Cool it, guinnog.
In case you may not have noticed, this thread is a years-old tradition on the SDMB; I don’t want you popping in to start a debate about it. If you absolutely feel it’s necessary to debate the posts within this thread, go to Great Debates and start a thread there with a link to this one.
Regardless of whether you choose to do that, your hijacking ends now. You’ve been warned.
Oooh!
Why don’t you flag it up with a ‘Hallowed ground’ tab?
Then people like me who actually have something to say would know their comments weren’t wanted?
I thought we were fighting ignorance here, not being twee. Sorry I was wrong; newbie.
I will also be Pitting this.
You have been warned.
Thanks for the recent additions, folks. Especially RickJay’s moving story about his grandfather.
Also, my sincere thanks to those who wish to discuss tangential issues and have chosen to do so elsewhere. It’s not that your opinions or debates aren’t interesting - they are - but this thread was never meant for them. Thanks again for understanding.
SkipMagic, that mod hat looks mighty good on ya, BTW. 
I was in America last week, so I wasn’t at home to commemorate the dead, or indeed celebrate liberation day. We got plenty of reminders though, what with Cinco de Mayo being quite an event in Arizona as well, albeit for different reasons. 
Now, let’s see what all those pit threads are about…
May 5th 2006, Liberation Day.
I revived this post because Coldfire said it better than I ever could.
**Thank you ** Americans, Canadian, British and other allies for the liberation of the Netherlands.
We will remember the sacrifices you made.
We will never forget.
We will always be grateful for our freedom.
Love,
gum
Thanks for remembering this, gum.
I’m sure this has been mentioned earlier in the thread, I’m dismayed to say that the people of the Netherlands remember our greatest generation far better than the youth of Canada seem to do.
The fact that Dutch Apache gunships and Belgian F-16s are covering our backs in Afghanistan (because our own government is too shortsighted to do it ourselves) is all the goodwill I need.
The Maple Leaf Legacy Project has photographed approximately 80% of the graves of Canadian War Dead.
Don’t really know what to say, except thank you. Thanks to all who fought, thanks to all who died, thanks to all who shared their stories here.
From a display I did last year for the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Army in the Netherlands:
EADGBe, Thanks for that link. I’m a sponsor now. It’s the least I can do.
Rodd Hill, Thank you and your family - again.
This is about the least mundane, pointless thread I’ve ever read.
In Memoriam
Ralph K. Updegraff, Jr., Major, U.S. Army, Medical Corps, 1909 – 1966
I know that Kipling is out of fashion but this, on the reunion of the survivors of the Indian Mutiny, seems appropriate:
*To-day, across our fathers’ graves
The astonished years reveal
The remnant of that desperate host
Which cleansed our East with steel.
Hail and Farewell! We greet you here,
With tears that none will scorn–
O Keepers of the House of old,
Ere ever we were born.
One service more we dare to ask–
Prey for us, heroes, prey,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the day!*
I clicked on this, not knowing it was an annual tradition–I was curious about a thread garnering 7 pages in one day.
I can’t stop crying. Random thoughts:
I went to Amsterdam when I was 16 with my German class in HS. The people were so wonderful to us, so gracious and helpful and friendly. I have a fondness for the Dutch based on that trip. Thank you.
My great uncle served in the European theater–he did something with intelligence. I don’t have his life story near at hand (he died this past year), but with his passing, I felt (I who never thought to ask him a thing about his war years) a finalizing of a time. My parents were kids when the war started, 8 and 10. They did their parts as boy scout and girl scout, collecting aluminum foil and newspapers etc. My dad remembers being called by a neighbor boy to come see this neat thing at the local grocery store–it was bananas. It’s amazing to me the degree of sacrifice that all people participated in.
I do think that if such a call was made today, that we would answer it. It is just my opinion that no such overwhelming threat has reared it’s ugly head, as yet. Not trying to get political here, just an observation. Conventional warfare is not the best approach to terrorism, to my mind.
What stays with me, though, is the waste and the cruelty of it all. The sheer mindless waste. Patton said war is hell, but it’s worse than hell–it’s evil. I have seen the crosses in Normandy and Dachau. What a loss. What a waste.
I will go to our local Memorial Day parade this year (my child plays in the marching band) with a different mindset–for that, I thank this thread.
