On my fifth night, the miracle I am thankful for is more to do with the places I have seen and what they have meant to me. I have seen many places in this world, thanks mostly to the USMC, Given what I did, primary MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) as a weather observer/forecaster and having a lot of contact with Marine pilots and such, I have ended up in places like Futenma, Okinawa, Japan and Pohang, and Dongducheon South Korea. Goose Bat Newfoundland and Reykjavik, Iceland, Narvik and Sandefjord Norway and Husum Germany.. I was supposed to be in Okinawa for a simple one year tour.. but at nineteen.. enjoying the life I extended twice spending three years overseas.. (they would not allow me a fourth year) being an amatuer military historian, visiting the Shiiri line, some of the bloodiest fighting between the Marine Corps and the Imperial Japanese was sobering.. and yet, the interaction between locals of my age or a little older, it would have been impossible to tell we had fought each other with such hatred, yet, one of the most chilling things I ever saw, and it has stuck with me today as if it happened yesterday, was an older Japanese man, maybe 40 years my senior, and the death stare I got as his eyes seemed to want to just kill me.. The miracle there is that seeing this, and knowing we played drunken softball with contemporary Japanese 40 after the war, is in of itself a miracle within a miracle. It told me there is always hope, and I hold out that hope in the middle east.. The visit to Narvik was an intriguing one, as this was a very contested place between the Allies and the Wehrmacht in 1940.. In Sandefjord, being such a huge lover of Viking history and lore, going to a museum and actually beng able to touch a longboat, the same longboat that had been displayed in a book of Vikinghostory I had owned since I was 12, was simply awesome.. but it wasnt until I stepped foot in Germany, and this is long before I officially converted, but had always had felt connected to Judaism, that also stuck with me.. There was an initial uneasy feeling whch surprised me, given I had several years of German as a second language, was fascinated by the military and political histories of world war II. Its the only country I have ever visited that I felt oddly out of place.. and have no desire to go back.. maybe that collective wound will take longer to heal I have been other places, and there are still several places on my bucket list I want to go.. Israel, the Grand Canyon, I never made it to Iwo Jima, I passed on a chance to head to Antarctica in 1987 to start college (I would have had to extend my tour of duty by one year in the Marine Corps and I was ready to be discharged after six years) The fifth day miracle is being able to see more than I ever thought I would see..
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 10:07:04 +0000
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