The Boy Next Door
By
Gerry Niskern
The boy next door just graduated from high school. He’s excited about starting college at NAU this fall. His future is ahead of him. He’ll be able to someday work where he chooses, have a business, move any where he wants. That’s what growing up in a Democracy allows. Freedom.
If today was eighty years ago, he would be headed directly into one of our armed services, and then straight overseas to battle. The many stories about D-Day this week reminds us that a large percentage of the men that landed on the Normandy beaches were teenagers. Take a minute and think about that.
Our country, along with our Allies, invaded Normandy eighty years ago to fight an authoritarian government that was intent on conquering the world. Nazi Germany had taken over the continent of Europe destroying countries and people’s lives. 150,000 men landed on five beaches on the coast of Normandy knowing that it was estimated that 50% of them would probably not survive.
Many books are available describing D-Day. The details of the invasion and the politics of why we weren’t involved in fighting that German government years earlier are explained again and again.
I can only truthfully write about my own memories of those war years. I vividly recall around age five, before I started to school, sitting in the kitchen and watching my mother cry as she listened to the radio while she worked. When I would ask why she was crying, she always answered, “Oh honey, it’s what’s happening to those people in Europe.” At that time, we still had cousins in Austria.
Later, I watched her crying the few times she received a precious V-mail from one of her two younger brothers in the Navy. One was a gunner on a destroyer and the other an electrician on a tanker. In December of 1943 my cousin, an eighteen- year- old Marine, was stationed at Camp Pendelton and was due to ship out. He was part of a Bazooka team. My Dad borrowed gas ration coupons and drove us to San Diego to hug him goodbye. We all cried that day. During the months ahead thousands of lives were interrupted and many thousands more lives were over.
Today the young men in the Ukraine are fighting to hang on to their Democracy. Their future plans are on hold. We’re committed to helping them. We can’t remain in isolation when other Democracies are threatened.
When we go to the polls in November we’ll be choosing between a future autocratic government or our present Democratic society where your kid next door can plan his future freely.