TELLING TRUTH TO THE DEAF

 

Major Richard Blaine attempts to reach the conscience of hardened generals to spare lives.

TELLING TRUTH TO THE DEAF

“Isn't it strange how people are selective about the truth they want to see or hear?”

– Helen Keller

 

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Sadly, the faces in this auditorium reflected callous hearts. How was I going to reach them?

Simple. I was not. But I never gave up.

I probably would have made it across the English Channel, too, even if that patrol boat hadn’t found me. I wasn’t brave. Just stubborn.

It was how I survived St. Marok’s Orphanage before Sentient could finally speak to me.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, the heart inspired, and inner peace achieved.

Merde. One day I might even get Eisenhower to listen to reason. No. Miracles had stopped in the 12^th Century.

But then, again, maybe it was time for one now?

I glanced at the stony, grim face of Eisenhower.

Then, again, maybe the 21^st Century would have a better shot at the coming again of miracles.

General Patton grunted, “All right, soldier. You seem to have spotted flaws in our invasion plans. Spill them!”

“Flaws?” I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

I gestured a thumb at Eisenhower and flinched at the pain of doing so. “Generalissimo over there ….”

“General Eisenhower, soldier! Show some respect.”

Sentient boomed from above us:

“RESECT IS EARNED. ALL THAT TRIBAL CHIEFTAN HAS EARNED FROM ME IS CONTEMPT.”

Patton’s left blouse pocket swelled, and I knew what it held. “Don’t read those pages, sir. I can prove my points without them.”

“Soldier, you have only guaranteed that I will read them.”

He ripped them out and began to read, glanced at Eisenhower, and then to me. “This was after you’d been beaten by Rommel’s men, jumped out his 3^rd story window, hit the ground, managed to stagger to the coast, and began swimming the English Channel?”

“Yes, sir. But I had the good fortune to land on a guard below the window and then, later being picked up by a patrol boat.”

“Halfway across the channel, soldier.”

He fixed me with hard eyes. “Do you think you would have made it all the way?”

I shrugged. “Sir, when you have no choice but to do something, you sometimes surprise yourself.”

He glared at Eisenhower. “I recognize your handwriting.”

“F-Forged,” forced out the general from stiff lips.

Patton growled, “Like that knife wound on the back of your right hand?”

“But that doesn’t matter, sir.”

He gaped at me in astonishment. “That this man tried to have you killed in your hospital bed while he watched?”

“No, sir. It’s what was in the file I stole from Rommel’s desk. Pointe-du-Hoc is a needless death trap.”

While Eisenhower frantically shook his head “No,” I continued, “The big gun emplacements atop Pointe du Hoc are empty!”

I sighed, “The 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder, will make a terrible ascent of a sheer 100-foot precipice while being picked off by grenades and sniper fire. Sentient says they will lose fully half their number … HALF! ... only to find those guns have been replaced with telephone poles!”

“Lies!” Eisenhower managed to force out of his frozen lips.

I shook my head. ‘Sentient is many things. But a liar she is not.”

‘Such flattery. It would go to my head … if I had one.’

“Worse,” I said. “A second independent intelligence report that cost the lives of six French Resistance Fighters confirms the same thing.”

I rubbed my face with throbbing fingers.

“If Generalissimo had just studied the aerial reconnaissance photos with a magnifying glass, he would have seen the drag marks leading to an orchard some miles away.”

“Lies!” gutturally forced out Eisenhower.

“Not to worry,” I said. “I will deal with them and make a trench up that cliff to protect those Rangers. I know Generalissimo will send up them up anyway out of his hate for me.”

“How?” asked Bradley.

“If I tell you, Generalissimo over there would just throw up roadblocks. Besides, it gets worse.”

“Worse?” gasped Lucy.

{ Allied forces used two gliders in the invasion: the Waco CG-4A and the Airspeed Horsa. These were not the modern sail planes of today, but cargo and troop carriers. The CG-4 carried a pilot and co-pilot, 13 soldiers and their equipment, or a jeep and two or three soldiers.}

I glared at the assembled luminaries. “Who was the moron who approved the Gliders?”

All eyes turned to Eisenhower. “Figures. Well, did it occur to anyone here that the hedgerows here in England ….”

I made jumping motions with the flat of my throbbing right hand.

“ … that your British elite jump your horses over in pursuit of terrified foxes might just be a little SMALLER than the ones in Normandy’s countryside over which you intend to land your equipment and soldier filled Gliders?”

“Did you?!” I roared, enraged at this lapse of simple common sense.

I clenched my fists and squirmed in agony as Montgomery sneered, “Laying it on a bit thick, are you not, lad?”

He suddenly began to scream, holding up his hands.

I smiled crooked. “Thank you. Sentient decided to halve my pain by giving the other half to you.”

While Patton did his own sneering at Montgomery, I added, “You had those brave Resistance Fighters over there. You could have safely sent a few to do a rough estimate of their hedgerows’ heights from a distance.”

I mocked a terrible French accent … which having been born in New Orleans was no easy thing to accomplish.

“Mon Dieu! Zey are too close togetzer! No room to land un big glider between dem. Zey iz az tall az un man, too! Zee gliders zey will crash un kill everyone in zem!”

Lucy giggled, then stopped as she must have realized she was laughing at the needless death of hundreds of brave men who trusted their commanders to be intelligent.

I sighed, “Then, there is the fiasco of the paratroopers and worse  … Omaha Beach.