This thread gets to me everytime I read it. It just blows my mind that Sue’s dad helped liberate the town your father was living in, Jasper. Wow. Thanks for starting this thread.
Happy belated birthday, sc913! My maternal grandmother’s birthday was May 5 as well. She passed away in 1985, but she had 40 very significant birthdays before that, since 1945.
And thank you, Canadian chicks. 
Yes, the fact that Sue’s dad helped liberate Arnhem IS mind-blowing. But it’s not too improbable either: Arnhem was one of the toughest nuts to crack for the Liberators. The movie A Bridge Too Far gives one an idea of the sacrifices the Allied Forces made. The Rhine river proved a strong threshold.
When Arnhem was finally liberated, it was a ghost town. Most of the people had long fled to the countryside, and returned to burned out and looted houses.
My grandparents and their (then) three children were among those people: they had to start from scratch, but they were alive.
They had spent almost a year in a chicken-shack-come-temporary-home in the countryside outside Arnhem, at times nearly freezing to death during one of the harshest winters of the 20th century (still known here as “The Hunger Winter”). Grandpa would go out at night to find parachutes, from which grandma would make clothes for my dad and his two brothers. This was extremly dangerous: if the Germans spotted you out after sundown, you’d get executed on sight. But he had to. They lived off what little the farm could provide, after having fed the farmer’s family. They were skin and bones in May of 1945, when they returned to their empty home.
But they were alive. My father turned 3 a month after the liberation. He still has some vague recollections of the winter in the chicken shack. My grandfather is no longer with us, having passed away in 2000. My grandma will turn 90 this fall - she’s amazingly strong, and it’s not hard to figure out why.
It’s unreal that all of this happened, only a generation away, right here.
Thank you Coldfire.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the Official name for this phenomenon. and it sucks.
Well, that was an unnecessary bump. But since it’s been done…
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Order of the Day
June 6, 1944
Since 2,000-5,000 active posters couldn’t find anyone to take note of D-day, I shamelessly profered Coldie’s thread.
Yeah! It’s only been a month since it was refreshed.
But I couldn’t write something that would have expressed anything any better. Hell ! Not half-as-well.
And, yes. I know how to spell proffer. From before the 14th century.
I just forgot to “preview.” In this century.
Thank you samclem for bringing this back up, I was sitting up until 4 in the morning reading this all the way through, but unable to post thru my tears last night.
My father is a Marine who also never talks about his experiences, reading this has shed a little more light on what his reasoning for that might be. Thank you to every man and women who ever sacrificed for freedom, there ought to be better larger ways to express how I feel, but thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I meant to click IMHO.
If all my mistakes turned out this nice!
Thanks COLDFIRE
To help other remembers, http://www.junobeach.org/ associated with the Juno beach memorial center that just opened on Friday.
I am relatively new to the boards, so I never saw this thread until it was backlinked in a different thread today.
As an Israeli and a Jew, I wish to thank the Dutch nation and individuals for helping so many Jews to survive the Holocaust, always at the risk, and sometimes at the expense, of their own lives. We, too, shall never forget those who did not turn their backs on us at the nadir of our history.
I think this thread should be bumped every so often, so that everyone here gets to read it sometime.
From a distance of nearly 3 1/2 years, thank you once again Coldfire for one of the most moving and inspiring pieces of writing it has ever been my honor to read. You have literally brought tears to my eyes.
Thanks for your response, Noone Special (a misnomer if ever there was one!).
Shalom.
p.s. Have you ever been to Amsterdam?
Though I have commented several times in other places about this thread, I just realised I have yet to say this in the thread itself:
Thank you.
To Coldfire for the OP and the others for your contributions.
To my Dad and his generation, for “getting the job done” when it was so desperately needed. (He was in the ETO)
Sometimes, it costs to be at peace.
Your Doper friend,
Steve -NCB-
A trifle early, but since it’s Remembrance Sunday in Britain:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them
Lest we forget.
Laurence Binyon 1869-1942
Lest we forget.
raises can of beer to monitor
Thanks for the wonderful responses, guys. It’s great to see this thread pop up every now and then - it’s good to see so many people still care, in the days that those who fought for our freedom are slowly taken away from us, one by one.
Let’s honour them while we can.
Remembrance Day is coming up, and it always makes me think of my father and grandfather----veteran of the second World War, and casualty of the first. I just lost my mother this week, so all these losses seem somehow fresh. Her brother was a tailgunner, and her father was another doughboy. I’m in the military myself, and find these shoes very hard to fill. Dammit, Coldfire you made me cry. My dad never talked about his war experiences, but he kept his uniform, and he kept his silver wings from jump school till we died.
There’s something else, too.
So many of these veterans are languishing in Veteran’s Homes, and I know my own father did not receive good care. The Veteran’s Administration, for example, tried to take the family home. These veterans deserve so much better than this, but they’re not getting this. Something needs to be done, and even while we appreciate their deeds, we must not forget those that survive, forgotten. When I visited my father and mother I saw many people who never received visitors, who wore their medals with sad pride, having outlived their families, or having been forgotten. They deserve so much more. Not forgetting should be year round.
I fully agree, margin. Every day should be commemoration day.
I’m sorry to hear about your mother. 
If you go here there are pictures of my mum and dad on their wedding day, but mostly of my dad, on the day he joined the Army (the South Pacific) and on VE day. They look so heartbreakingly young in those photos, but the same could be said for any photo of any veteran of this war. Once, they were young, but they still made incredible sacrifices.
There’s good crying and bad crying, Coldfire.
This was written about the ‘War to End All Wars.’ It’s almost optomistic to have called it that.
*In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. *
My father served in the U.S. forces in the late forties, and spent several years in Germany. (In fact, he had a girlfriend whose name I now have as my middle name…I can’t believe my mom agreed to that one!)
I look at the old pictures of my father in uniform (he died 9 years ago) - and I feel proud, and unbelievably sad. What we all would give for one minute of peace, right?
Thinking of y’all, and carry on.