Did anyone else watch the D-Day event broadcast from England today? Very impressive!
I actually got a bit choked up seeing the veterans on stage, all in their 90s! It reminded me again why I need to give respect to my 93 year old father, and better understand why he was such a stoic hard-ass when I was growing up...
I just sent a note to a German SOR friend about our trading activity, and added the following, which might be relevant to today's events. Here it is...
P.S. How is Germany feeling today with the huge D-Day celebrations going on in England? I felt sorry for Angela Merkel having to sit through "Germany did this...Germany did that..." My father (a 93 year old veteran of WWII, injured in a plane crash returning from Germany to England) always referred to "the G-d D--m Nazis" but never "Germany". That was a good lesson to me growing up that a Government does not define a people; and that hatred for a former enemy does not preclude reconciliation with them as a reborn ally.
Remember, "They gave their lives so we could live in freedom".
Hi, I saw the D Day celebrations today on the BBC, and very nostalgic.
I was born in 1941 and sometime around the date of D Day or maybe a little later I was in a parade in my uniform that my mother had made with Commando flashes on my shoulders. She was a dressmaker and had an old commando uniform from her brother so she cut it down to size for me. I think I am the youngest Royal Marine Commando of all time!!!!
I thought the most wonderful thing about the D-Day thing was the ex U.S. and British paratroops who jumped out of an aeroplane at 90 odd years old!,
The other thing was the respect shown to the veterans by todays soldiers. I guess they felt that they had more in common with the veterans than with their civilian contemporaries.
My late Father landed on D+2 and went through some heavy fighting around Caen ( although he never talked about it, and I only found out just how bad it was when I started getting interested in military history). He had no personal enmity towards the Germans, although he wasn't exactly fond of the S.S. he came across! Part of his duties included looking after POW s, and he remarked that there was a camaraderie between guards and guarded. ( not necessarily present when they were first captured, I suspect).
I find that most veterans (from all wars) do not like to talk about their experience ( other than funny anecdotes), and in a sense they do themselves ( and us ) an injustice. If they had only explained just how brutal and senseless war is perhaps it would make us think again before we embroil our countries in it.
