This is liable to be even more introspective a missive; given that for the last two weeks I’ve done little else but prepare for and perform in memorial ceremonies. Playing in graveyards is certainly nothing new for an Army musician, but something about performing them in the fields of Holland and the beaches of Normandy where they fell, to say nothing of the sheer number of the dead, added an inescapable feeling of realism for me which all previous ceremonies had lacked. The 30th of May found us in Maastricht, a lovely town at the southern tip of Holland where it sticks out for no apparent reason between Belgium and Germany. Perhaps that’s why they chose it as the site for signing the European Union Treaty a few years ago. We were allowed to go into town for dinner, and were surprised to find ourselves in the middle of quite a party: bands set up everywhere, men in tails and women in formals. The only explanation I could get was that it was the night of the annual transvestite ball, but maybe my French is rustier than I thought. I hope so - they looked real to me. Anyway, it made for quite a striking contrast the next morning with cemetery grounds outside of town. It isn’t nearly as large as Arlington, there are no famous persons buried there, and the central monument is a very plain rectangular obelisk of ten stories. The perfect rows of crosses and stars of David mark some of the very last victims of the war, some falling as late as the week before the surrender of Germany in campaigns of which I certainly had no knowledge. And of course I had a job to do; so my mind was on performing and wishing the rain would stop and hoping the American Ambassador (who had an umbrella) would cut it short and not use it as a platform for another Kosovo pep talk. But the guy who got to me was not a politician at all, but the son of one of the men buried there. He had never known his father, of course; and like so many of his generation was looking for a way to explain to his children what it was that had happened here as well as come to grips with it himself. After all, kids don’t understand politics, tyrants and crusades (as if any of us really do); and no one who has not experienced combat has a clue as to what it is like - myself most certainly included. But while there were perhaps as many reasons and causes as men on that field, in the moment when it counted they all felt it more important than life without it. He still wasn’t sure how to explain it to his kids, but he knew they had to come back and say thank you. After the ceremony while the combo had to play for a reception, I got to wander around for awhile by myself; and it struck me just how immeasurably large our debt is to these men. It’s almost as if I could hear them saying, "I gave you the chance to have everything that you have - wife, family, job, growing old - so what have you done with it?" And I must say, my comfortable and self-centered life didn’t make for a very good response.
Which put me in a fine state to appreciate my time in Normandy. It was more like a field exercise than anything else: we stayed in old barracks, ate meals of questionable origin and got rained on every single day. One ceremony we got so wet we couldn’t use the uniforms for the next job. The atmosphere, however, was still quite festive. Everywhere people were flying the flags of France, America, Great Britain and Canada, wearing old WWII uniforms and driving around in everything from jeeps to half tracks. Kids whose parents might not even have been born in ’44 were decked out from head to toe (though a few seemed a bit confused about the role of the Confederacy in the landing). Every little town had immaculately cared-for monuments, bedecked with more flags and flowers. Oh, and I caught some intestinal virus or something that kept me flat on my back for a day (when I wasn’t retching or relieving my liquid intestines) before I passed it on to the rest of the band. They were singularly ungrateful. However, I still managed to get down to the beach. There was no way I was going to come so far and put up with so much and miss it. I tell you, though I’ve seen the movies and read accounts, nothing could have prepared me for the impossibility of that landing. It is a miracle that anyone survived June 6th at all. Even after all the bombing and 55 years of neglect, the coastal batteries and bunkers are still mostly intact; and the cliffs themselves are formidable. I usually get quite cynical whenever some politician starts talking about God being on one side or another, but from where I stood He had to have been with them that day; for there just isn’t any other reasonable explanation for why they weren’t all thrown back into the sea. Looking at what they accomplished, I felt unworthy to even stand in the same sand.
The final ceremony itself was something of an anticlimax. Not that it wasn’t appropriate or well done; there’s something about having to concentrate so hard for over two hours on just remaining vertical that dulls the impact, I guess. The next day as we headed home, I was struck by how quickly everything had returned to normal. The soldiers and flags were gone, as if never there; and the cows once again had the run of the muddy rolling hills. I think that’s why we must go back every now and then to remember.
You might be surprised to know that we almost never get to play for the President when he's here. There is a big Air Force band that takes all those jobs, often leaving some other job for us to cover like this July 5th in Paris. Not that I mind Paris in the least, mind you; it just means that we have to go straight from a July 4th gig in Belgium. I guess if the President were walking in, we’d get to play.