The air was full of salt and musk that engulfed the world around me, my worn body standing motionless amidst the moving waves and infantrymen as we headed toward Omaha Beach.
With my head bowed, I watched the sway of candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts scuttling across the floor of the transport boat; tattered comic books, newspapers, and Bibles scattered alongside—the vestiges of the world we were leaving behind, talismans to protect us in the world we were about to land on. Even as our trench boots trampled over their remains on the tattered ground.
A little locket dangled around my neck as a sorely needed salve for the psyche, rustling stalwart against the coming winds. Inscribed on it, an old family name: "Dawid."
My army fatigues sagged against the bleak fog that enveloped the seascape and the sky itself, all dirtied from the 'practice' drills Sarge had run us through. We had hauled our beleaguered asses over artificially swamped creeks, let our hands bleed climbing against ropes and battlements, and muscled our way through rock formations and forests. It had gone on for days. Weeks, really. Months. Whatever the time, our jacket sleeves acted as mirthless masks for the scars we'd already endured before, hints of what greater bedevilment was to come of our bodies. Bruises and scrapes became lovely rarities as red openings turned out to be all too commonplace under our sleeves and shirts. The great showman of fate giving us a prologue to the blood we'd shed damn soon enough.
We wondered if, by the end of the day's events, we'd have more scars than skin.
And who could forget the eternally versatile equipment kits and ration packs that drooped abreast my torso, serving our many needs on the battlefield? The slew of wartime paraphernalia jingled with every movement of our bodies, the shaking sounds vexing our minds more than the equipment saved our lives. Lieutenant Johnson joked that with all the knives and bayonets they packed in there, you'd more easily bludgeon the servicemen around you than a Kraut entrenched a hundred miles away. Who, conveniently, was ready to shoot your brains out at a moment's notice. (More like a millisecond's notice, seeing how vengeful the gunners on the beach were looking...)
As the greatest security measures Uncle Sam could buy went further up my body, you'd think the camo-colored, Kevlar-laced army helmets doled out to us would provide us with the most protection. The most lengthening of our happy-go-lucky lives. But that wasn't the thing that protected me most. (The Krauts sure were foaming at the mouth to send hundreds of tons of lead ringing through it, that was a given.) Indeed, a helmet wasn't the single object of matter and soul that gave me the most resolve.
No, the one thing in the world that delivered the most sanctity to my heart, that made me feel to some degree that I would be safe in life, that I would be well in mind—and maybe even in body—after all this shit was said and done; it wasn't any of that. Not the splintering helmet, not the ratcheting supply kit, not the moldering fatigues, and not the sole-clenching trench boots that jabbed my mangled toes into the ground.
It was my family's Star of David locket, gracefully draped below my neck, that gave me the most solace in this war-torn world.
Its six-pointed starry shape was rimmed by a dark blue outline, inlaid by white contours that spoke to the optimistic determination only a member of Abraham's band could hold in these trying moments. Its iron necklace, painted a pallid hue of grey yet still able to glint light away, granted a seminal connection between the star's visage and my own mortal being. Its sleek veneer somehow shone mightily against all the soon-to-be chaos wrapped around it, moving deftly in the air as we began to depart for the beachhead. The star's size on my neck was miniscule but its presence on my soul was astronomical.
For Jews are no strangers to overcoming the odds of all the world pitted against them. From the ancient days of Jesus' death to the Dark Age nights of boundless persecution and the Spanish Inquisition, the vicious pogroms in Russia, and now state-sponsored racism and genocide executed yet again throughout the bloodied mounds of Europe–as the bullets rained down, I could only think that this wasn't the first time a Jew faced the weight of all fate slung against him. And I could only feel the solace that the star discharged into my moving body as I braved past every bullet that rang my way. Both the hundreds that whizzed past me and the lucky few that lodged themselves in my flesh.
Pain is a fickle thing when you have the soulful emblem of your heritage pushing you far out from the depths of mankind to hard-fought triumph. Pain didn't deter all those around me either, who likewise braved through the corpses piling around them, the blood spewing out from every orifice Uncle Sam could conceive, our march continuing along the beachhead. Pain could not stall the advance of a band of men who were fighting for their existence, the nature of purpose for their souls.
Pain wasn't going to stop the 52nd Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army as it made its way through Nazi-infested Europe.
With every bullet that sliced through a green-hatted skull, three more gallant men charged to take his place, to ensure his demise was not for nothing. With every breath taken amid the exhaustion and delirium that becomes routine under the auspices of war, there were fleeting images of the lives we would be bettering, removing from the very same fate of ours. Even if those images merely formed some dream we believed in to somehow make our sacrifice worth it, it'd be a dream we took to our watery graves.
Despite the horrors of the conflict, we inched across the sand to catch glimmers of light, peeking out from behind the smoking mortars and tank traps like a child peering out from a hiding place. Shattered yet determined, we believed that the rays of sunlight would surely emerge, even if we wouldn't be able to see them.
The Star of David would propel all of us and I through the depths of hell itself–into the heights of hard-won heaven.