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Completed Lives
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| Private Henry Jessie
Hanrahan left Indiana far behind on June 6, 1944 as he finally topped
the heights above Omaha Beach and flopped, exhausted and terrified,
under an apple tree with his face buried in the moist and loamy earth.
This soil didn’t smell or feel a bit different from that at home and,
as he sucked in one shuddering, frightened breath after another, it
seemed impossible that this foreign and horrible place should seem so
familiar and even ordinary on a cloudy summer day so like those he had
experienced so often at home. That ordinariness of leaf and tree,
insect and grass allowed him to endure the man-made maelstrom of death
that swirled around him for the next ten weeks as his platoon and
battalion was decimated and reassembled of spare parts of other
platoons and battalions, fragmented again and crushed and reassembled
again amid the leaves and trees of Bayeaux, then Caen. He noticed the
insects and grass of Argentan and Alençon and, ultimately, Dreux. The
earth was so commonplace, so utterly normal that he survived in France
by devoting his attention to the distance that he could touch with his
finger and he went back to Indiana, not intact but alive, under a
cloudy sky and embraced the leaves and the trees, insects and grass
that he had taken for granted before but never would again. The girl behind the counter at the auto parts store had moved up to Bloomington for a higher paying job so he didn’t see her any more but he met a new girl and they were married in her church, United and Reformed. Their first two children were destined to become the ‘baby boom’ generation and the third child was born when his wife was 42. All three graduated from college and made them proud. The youngest became a lawyer but she worked for one of those do-good free clinics in the city for years. Henry Jessie Hanrahan worked in an agricultural equipment repair shop for the first four years after they got married and then he was hired away by a dealer of farm implements. He stayed with them as a salesman until he retired at 69 years old. He always sought and was happiest amid the humdrum and commonplace. He never put into words or, maybe even realized, that, on June 6, 1944, the anchor of his life became the routine, the homespun, the run of the mill. His life was defined by the simple, the so-so, the undistinguished and that was fine with him. He devoted his attention to that which he could touch with his finger. ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ Not a single word of that story of Henry Hanrahan was true, of course. Julianna was certain of that because the actual earthly remains of a 21 year old soldier of that name were buried beneath the spot where she stood, the place where he was laid to rest in June of 1944, near the place where she had written that story so many years later. The grave at the American Military Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer was marked with one of more than 9000 memorials that listed name, rank and unit, date of death and home state. She had written a couple of hundred of these fabricated and mundane biographies over the past 30 or so summer trips to this cemetery in Normandy. Julianna was a school teacher back home in the US, unmarried and free to travel in the summers. Not even related to, or descended from, any of these fallen soldiers, she couldn’t have easily explained why she returned here year after year. No one back home knew that she had been here so often and, certainly, she could never have admitted that she had written these presumptuous fictional continuations for these tragically interrupted lives. Some of the narratives had more or less romance, more trials or triumphs, disappointments or frustrations, depending, perhaps, on her own mood or inclination. Some included success or, at least, satisfaction while others had ill health or privation but the important part was that the little histories were uninterrupted, unbroken timelines to the normal fruition of a life. She could not bear the obscene finality that these white markers betokened. 9386 young lives that ended too soon within sight of this place. Her little collection of notebooks was the work of many hours sitting and walking among the rows of markers in all weather. Each morning when she arrived, she went to the chapel to sit a few minutes and she always read the inscription that may have been the stimulus for her compulsion to complete these lives. THINK NOT ONLY UPON THEIR PASSING She was aware that she had no right to do it but these interrupted lives deserved some form of continuation, however flawed or parochial. Her efforts couldn’t possibly hurt these men now and maybe it would help to remember the glory of their spirit with these completed lives. |
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