mr. Blunt and the remaining members of the Greatest Generation, to say, perhaps at last, welcome home. We shall never forget.
*Portion of St. Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V.
