Touching
I remember watching a program about D-Day, viewed from both sides. One part of it centered on a single German gunner, reciting the letter he had planned to write home that day as he held his ground against the Allied invasion. I can't help but remember this every time I play this game. He fought on, until the end, but I do not know what happened to him. I cannot help but remember, that just because they wore the swastika on their arms did not make them all evil. Many were just like the Allied troops, young boys drafted to fight a war they didn't really want, eagerly awaiting that next letter from home while trying not to forget to write themselves. Fighting on in the belief that the cause they were fighting for was good and just, for how could the common infantryman know what was really happening behind the charade?
I'm sitting here now, listening to the epilogue song, thinking back, picturing every war movie or CG television program about WWII, seeing scenes like the German gunner reciting his letter as he tried to hold off the tide of men, or an American in a burning tank-destroyer desperately holding off a German counter-attack with the mounted machine-gun until reinforcements can arrive, or a Russian in Stalingrad lamenting the loss of his friends after the day's fighting before lighting a cigarette, and I hear this song playing behind all of them.
This, in reality, is a very simple game, but the shear food for thought it presents once you have finally been beaten just causes a truly sad feeling. For some reason I can imagine an American officer breaking into the back of the bunker and pulling the young gunner out just before the explosion tears the bunker apart.
Here's to a happy Memorial Day, and say some prayers for me. My best friend got out of US Army basic training a month ago, and he is on his way back to duty right now. He's not being deployed oversees, but that doesn't mean I can't pray for both his safety and the safety of all of our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, deployed or not.
And with one final "Thank You" to Xeptic and friends for this game, I bid you goodnight.