The small speaker crackled with static, and then they heard it. “Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur D'une langueur Monotone.” The poem by Paul Verlaine was well known. Many listening had learned it in childhood. The melancholy words spoke of the long slow weeping of autumn’s violins.
This time the words held sensus plenior (fuller meaning). This time they were announcing, somewhere out there in the darkness, ships were plowing their way through the waters of the English Channel – among them a thousand Higgins boats – the landing craft that would bring soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Force onto the beaches of Normandy, beginning the liberation of France.
