D-Day - June 6, 1944......the 80th anniversary

I was watching the D Day event and French President Emmanuel Macron began presention the French Legion of Honor to US Veterans of the D DAY. The first guy was Hilbert Margol. I looked him up on Ancestry. He is 102 year old UF alum grom Jacksonville Florida. He stood tall and strong. The Gator Nation is truly everywhere especially when Our country needed them

 

Thank you for this. My wife is a hospice nurse, and she says that very often at the end of life combat veterans relive the horrors of war. I have a friend who was a marine in Vietnam and he said not a day goes by that he doesn’t see in his mind what he saw on the field.

If any of us have family members who were in combat, we need to be sensitive to this as they come to the end of their lives.

 

I know where you can get some French rifles.

Never Used. Dropped Once.

 

I know that sometimes we like to make jokes like this but we need to remember the bravery of French civilians that were part of the Resistance. It is estimated that between 10 and 25% of Resistance fighters were women.

5 Heroic Women of the French Resistance

 

I've seen Army of Shadows and Army of Crime, I've been successfully French Resistance-pilled

 

Well said.

 

I cried.

 

Interesting story about the last of the 500 Native Americans who went ashore on D-Day.

Charles Norman Shay was one of the 500 Native Americans who came ashore on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was barely 20 years old and had grown up on an Indian reservation in the US state of Maine. Today, the former combat medic has settled permanently in the Calvados district of Normandy, a few kilometres from where “the most important day of his life” took place.

“But when we jumped into the water, many of the soldiers were heavily laden with machine guns, mortars and ammunition. I saw many of them drown. They weren't able to swim and there was no way to save them,” he continues. With his lighter medical equipment, he managed to make his way to the beach.

Along with many injured soldiers who were unknown to him, Shay came across one of his friends, Edward Morozewicz, a 19-year-old fellow medic who was severely wounded.

By late afternoon, Shay, drained of energy, decided to head inland. “But I fell asleep at the top of the beach from exhaustion. When I woke up, I was surrounded by dead Germans and Americans,” he recalls. Eventually, he managed to rejoin his unit, and reunite with other survivors from his regiment.

Charles Norman Shay, the Native American veteran who tended to the wounded at Omaha Beach on D-Day

 

That’s amazing. I haven’t ever met anyone who was on Omaha beach on D-Day, kind of a missing piece for me.

When I was growing up, my friend’s dad was in the war, all I knew was that he was a pilot who was shot down and ended up in a German POW camp. When I was about 8 my family went to Germany and met up with their family there, he was going around his old haunts apparently.
What I didn’t find out til much later is that he was in the Barracks that the Great Escape was based on. He’s not portrayed in the movie, but some of his things are clearly shown. I think he also worked on the film as an advisor.
I always regret not being old enough to have a mature conversation with him about it, if he was willing. I can’t imagine the stories he would have had. Or even in Germany, trying to imagine what he went back to see.

It’s beyond sad to me that his and your dad’s generation is almost gone. It’s such a loss for all of us.

 

I saw a headline earlier that one of the vets died while visiting. RIP

 

Refreshing to see you posting one of the greatest speeches from the greatest POTUS ever.

 

Don’t think it could be summed up better than this.

 

It was a great speech as was this speech by Reagan praising NATO.
Address to the Citizens of Western Europe

The Atlantic alliance is the core of America's foreign policy and of America's own security. Preservation of a peaceful, free, and democratic Europe is essential to the preservation of a peaceful, free, and democratic United States. If our fellow democracies are not secure, we cannot be secure. If you are threatened, we're threatened. If you're not at peace, we cannot be at peace. An attack on you is an attack on us. This is not simply a matter of treaty language, important as treaty language is. It is an enduring reality -- as enduring as the reality that a threat to the security of the State of Maine or New York or California is a threat to the security of all 50 American States. Simply put: An attack on Munich is the same as an attack on Chicago. ​

Almost the complete opposite of the view of a certain former president and current presidential candidate.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tr...to-allies-their-paying-fair-share-2024-03-19/

In an interview with Britain's right-leaning GB News that was released on Tuesday, Trump repeated remarks that triggered an uproar both at home and abroad last month. He told a campaign rally, that he would encourage Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" to a NATO member if it wasn't spending enough on defense.​

 

I hear things like this and think of the trivial and immaterial things I did at 23 years old

 

Good chance the last time this guy’s feet were in the water there was D-day.

 

I found this to be quite compelling, especially with the use of original footage.

 

Maybe a day late, but, this might be the most powerful D-Day image I've ever seen.

One might miss the relation between rank (chevrons on the sleeve) and facial expression. The half-hidden man on the left, three chevrons -- that's a Sergeant & the baby-faced man third from bottom, middle, two chevrons -- that's a Corporeal. They aren't smiling; I think they knew what was about to happen. May all of them rest in peace, whether they lived only another 7 minutes or for 75 years.