Thank you eleanorigby and your family.
Spavined Gelding was he related to you? Thank you and R.I.P, **
Ralph K. Updegraff, Jr., Major, U.S. Army, Medical Corps, 1909 – 1966**
E-Sabbath, You’re very welcome. I actually am still very grateful and I’m glad Coldfire made this thread.
Freedom is a precious thing.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.*
~ Samuel Adams ~
My father.
I am proud to have contributed (or to still have to send in to the project coordinator) approximately 100 photos so far and hope to complete about 30 - 40 more this summer. It is always nice to meet people who are appreciative of the project and I thank you for your sponsorship.
My motivation for being involved and interested in this comes from my grandfather’s brother who was killed at Dieppe. I always regretted not asking my great-grandmother more about him while she was alive - the ignorance of youth…
My admiration for those who sacrificed their lives for my future knows now bounds. My grandfather, who only died last year, was chief gunner on a destroyer during the war. He couched his service in stif-upper-lip euphemisms: “took a swim”, meaning the ship was destroyed; "
I recently went to the Cabinet War Rooms in London. It’s an absolute must for anyone who visits the city. Now my admiration for the leaders who made those clever, horrendous decisions, joins it.
The map of the Atlantic is particularly affecting: each position of each ship was marked with a thumbtack hole. The concentration of holes indicated the shipping lanes. And the enemy ships that hounded them. A thumbtack was removed when a ship was sunk. The map was almost completely covered in dots, and a few of those little dots marked the actions of my grandfather.
The path of the armies across Europe was marked with coloured string, with the advance of Russia in red, and the other allies in green.
The leaders lived in cramped, primitive quarters as the bombs rained down above them, and planned and won the war with string and thumbtacks. I am in awe.
I’m sorry, Spavined Gelding. It’s good to have had a hero as a father, though. I’ll be thinking of him.
** EADGBe/B] What an awesome project to work on. Thank you!
I got a mail from the Maple Leaf Legacy Project to thank me for my contribution. It will help them buy a new computer.
I’ll find some more sponsors.
Only 28 years of age, your grandfather’s brother, huh. 
So young. I’ll be thinking of him too.
And of your grandfather, jjimm. I am in awe of him. Thank you.
This thread always brings tears to my eyes. Thank you, Coldfire, for providing us a place to remember those who did unimaginable deeds so that we today can enjoy a life of freedom.
A couple of years ago, when the D-Day Museum in New Orleans was opening its “War in the Pacific” wing, there was a parademost of which consisted, very simply, of WWII veterans, riding together in trucks with other men from their units. They were such ordinary men, who did such extraordinary things.
We offered a chair to an elderly man who was there with his wife and daughters to view the parade, and started talking to him. He was a vet who had been aboard a ship that was in the entrance to Pearl Harbor as the Japanese attack began; his ship stopped where it was, and men aboard it shot the film that today is what we all see when we look at those old black-and-white images of the ships under attack. He then saw action all over the Pacific in the next few years, but came home to an ordinary life.
As he told us about this, his daughter stood there weeping. This was the first time her father had ever talked about his WWII experiences. Until that day, she had no idea that he had been there watching the bombs drop aboard the USS Arizona. And I suspect that all up and down Poydras Street, similar scenes were taking place – men talking for the first time about what they had gone through all those years before, that they came home and put behind them for so long.
My father was young enough that he didn’t see active service until just at the end of the war, aboard ship in the Pacific. But like the daughter of that man on Poydras Street that day, it wasn’t until he and my husband started talking about islands in the Pacific that I learned where he had been during the war. He just never talked about it.
We can never thank them enough.
There is nothing to be sorry about, gum. Not a hero, though, he was just an honest man who went when he was called, hated Roosevelt, and died too young.
His partners were the heros – six days on Omaha Beach running a dressing station under a knocked out bulldozer for one. The other wrote home from Guadalcanal that he was glad his father hadn’t taught the Japanese to duck hunt – they didn’t know how to lead a target.
When I was on active duty I wore my father’s insignia of grade, so that stuff was in use, off and on, from 1942 until 1972. No bad for an old set of captain’s bars.
As I think about it, most of my friend from school in Ohio and Iowa were the children of men who went to the war when they were infants, and in some cases unborn. Not a small number had no recollection of their fathers just because they never came back.
