With power only on this LCD, will I see anything?
What you have here is a HD44780-type character display. Displays of this type will typically display black blocks on the first line of the display when powered on.

It's technically possible to send commands to the display with a bank of switches, but it's annoying enough that I'd advise you to do it with a microcontroller. If you have an Arduino board handy, the LiquidCrystal library is an easy way to do this.

The VL input is a contrast control. Connect it to a potentiometer between VSS and VDD, and adjust it until the blocks are clearly visible.