American Spirit Marked by Goodness and Sacrifice

The spirit of America is found in the mundane tasks of daily living and in great acts of bravery and sacrifice. Most Americans, in every corner of the union, are responsible citizens who work every day to build a good life for their families. They want to build better communities where all can live together in relative harmony and thrive. They strive to be good neighbors and help those in their community who, for whatever reason, are struggling.

As we look back across this country’s history, many made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve the spirit of America. Recently, I finished reading “The Americans at Normandy” by John C. McManus. The combat in the hedgerow country after D-Day was brutal, lasting through June and July into August of 1944. The casualty rates were incredibly high. The Germans were fanatical and well-trained fighters.

McManus concludes his book with two powerful paragraphs:

“Just outside of the seaside town of St-Laurent, on a cliffside that overlooks a strip of beach that was once known as Easy Red, 9,387 Americans lie under a field of white crosses and Stars of David. Most of these Americans were killed in the Battle of Normandy. The cemetery is beautifully maintained and manicured. Those who are buried there deserve nothing less. On a typical day, a visitor can stroll among the graves, dignified row after dignified row, and smell the sea air, hear the whisper of the surf against the beach, and experience a peace and tranquility that those 9,387 Americans did not enjoy in the summer of 1944. At this place of heroes, the past is somehow alive. The unseen faces of so many young Americans are there somehow — perhaps it is just their presence that one can sense.

“They were sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, and friends. Nearly all of them were loved. Nearly all of them were important to someone in those days so long ago. Nearly all of them left a void in the lives of those they knew. Each and every one of them hoped for a long, full life, but for these dead men there would be no postwar world. They would never see their children grow to adulthood, nor would they bury their grandparents, parents, uncles, or aunts. For them, time stopped on the day they were killed. They are forever young. Year by year, they recede further and further into the anonymity of the past, known only to a dying few. To the generations that have followed them, and will follow them in the future, their graves are a living memorial to the past, to what Americans once did, in a place so far from home. For what ultimately did they give their lives? Very simply, they gave their collective future to ensure ours. In the final analysis, there was, for them, nothing more valuable, or more precious, they could ever give. Such is the American legacy of the Battle of Normandy.”