D-Day 1944 : 77th Anniversary tribute

Here’s my annual tribute to our troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy 77 years ago, (photos taken by my late father who skippered one of the LCTs onto Utah Beach):

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Remembering on Memorial Day

 

Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

In observance of Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by the late Peter Collier to mark the occasion. The column remains timely and is accessible online here. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. 

The entire column is worth reading; it begins:

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

. . .

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers–honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless–in our midst.

***

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There’s something wrong with that.

Mr. Collier vividly describes actions taken by Medal of Honor recipients, and then closes his column:

We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys’ adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we’ve heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we’re uncertain about what we celebrate. We’re the land of the free for one reason only: We’re also the home of the brave.

The full column is here.

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76th anniversary of D-Day

Today is the 76^th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings 

on the beaches of Normandy.

Image credit: National Geographic

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Why we remember D-Day

Photo credit: Real Clear Defense

Lots of reports on commemorations of D Day this week. Here's a succinct report by Emma Watkins and Alexandra Marotta in a column for The Daily Signal:

If the invasion of Normandy had been unsuccessful that day, Europe might have remained under Nazi control, and our world might look much different today. That battle was the tipping point needed to liberate Europe.

The American troops who fought in D-Day were not fighting to liberate their own land. They fought to preserve the free world.

Most of those troops probably didn’t wake up that morning anticipating that their sacrifice would change the world. They got up knowing only that they had work to do.

That’s a valuable lesson for a generation that often sees going to work as an obligation, rather than an opportunity to effect change.

Some 6,603 American troops were killed, wounded, or missing in action in the Normandy invasion. They fought for a cause that was larger than simply securing the beaches. That sacrifice is often taken for granted today. It is essential that we do not let the significance of what was achieved on D-Day be forgotten.

Read the rest here. Recently discovered color photographs of D-Day (see above photograph) and the Liberation of Paris are here. 

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Remembering D Day this week

cartoon by Tom Stiglich via Townhall

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The Last Longest Day - Fernandez

This coming week will mark the 75^th anniversary of the landings on the Normandy beaches. I’ll be posting a few blogs on the landmark remembrance of D-Day. Today, Richard Fernandez at PJ Media) contemplates the historical consequences of the Allied victories:

it is likely to be the last major D-Day anniversary while veterans are still alive.

. . .

Seventy-five years ago, the human impact of the invasion could scarcely be understated. Over 4,400 soldiers died in a single day, the Longest Day, so named in popular culture after Erwin Rommel's prescient observation: "The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive. . . . For the Allies as well as Germany, it will be the longest day."

It was an all-out throw of the dice. A maximum effort. There was no plan B if it didn't work.

. . .

And what of D-Day? Like the fading black and white chemical film on which its images were captured, modern culture has lost the detail, emotional tone and context once provided by living memory. What still remains is posterized, compressed and pixellated to the point where, to paraphrase Tennyson, "they are become a name." The Longest Day grows less distinct with each passing year.

Less distinct but no less real. . . .

Mr. Fernandez's full article, "The Last Longest Day," is here.

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Commemorating D-Day

On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches. Diana’s father skippered LCT 2454 and delivered troops and equipment onto Utah Beach early that morning. The photo below was taken with his Brownie Box camera at H-Hour. Tea Party patriots salute and remember the Greatest Generation.

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