"They swarmed into Dunkirk and onto the beaches ~ lost, confused, and all too often, leaderless... [Soldiers] threw away their arms and aimlessly wandered about the beach. Others played games and swam. Others got drunk. Others prayed and sang hymns... [O]ne man, with studied indifference, stripped to his shorts and sunbathed among the rocks..."
~ Walter Lord, "The Miracle of Dunkirk"
Stayed up until well past three-thirty last night with our mindblowing new speakers, a decade-long awaited Christmas present to ourselves whose 70-hour break-in period we use as a convenient excuse to stay up until stupid hours to listen to music with our eyes squeezed shut. One of my choices flooded my mind's eye with an almost physical recollect of a favourite ~ and now justifiably infamous ~ scene from an astounding film, beginning with the awakening of the exhausted companions in a French barn, to their trek through foreshadowing poppy fields, and culminating on the soiled beaches of Dunkirk.
It never fails to collapse the chest, suckerpunch the gut, prickle the eyes, tickle the nose, and wobble the lower lip. Their anguished mothers. Their feared sleep and ruined dreamlives. Their helpless lovers and children.
No glory. Just bleeding heartbreak, immeasurable loss, and immutable scars across surviving landscapes, generations, and spirits, ameliorated by examples of selfless valour that still count for so very much.
And yet to think: Despite it all, we will never really learn.
Fie on the blasted legacy of Cain.
(photo credit: The stunning story behind the image at top can be found in this in-depth and arresting article from London's Daily Mail, on the 70th Anniversary of the fabled Dunkirk evacuation. Without a doubt, it is one of the greatest retellings I've found for ~ in countlessly different ways ~ one hell of an event.)
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