| Author | Message | ||
     Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.74 |
Sixty-five years on, and the acts of that day seem to resonate with ever greater meaning. I find the commemorations heart-breakingly sad and beautiful. One soldier was asked about Saving Private Ryan, the opening sequence, and asked how accurate it was. 'It wasn't,' he replied. 'It was hundred times worse.' Quite. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.24.243 |
At last year's Remembrance Day ceremony at Tim's school, members of the local Legion came in to take part. One was an older chap, walking with a cane, but still pretty spry, named Tom Knowles, and he told some stories about his time in the Army during WW II, including one about being stationed in a small English village and seeing a truck parked at the side of the road with a pretty young girl in uniform working under the bonnet fixing it. 'Hang on,' he said to his mates, 'that's Princess Elizabeth.' And it was. And being a friendly young Canadian chap seeing a pretty girl, Tom went over and talked with her for a few minutes. Fast forward several decades to a big D-Day memorial service in England, and Tom's there, and so is the Queen, and she walks along chatting with some of the veterans, and when she got to him Tom asked if she remembered that incident from years before, and she did, saying something like she'd enjoyed working with the vehicles and wished she'd had more opportunity to do that over the years. Tom was one of the Canadians who took the beach at Juno on 6 June. After the service I went up to him and shook his hand and said 'Thank you for what you did back then.' Living history; and we owe these men - the ones who came back, and the ones who didn't - a huge debt. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
Excellent story, Barbara. I was at the military air museum in east Kent this year, and the documents alone were enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, impress upon you how young these kids were. Tony was telling me his father-in-law flew on night bombing raids, and he couldn't be far out of his teens, if that. Astonishing even to imagine that, the machinery, the youth of the air crews, slipping with their terrible cargo between the clouds over occupied Europe. The heroic generation, their deeds are probably going to be lost in the swirl of history as myth eventually. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
I visited Juno beach last year; it was one in a long line of emotional experiences in Normandy. Even Charlie, then 4 years old, was moved. He still talks about the "dead soldiers " from the Normandy cemeteries now... | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.165.182 |
It's almost impossible to picture what those men went through. Worth remembering, as well, that the fighting didn't stop on D-Day. They were landing troops days later. My grandfather was one of them. And one of the ones who didn't make it back, leaving my grandmother a widow and my dad fatherless. It's only in the last year I've come to realise how massive the impact of the war has been on both of them- on my family. And almost every family in Britain must have a similar tale to tell. To all the men who fought at Normandy- the ones who came back and the ones still buried there- thank you. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Well said, fella me lad. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.74 |
One of the biggest sacrifices, the ones who gave their lives, was never knowing the impact they'd have on the rest of us. Obama got it right in his speech today, about so few changing the course of a century. |