Today is D-Day.
We couldn’t have done it without you.
I won’t say you’re welcome, because I wasn’t there. I will add my thanks to those 18 and 19 year old boys, from all countries, races, and religions, who stormed a beach and won a war.
You have my eternal gratitude for battling evil.
Ditto to what Ivylass said. Very well put.
I wholeheartedly agree. Might be time to watch Saving Private Ryan again.
Ditto that. Thanks, Yanks.
Or Band of Brothers. That quote still gets me every time…“We happy few, we band of brothers…”
because in such few words it demonstrates how the word “happy” meant more “fortunate” in those days, but also, IMO, expresses the idea of happiness being bound up with honor.
On behalf of my father…you’re welcome.
I got Ivylad *Band of Brothers * on DVD for Father’s Day. He watches it whenever it’s on A&E, so I’m hoping he’ll like it.
You do know, of course, that D-Day wasn’t just a U.S. operation? Let’s thank the UK and Canada too, huh? And there were contributions from Poland, Greece, Free France, Norway, Australia, and more.
I’ll have to remember to call Mr. Neville’s grandfather tonight. He was there, storming the beaches, 63 years ago today.
I’m a little disappointed in AMC for not showing The Longest Day this year. Always one of my favorites. The bravery of those guys getting off the transports and running into ferocious fire is just amazing. A lot of us owe them a big debt.
It was a million years ago. You’re welcome, and we’re happy we could help, but let’s move on and work on prevent something like that from ever happening again.
Don’t tell us…tell the Hitlers and the Osama bin Ladens.
We tried, but the bombs missed. Very inconvenient.
It’s a perfect guy gift. If he’s like me, he’ll watch it again and again.
ETA: He’ll especially like the DVD extras, like the interviews with the actual participants.
Every source i’ve seen (admittedly not a huge number) suggests that the average age of combat troops in World War II was about 25-26 years old.
I remember Paul Hardcastle did a song called “19” in the 1980s, in which the voiceover said that the average age in WWII was 26, and in Vietnam was 19. I’ve seen quite a few websites arguing that the figure for Vietnam was wrong (actually about 22-23), but that the WWII figure was correct. This page has an excerpt from Stephen Ambrose’s book about D-Day which gives the average age for US soldiers as twenty-five and a half.
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Anyway, my thanks, too, to those who were there. My grandfather was in the British Army, but i’m not sure where he was or what he was doing during this particular time.
I had completely missed the date (On a course so bit stressed). To be honest Britain, we probaby would have tried anyway, couldn’t have invaded Europe without US, and Empire help. Thank you to all the countries around the world who gave thier young men. Freedom is what they bought.
It was a war, but a just war…
They were one hell of a generation.
And I respect them.
But, I do not feel that later generations should claim any credit. We do not shine that brightly.
You may be right…my grandfather fought in Europe during the war, though he was not at D-Day. He was in his mid-twenties, so not a kid exactly. But what to me is more significant than age is that so many of these men were not soldiers…and that due to their age and the culture of the times, many already had wives and children whom they had to leave unexpectedly. My grandfather was drafted and left his wife and small daughter (my mother) behind for more than 2 years. My grandfather was such a gentle man, and the war affected him terribly, so that he never talked about it, and suffered from nightmares all his life. The sacrifices made by these men is truly supreme…even for the ones who survived the war but had to live with what they had seen.
We may not shine that bright, but given a foe as evil as Hitler I think our generation would and could do the same… If we lack anything, its leadership.