50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

In our last contact I said, see if what we come up with in June suits us, always a dangerous suggestion from a writer. This June holds key military decisions that pushed to end WWII. Seventy-five years in our past was a launch, literally, onto points on the French coastline, controlled by German army machine guns. This poem you will read was composed on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, but for me dates to the actual invasion of Europe. I was nine and on a visit to my Aunt Lena’s home in Des Moines. When I got up and had some breakfast, the radio, tuned to the CBS network told the home front of invasions witnessed in some manner and sent us on our home radios. Robert Trout was the anchor in New York, passing to his listeners wired in reports and CBS reporters live estimations of what was taking place.

So, even at age nine, that holds a permanent slot in my memory. An aside, our family was in our kitchen hearing as the Japan Empire signed surrender documents aboard the U.S. Battleship Missouri. What follows is my effort, albeit somewhat dark, about the Allied landings, D-Day.

Running Scared

Best plans wash in a swirling sea

as machines of war go on.

Down go the boys, as prepared as they’ll ever be to fight.

Washing in the tide, rifle and pack hold one soldier above the wet consequence.

Best plans advance, humans move step by step.

Engineers with rifles and shovels build through the destruction.

Binoculars focus on the tumult, see a neighbor running scared, witness to the incidental carnage.

Some stay, some build and go on with their lives a week or two.

Some dodge the bullets forever.

Bodies on the beach and war comes to a crawl, enemies manufactured from slogans and worse.

Minds prepared to kill, but not to die glory bound from a Nazi round.

This poem was not easy to think out and write, searching for words and sentiments to soften the impact. In movie theaters and on television screens later, we might see selected landing activities, and sometimes a GI falling on the beach. The losses have always been hard to deal with. Soldiers gave their lives “as prepared as they’ll ever be to fight.”

Scenes we know and create within our lawns and gardens refresh our lives “just in time” Join us in July.