By James Banakis

November 11, 2025

Freedom is the possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

                                            -Pericles

Little boys don’t play with toy soldiers anymore.  Maybe that’s a good thing. I only know that growing up the other half of our playtime not involving sports, was taken up playing “army.”  The boys in our neighborhood, spent summer days dressing up in our father’s cast aside army gear. We supplemented it with army surplus from Stark’s Army Surplus Warehouse on South Harlem Ave. Nobody wanted to be the bad guys, so we just imagined them out there, lots of them.  Since we were cold war kids, we called the enemy “dirty Reds,” just like in the gory comic books we handed off to each other. In our own way we revered soldiers. They were our heroes not unlike Nellie Fox and Ernie Banks. At night we’d set up, and play with those little green plastic soldiers, and the following day we’d personally reenact outdoors the carnage we inflicted on the little green men the night before.

Each Memorial Day, we’d sit on the curb in front of Scoville Park, site of the Oak Park River Forest War Memorial commemorating 100 years this Veterans Day.  We’d cheer for the veterans marching in the annual parade. First were the WWII survivors, still vital and vigorously marching, our father’s generation.

Next the First World War guys, our grandfather’s generation some with walking sticks and canes, but reaching back and giving it their all. Lastly were the 4 or 5 survivors from the Spanish American War. They received the biggest hand, but we knew their days were numbered. Heroes all, and today they’re all gone, but I still remember.

The primary reason I remember was  because of what happened on a day in early June of 1998. We were on a trip to France. On all the trips I’ve made I always try to meld historical sites with restaurants and relaxation. On this one, I placed Normandy and the D-Day sites on our itinerary. When we arrived at Omaha Beach it was windy with a light rain. The temperature was about 50 degrees. I recognized the conditions were like June 6^th 1944.

When my wife and the other 3 American couples opted to avoid the bad weather and have coffee and pastries in a café, I headed down the bluffs alone and on to the beach, the only human in sight. With the deafening roar of the Atlantic to my right.  The steep sloped muted green and beige, long grass dunes were on my left. The light misty rain was now horizonal in my face. Like many great battlefields I’ve toured, this beach, so majestic in natural beauty, made it difficult to imagine a great deadly, chaotic battle where I walked. That is until I saw the cliffs in the distance, Pointe du Hoc. Sheer cliffs 110 feet straight up then heavily fortified which were scaled on D-Day by American Rangers. Cold and wet myself at this point I tried to imagine the bravery of those heroes. Climbing the impossible wet rock while being shot at from above. I recalled President Reagan’s timeless speech at the top of those cliffs on the 40^th anniversary of that day.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns.

As I made my way back to my companions, the weather changed for the better. The wind stilled and the sun peeked from behind the clouds. The area above the beach still had the fearful decomposing pillboxes in place. Countless huge bomb craters were so deep that we had to form a human chain to pull out someone who ran down into one and couldn’t climb out.

The life changing moment for our entire group however was the American Cemetery and Memorial. We all had a deep sense of being overwhelmed by the poignancy of being encircled by 10,000 mostly 19- and 20-year-old fallen American boys who all died in and about this bloody desperate battle.

In the distance was the haunting beach and English Channel, now still. Everyone here whispers as you would in a church. Offering silent prayers was almost involuntary. We engaged some of the visiting veterans who willingly shared their involvements in the war. One leading us to the grave of a buddy to punctuate his story.

Later that summer the incomparable film, “Saving Private Ryan” was released. For me the timing seemed predetermined. The consequence of that summer then is why I’ll always remember the human cost of war.

This experience allowed me to recall and fully appreciate my own father’s wartime experience.  He witnessed the unspeakable carnage from a different perspective. During the war my father served as a hospital assistant at the Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio.

While he never functioned in combat, he aided and encouraged all the kids, his peers, with heinous injuries, burns, and missing limbs. He witnessed the horrors of war and later anguished at the thought of his sons having to go off and fight a generation after what he thought was the last war America would ever fight.

What he and I didn’t know then was that this country would be almost always be at war. War is a profitable enterprise.

President Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day, who saw war as perhaps no other American ever has, sending thousands into combat. It’s ironic that it was a man bred to combat who warned us of the dangers of the” Military Industrial Complex.” The problem we face today is that we are in a groundbreaking crossroads in weapon development. Because of AI technology, tanks, jet fighters, even soldiers will soon be obsolete. I think even nuclear missiles will be outdated.

Our current experts are developing, drones and robots, the diabolical weapons for the second half of the 21^st century, and of course they are going to have to use them and sell them. We admire the peacemakers, but they haven’t been able to compete with the Masters of War, and so it goes on…the endless ruinous flaw of the human condition.

On this Veterans Day please pause to consider what Abraham Lincoln said, “A nation that does not honor it’s heroes will not long endure.” We need to imprint these words in our hearts. All those that served our country have earned our everlasting gratitude. Remember their sacrifice.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

– The ending of FDR’s D-Day prayer to the nation

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Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur.  He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School.  He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.