Anniversary encounter

Another year draws past.

No remembrance can surpass

Normandy’s welcome: Taylor, James.

Invasion of a land in flame.

Victory of arms denied you,

Eternal struggle yet awaits, so

Raise your star-stripe banner high,

Shout defiance, I hear your battle cry.

Advance to glory, eternal war.

Remembrance, only, shall be yours.

Years gone by: four score.

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As entered into: Real Poetic's One Year Anniversary Challenge

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Some years ago, on a family vacation to the Normandy region of France, we visited the American cemetery that stands above the beach at Colleville-sur-Mer. You may remember it from the movie Saving Private Ryan. As we approached the neatly regimented rows and columns of white headstones, the first grave we came to was that of one James Taylor. A blood relative? Who knows, for Taylor is a common enough name east and west of the mighty Atlantic. But it made the visit all the more poignant.

For the purpose of planning the D-Day Normandy landings that took place on June 6 1944, the beach below the bluff of land where the cemetery now stands was known as Omaha Beach (again, featured in Saving Private Ryan). Omaha Beach linked the British and American landing sites and was the most costly to assault, resulting in some 2,400 American casualties in one day. June 6, 2024 marked the eightieth anniversary of D-Day.

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Lest we forget.

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