On our Rhine-Moselle river trip we made a stop a couple of
days ago at the American WW2 cemetery at Hamm, near Luxemburg, the last resting
place of about 5000 American servicemen (and 1 woman, an Army nurse) most of whom
died in the 1944/45 Battle of the Bulge. Nearby in the German WW2 cemetery lie about
11,000 young German soldiers who lost their lives in the same battle. There is
something terribly poignant about all those young people, American and German
alike, who could in other circumstances have been the best of friends, but
instead cut each other’s lives so short.
As a group (we are
all Americans on this river cruise) we laid a wreath at the central chapel. The
superintendent called forth all the veterans in the group, and I found myself terribly
moved as a number of old men (we are almost all old in this cruise) stepped
forward to form ranks and place the wreath while taps were played.
I cannot help but reflect what madness, what political incompetence
on both sides led us into all the senseless
devastation and lost lives in World War 2, and wonder whether the world isn’t repeating
this madness today. Our Middle Eastern wars haven’t produced as many American
deaths, but it has produced tens of thousands of physically and/or mentally
damaged American soldiers whose lives and whose family’s lives will be blighted
by their disabilities for the rest of their lives. And of course millions of
the native residents of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan have been killed, wounded,
and/or displaced in the senseless fighting
Traveling through the Rhine and Moselle valleys one learns
about the many invasions and conflicts that have washed over these areas repeatedly
since before Roman times right up to World War 2. What, one wonders, would it
take to permanently restrain the inevitable ambitions of demagogues (President
Putin comes to mind) and religious
fanatics (the IS comes to mind) and end this senseless cycle of destruction.
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