I was privileged to be in Normandy for the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings. I trust that the vast majority of readers will be well acquainted with what happened on 6 June 1944. The operation was, quite simply, the greatest feat of arms in history. The logistics are almost incomprehensible: an armada of five thousand ships, eleven thousand aircraft and, most importantly, a hundred and thirty-three thousand men delivered to a narrow strip of fortified coastline in the first seventeen hours. Losses on both sides were terrible and over twenty thousand French civilians were killed but the liberation of Europe was begun.
    The events arranged to commemorate this phenomenal achievement were legion: joyful, solemn, modest and spectacular by turns. They were attended, variously, by crowned heads, heads of state and dignitaries civil and military. There were old soldiers, who remembered, and their children - and their children - who could merely marvel and be glad. It is intensely sobering to stand amongst the headstones in the American cemetery above Omaha Beach and read the names of all those little-more-than boys who had come from every state of the Union – halfway around the world, some of them – to die in the surf on the margin of a continent that, in the normal course of events, they would never have dreamed of seeing.
    War, of course, is not the normal course of events; it defines abnormality. In the German cemetery nearby lie 22,000 similar victims, buried together two by two, comrades-in-arms, united in death. There are equally heart-rending sights to be witnessed in British and Commonwealth cemeteries, French cemeteries and so on and so on…. There are just so many - as Sassoon so ably and angrily put it, recalling an earlier conflict - intolerably nameless names.

A great debt owed

Seeing those names - belonging, as I do, to a generation that has grown up enjoying freedom and imagining, perhaps, that it really was ‘free’ - I was obliged to contemplate the cost at which it has been bought. Over drinks, in the warm, June sunshine, on the terrace of the sumptuous Chateau de L’Isle-Marie, which still bears the scars of the battle that raged around it, I chatted to a party of American officers. The most senior among them was Lieutenant General Vines, officer commanding Fort Bragg, North Carolina: home of the US Airborne Divisions. It was paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne, now under General Vines’s command, who, sixty years previously, had liberated Ste. Mère-Eglise, ten minutes down the road. A commemorative parachutage had taken place earlier and the town was once more occupied by American troops, many little-more-than boys. Their behaviour was exemplary. It must have been pleasant for them to be feted in a foreign land, half of them having already completed tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq… Even during the cocktail hour, I was reminded that freedom is purchased by instalments that will continue to fall due until the end of time, and that somebody has to keep up the payments. I am in their debt. We are all in their debt…
    Zane Schlemmer had made his contribution just beyond the entrance to the Chateau’s Grande Avenue, at the side of a narrow lane that now bears his name. As a nineteen year-old sergeant in the 82nd, he had landed here, in the pre-dawn hours of the sixth of June, 1944. He’s now a real-estate developer in Hawaii. He’d come back, halfway around the world, to remember. I asked his permission to take his photograph at the parachutage and he appeared genuinely flattered by the request. The crowds were vast and my wife and I had cycled to La Fière see the spectacle. We were both dressed in racing jerseys, specially produced by a local velo dealer, that bore a picture of the church tower in Ste. Mère (upon which, famously, one John Steele’s parachute had caught, sixty years before) and the insignia of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Pointing to that of the 82nd, Zane grinned and told me that he was very pleased to see that I was wearing it. He said it like he meant it.
    Many might consider it disrespectful to wear a cycling jersey - or a T-shirt or a ball cap - bearing the insignia of a military unit to which one has no connection whatsoever, especially at the commemoration of that unit’s greatest triumph and sacrifice. Symbols don’t become potent by chance: how jealously do we guard the privilege of wearing the old school tie or the regimental blazer - or the dark blue apron? Here, however, the idea of mere bystanders identifying themselves directly with the gallantry of war veterans seemed to be perfectly acceptable. This phenomenon - the speculative overlapping the operative, as it were - was carried, by some, to its logical limits.

The Re-Enactors

From the moment of arriving at the ferry terminal at Portsmouth, we had been struck by the remarkable numbers of lovingly preserved, painstakingly restored, military vehicles that were being taken over for the commemorations. On arrival in Normandy, their numbers were swelled, hugely, by contingents from all over the continent. Convoys of jeeps and trucks, ambulances and half-tracks constantly traversed the roads, carrying an army of men (and women) in period military uniform. Where we were staying, close to Ste. Mère-Eglise and Ste. Marie-du-Mont, just inland from Utah Beach, we were surrounded by American marines and paratroopers – except that none of them were Americans, marines or paratroopers. They were accountants from Guildford; I.T. consultants from The Hague; shop assistants from Paris…They had nothing in common but their fascination – obsession, even – with what had happened here. Their interest may well have been sparked by seeing Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. The opportunity to be in Normandy, on June 6th, with members of Easy Company – and Tom Hanks! – was obviously too good to miss.
    My first reaction to the presence of these folk was mild amusement, but then I began to feel annoyed. It seemed to me, remembering Sassoon again, that to behave like this, in the presence of elderly veterans who were being moved to tears at the remembrance of what had happened here and at the sight of comrades’ names on headstones, was truly to mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume. I thought of asking one of them what they were doing or, rather, what they thought they were doing - but Zane Schlemmer’s reaction to my cycling jersey made me think again.
    These seemingly weird, weekend warriors were ordinary people who wanted, sincerely – passionately – to associate themselves, somehow, with something extraordinary. It is inconceivable that they, or I, will ever have the opportunity to participate directly in an event of such enormity as D-Day. We will never be a part, even the smallest part, of an undertaking of such significance, but there is, within us all, a deep desire to discover significance in our lives. The re-enactors (to give them their proper title) were paying tribute to their perception of merit - just as, on another plane, the flabby football fan in his Beckham shirt does - just as, on another plane, the faltering Freemason in his gloves and apron does.
    Suffice it to say that what you observe praiseworthy in others, you should carefully imitate… Precisely what the re-enactors, in their peculiar way, were up to! We Freemasons are all re-enactors. We perform elaborate re-enactments of birth and life and death – and more. Through our rituals – by degrees - we are endeavouring to discover our significance: to find our place. We venture to imagine the unimaginable; to overcome the obstacles of time and space and reason; to see through the smoke….. We are united in a grand design – a plan as ambitious as Overlord.
    Just as the D-Day re-enactors have their uniforms and their jeeps, we have our costumes and our props. In many ways we’re exactly the same: they dress up and pretend, what do we do? It’s easy for others to laugh or be annoyed at what we do, or, rather, by what they think we do. What’s important is that we keep in mind the significance of what we truly do. In the face of mockery, discrimination and persecution, we Freemasons must continue to pay tribute to our perception of merit. Like the re-enactors, we must acknowledge that what we aspire to is beyond us: beyond our ability to envisage, experience or even explain, but like the real, D-Day paratroopers, if we intend to achieve the great liberation, we must be prepared to leap into the unknown.