Thursday, June 6, 2024

The 80th Anniversary of The Longest Day

On June 6, 1944, over 160,000 Allied troops landed on a 50 mile stretch of French beaches at Normandy to begin one of the greatest invasions of all time.

What were those people fighting for?  It was nothing less than the very survival of the Western World, as far as I'm concerned.  We owe our freedoms today to those brave soldiers who didn't know, minute by minute, if they would ever see home again.

Many of the remains of the combat dead remained in France, where one of my cousin's spouses (of part French ancestry) made a point of visiting cemeteries to honor them.  These are memorials to American dead but there are other graves and memorials for British, Canadian, Australian, French, Greek, citizens of New Zealand, Norwegian, Polish and others who gave their lives that day.  We must never forget this was a group effort of many countries with the help of European Resistance fighters. 

This may be the last major anniversary of D-Day where its veterans can attend.

These cemeteries will be holding commemorations for this 80th anniversary and various American veterans of several wars will be attending.  There was also a mass parachute jump Sunday kicking off a week of ceremonies.

One of the veterans planning to attend is 102 years old.   Another is 107.  I watched the video (not the one below - I watched the arrival video on ABC news' website) of them arriving in France.  Some were in wheelchairs.  They received a hero's welcome.  It gave me chills.

You may have seen John Wayne war movies or the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan.  This blogger blogs more about it.

If I live long enough, I will see the last member of the Greatest Generation pass from our Earth.

That saddens me.  I grew up among some of those veterans, both men and women. 

An American statistic:  Only about 119,500 Americans of the 16 million who served in World War II are still alive.  Maybe, as another statistic is "under 500,000". I've actually seen three different statistics in the past week.  There are no official statistics for this number.

Memories of World War II were still recent when I was young.  I played with plastic toy soldiers of World War II.  I watched reruns of Hollywood movies on the local New York City TV Channels - everything from Guadalcanal Diary to Twelve O'clock High to Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

In my youth, I sat in a movie theater with my parents and watched the movie "The Longest Day" which I could have renamed "The Longest Movie" but it must have been the longest day for those storming those beaches.

May the veterans of that day spend their remaining days in peace.  

5 comments:

  1. Amazing. And some of those veterans still look good. They were such boys and I can't imagine their bravery.

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  2. ...united against evil, but what will Trump do?

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  3. We spoke about this yesterday at our home. Always remember.

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  4. I saw a headline about one veteran who sadly passed on his way to the remembrances. It's good that we still hold this in memory, even though it happened before most of us were born.

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