Eyes of Mercy
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In the countless times Louis LeBeau had mindlessly uttered those words, from the family rosary in their living room when he was growing up to later on when he found himself saying a rosary out of a need to calm his nerves. He rarely thought deeply about what the words in any of the prayers meant. They were just there as a comfort, rote memory, something to soothe his busy mind when nothing else seemed to calm it.
He knew what the words meant; he'd learned Latin at an early age to become an altar boy. But it never really seemed, at least to him, to be about the meaning behind the words, merely the comfort in the repetition.
There was just something about fingering wooden beads or even counting off Ave Marias on his fingers that made anxiety roll off his back like water off a duck's. LeBeau hadn't been a good Catholic in years, but there was just something about praying a rosary that he could never quite put his finger on, but it just helped.
Sometimes even when his mind was blank, such as when he was cooking either in his restaurant before the war or for his amis in barracks 2. The words of the Ave Maria would race back and forth in his mind as if they were playing a game of chase until he was to the fourth decade without even realizing it.
Most nights as LeBeau lay in his bunk, he struggled to fall asleep, he'd lay there exhausted, but sleep wouldn't come. As soon as he'd start to say a rosary, he sometimes would make it into the first decade, or on a really bad night to the third, but he rarely made it through all five decades to the Salve Regina before the waves of exhaustion carried him off to sleep.
But tonight, it seemed as though there was nothing that could soothe his racing mind and his heart that was beating faster than was probably healthy.
London was asking the impossible of them. There was no way they'd pull that off. The odds of something going horrifically wrong were so high. He didn't care what crazy scheme Colonel Hogan would no doubt come up with, with how things had been going, he was terrified by all the ways everything could go wrong.
Then he came to those words.
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Turn your merciful eyes upon us
Yes, that's exactly what they needed, a mother's merciful eyes upon them asking her Divine Son to have mercy on them.
LeBeau found himself truly praying those words with every fiber of his being.
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Misericordes oculos ad nos converte
Misericordes oculos ad nos converte
He repeated them over and over and over, as if they were a lifeline.
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"Please," LeBeau heard himself whisper before silently mouthing the phrase again and again until he finally fell asleep.
Even years later, looking back at that mission, he intrinsically knew that there had been merciful eyes turned upon them throughout the entire mission. It had gone off without a single hitch, and by no means should it have.