Omaha Beach, Normandy France
It's had to have happened to you. You're running late and you find yourself stuck in traffic behind some old dude going 25 miles an hour in the wrong lane with the wrong blinker on. Most likely you're in 
It's the 6th of June, 1944 and that guy you and I will eventually have the luxury of being annoyed with is standing in a landing craft. He's sea-sick and scared shitless and the guy behind him just puked up a half-digested can of K-rations on the back of his legs, both of which are shaking almost beyond control. He checks his M1 Garand for the thirty-second time...loaded, charged, safety on. He re-wraps the plastic around it to keep it dry. From behind, someone yells "One minute!"
His Squad Leader is yelling something about intervals and rally points.
He feels the boat strike and grind on something and he loses his balance, then falls to one knee but this saves his life for the minute the ramp falls the enemy MG-42 rounds go high, just over his head.
The guy behind him drops like a rag-doll, as do several in front of him.
Huddled behind an X-shaped steel barrier he scans the beach ahead. Dozens lay crumpled in the sand at the waters edge, their limbs floating awkwardly to and fro in blood-stained sea foam. He moves with the crowd, hears a slap, and the man to his left drops.
Somehow, and the memory of how it came pass be will always escape him, he makes it across the beach and to the sea wall; a three foot mound of sand that is the high-water mark of the English Channel in France. He collapses into a fetal position and screams. Like in a dream, there is no sound. Then he pisses himself.
A round from a German 88 explodes in the dunes beyond the seawall, showering him with sand.
He's up now and running.
Somebody yells for a Bangalore torpedo, a long pipe-like munition designed to breach barbed wire obstacles. There is an explosion and a sergeant yells "defilade, right front…let's move!" The line surges through the gap and into the brushy dunes beyond the sea wall. Ahead there is an enormous hill, heavily laden with concrete bunkers and pill-boxes that rain death from their guns. Suddenly our man realizes that he has yet to fire his weapon. This makes him mad and he fires three rounds up the hill, hitting nothing but feeling better; no longer helpless. He runs, dodges and sprints in short dashes just like they told him to do in basic training so long ago and finds himself separated from the main body with two others at his side. This is when he sees his first Germans. Through the slit-like opening in a concrete bunker, they are firing an MG-42 with great effect down the line; tearing guys up... tearing up his friends. Without a second thought, he waits until the line of fire angles away from him, yells "covering fire!" to the two men, and surges forward. He doesn't feel brave. He feels only rage. All thoughts of patriotism and noble causes and of liberating an oppressed
His lungs are about to explode as he gains the bunker. Back to the concrete, the gun slit open to his left, he prays and curses in the same breath. He hears muffled commands from within, shouted in a language he doesn't understand, and the gun opens up again but now he has pulled the pin on his grenade and lets the spoon fly. He counts; One thousand, two thousand, three thousand...then tosses the grenade into the slit. There are panicked shouts in German, an explosion, and the gun falls silent. He makes his way to the back of the bunker where three more Germans appear from the rear entrance. He drops them all with his M1 rifle, emptying the clip, and then reloads. There are voices now, and scattered moans from within the bunker. He doesn't understand German but the tone is clearly that of pain and surrender. Well, maybe. Who's to know? Without a tinge of guilt he throws in another grenade, then another. He wishes like hell that he had a flame thrower. When the dust settles he enters the bunker with his weapon raised to his shoulder, knife-like eyes gazing down the front sight post. There is only one German still alive. The enemy is wounded, crumpled in the corner with his hands up...old enough to be his grandfather. The German strikes our man as scared, hurt, and somewhat pathetic. He places the muzzle of hi M1 on the German's chest and fires. On the floor next to the German is a charred pack of cigarettes and a lighter emblazoned with a swastika. He picks up the pack, draws one out, lights it, and inhales deeply. The men he has just killed lay crumpled around him in pools of their own blood; eyes and mouths open wide in frozen terror. He surveys the scene through eyes that rest below furrowed brows. A sudden guilt tugs at him, unbidden, and he stares at the lit end of the cigarette... my mother would just shit if she knew I was smoking.
His two companions appear as dark silhouettes in the doorway and stare into the bunker with wide eyes. He knows both of the men from the long months of training in
He looks down and sees his left leg soaked in blood. Only then does the pain register and he hobbles out of the bunker and into the light where a sudden weariness washes over him. Gazing up the hill, he sees American soldiers surging over the top. The cacophony of weapons fire has eased to sporadic reports. They've taken the beach. His bad leg buckles and he falls against the bunker, then sits. As his vision begins to dim, he casts his gaze out to sea where ships stretch ominously under lead-gray skies as far as the distant horizon. We're gonna win this fight, he thinks, and then he smiles awkwardly and passes out. One soldier goes to work on his leg and the other yells frantically for a medic.
Tomorrow will be his birthday. He'll be nineteen years old.
Eventually, he will recover from his wounds and fight again, spending the next year of his life on constant edge, experiencing the unimaginable and living through the un-livable. He's there to do a job and he does it. He'll be awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart but he's not a hero. He would gladly trade those little tags of cloth and tinsel just to hear the friends he lost laugh one more time. He's a kid from
Now, years later as he stands before us in line or delays us in traffic, the wounds and years have caught up with him and he's frustrated at how slow he is and how fast and impatient the world has become. Cancer is slowly accomplishing what the Germans failed to do on the beaches of
A few paragraphs can not do justice to what it feels like to stand on
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