Friday, March 29, AD 2024 3:44am

D-Day and Memory

 

 

 

Seventy-eight years since D-Day.  In the first law firm I worked for in 1982 the Senior Partner had a son come ashore on Omaha Beach who was killed later in the War.  A former partner of the firm was now a Judge, and still walked with a limp from being shot up on Omaha Beach.  Another partner had been with the Eighth Air Force in England, helping to plot flight missions in support of D-Day.  This was in a five man firm, including myself.  D-Day left its mark on this nation, with its approximately 3,000 dead and 6000 wounded Americans, but with the swift passage of the decades the memories of that time have grown ever fainter.  All three of the men connected with the firm I worked for are now deceased and their living memories of that longest day are gone with them.

About 200,000 of the sixteen million American who served in World War II are now left.  They are leaving us at the rate of 370 souls a day.  The youngest of them are well into their tenth decade.  All too soon all the men who fought in the Great Crusade, as Eisenhower termed it, will be joining Washington’s Continentals, the Blue and the Gray, the Rough Riders and the Dough boys, as figures of history, no longer people we can talk to and meet.

 

 

Color film of the D-Day landings reminds us of the limitations of the historical record in conveying the reality of any historical event to those who did not experience it.  Soon World War II will depart living memory and become the province only of the historians.  Inevitable, but sad to those of us who recall the men and women who lived through these years, who spoke with them and felt some fragment of the passions of those years of strife and victory.  Time is a river and it bears us all away, along with our memories and the emotions of our life.   The best memorial to our veterans who helped save the world from monstrous tyranny is to live our lives in such a way that we can rightly say, in the words of Lincoln, that these dead shall not have died in vain.

 

 

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John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Sunday, June 6, AD 2021 2:16pm

“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Bob S.
Bob S.
Sunday, June 6, AD 2021 11:05pm

I lived in England and France as a child and our family traveled to many of the somber yet beautiful cemeteries. Very moving to see seemingly endless rows of crosses and other headstones; one can’t help but marvel at the enormity of the effort and sacrifice. My daughter did a college summer exchange program in France and got to visit Normandy; she actually flew down the coast in a C-160 Transall, a French military cargo plane similar to but smaller than the C-130. She then visited the cliffs the Rangers assaulted and wept. We are the beneficiaries of a colossal battle, something Marshall said was indeed a “very near thing”. God bless them all…

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Monday, June 7, AD 2021 6:36am

I thank God for these brave heroes who gave all in WW II. They will not be forgotten.

The planning and execution of the WWII memorial in perfect line with the Lincoln memorial and Washington monument as bookends, leads me to believe that their efforts and sacrifices will always be remembered.

Today’s threat is within. Rewriting history and tearing apart monuments, statues and reputations because some view their actions as oppressive or not sensitive to all peoples of every race.

Insecurity and hatred towards others is possibly a reflection of themselves.
A projection that blames others for their own unhappiness.

[My rendition of
Lucy..5 cent analyze stand via Charles Schultz.]

GregB
Monday, June 7, AD 2021 8:12am

PHILIP NACHAZEL
*
The Founding Fathers through the U.S. Constitution devised a form of government with the decentralization of power, the rule of law, and due process. This as much as anything else is probably why the totalitarian left finds them to be so offensive.

Mike
Mike
Monday, June 6, AD 2022 11:01am

Actually tenth decade, Don.

The Christian Teacher
The Christian Teacher
Monday, June 6, AD 2022 5:25pm

The planning and execution of the WWII memorial in perfect line with the Lincoln memorial and Washington monument as bookends, leads me to believe that their efforts and sacrifices will always be remembered.
————
The World War II memorial is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Don Beckett
Don Beckett
Monday, June 6, AD 2022 10:45pm

Just checked my Dad’s diary for the 6th. June 1944. He was in Maadi Camp in Egypt with the NZEF preparing for the invasion of Italy. His only comment was complaining about the heat – 116 degrees F. in the shade. They probably never even knew about the Normandy landings till a week or so later.

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