Occupation Troops: Thoughts on Viewing the American Cemetery at Normandy

Beneath clean white markers on manicured lawns, American troops forever occupy lands wrested from tyrants’ brutal grip. Across its broadest seas, the world’s great ships sail in freedom purchased with the priceless lives of brave Americans who forever occupy their depths.

American troops occupy their own strife-torn nation by the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands: Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam. As American troops occupy our great mausoleums and humble churchyards, they confer upon each a proud equality that transcends a grave’s opulence, or its lack.

Around the world in nature’s tender, remote embrace, unmarked patches of forest, desert and field are occupied by American troops whose ultimate moments remain unrecorded and unattended by their countrymen’s gentle care.

Yes, Americans are global occupation troops. In quiet repose they occupy places whose soil would be bloody still had it not been redeemed with American blood. They occupy the memories of grateful peoples and nations that would not exist, whose hopes would be hollow, had they never greeted hopeful young Americans come to vouchsafe freedom’s promise.

They landed here armed with a pledge of liberty, and occupied a territory even more vast than all the world’s battlefields and graveyards – the boundless realm of humanity’s highest aspirations and its children’s optimism.

They occupied a savior’s place in the tearful prayers of the oppressed.

By the thousands, hundreds, dozens and alone, American troops will always occupy large tracts of the world and small specks of eternity. For their devotion, the world and eternity are both brighter places.

For all its momentary troubles, the American dream enduringly occupies the collective mind of a hopeful world – a testament to beloved sons and daughters who will remain as occupiers of nations and seas from which they shall not depart until land and water cease to be.