This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2:
Only four years, almost to the day, after tens of thousands of allied troops had sat on a beach at Dunkirk, being bombed and strafed and hoping for evacuation, 6 June 1944 saw many hundreds of the same men preparing to fight on the European mainland again. Imagine their feelings – about to face the guns once more. That’s courage.
Like young Albert Kings of the 1st Worcester Regiment as his troop ship pulls out of Newhaven Docks, thinking of his wife of less than three months and wondering if she will soon be a widow. Later he wrote: “I tried to look ahead to better times, but I knew it would only be brought about by our efforts. I was determined to do my best.”
What strikes me, reading the stories of D-Day again, 75 years on, is that these guys didn’t have the luxury of offering opinions or passing distant judgment on the whole operation or those who had planned it. Whatever their feelings, whatever their fears, whatever their thoughts, they got into boats and sought to land on enemy territory in France. They weren’t given opt-outs or asked to fill out a feedback form.
The point is that these men – they were mostly men – looked out across the water into the unknown and committed themselves wholly to the mission.
Now, I really admire them for this. They knew they might never come back, but they went. They imagined the cost. And they went.
But, this notion of commitment didn’t just emerge from anywhere. This sacrifice was rooted in the Hebrew and Christian notion that belief is not simply about accepting a doctrine about God or an ideology; no, to believe was to commit yourself, body, mind and spirit, to what you believed (however feebly or tentatively) to be true or right. Today belief is largely seen as something going on in your head, but that is a bloodless understanding.
Albert Kings trusted that, as he played his part, others would play theirs. They were interdependent and had to trust, knowing the mission might also fail.
I don’t have to invade France today. But, I might consider whether it’s braver to observe from a distance or get stuck in when it comes to helping and loving my neighbor.
