Running Out Of Time To Thank “The Greatest Generation”

Grand Rants ^ | 06-02-11 | Gerry Ashley

[Stoutcat]

Colleville Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, looking north towards the English Channel and the southern coast of England. 9,387 American fighting men—representing only about 1/3 of all Americans killed fighting in Normandy in the summer of 1944—are interred here at Colleville.

Among them is Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., who was the only General officer to land on any of the Normandy beaches on D-Day (Utah Beach), and whose weak heart finally quit on July 12, five weeks after D-Day. His brother, Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, a pilot who was killed in France in WW1 in July, 1918, was reinterred to Colleville and rests beside him.

Incidentally, each of those 9,387 Americans is resting in American soil. You see, France ceded the cemetery’s elegantly manicured 172 acres (69 hectares) to the United States after the war...

In the spring of 1944 millions of allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen… British, American, Canadian and expatriate Europeans [Free French, Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Belgians and others] gathered, bivouaced, trained and trained and waited and trained in Britain for the inevitable invasion of France to free Europe and the world of the tyranny and the threat of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine.

Perhaps the worst-kept secret in the world was that the allied invasion was coming; on the other hand, the best-kept secret in the world was precisely where and when the allied forces would storm ashore.

The secret began to leak out early on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1944, a day code-named [and forever after known to the entire world as] “D-Day”...

[mom4melody]

I work for the V.A....and every one of those old gentlemen I have the priviledge to meet I thank, and let them know, one more time, that they saved the the world, and then built a nation.

I wish we had their strength and honor again, to fight the enemy within, but alas, they have earned their rest.

It’s too bad they raised a generation of hippies and socialists (I know, not all the boomers are jerks).

[GnuHere]

Support your local or regional Honor Flights - taking the WWII vets to see their memorial in D.C. at no cost to them.

[Mr. K]

Yeah- thanks a lot for sticking us with Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare

[ngat]

They have an excuse. They were raised BY a generation of progressives.

[hillarys cankles]

Thank you for winning WW2.
Shame on you for raising the most selfish, destructive generation. The baby boomers. So while saving us from the Nazi’s you have doomed us because you wanted to make your kids lives as easy as possible.

[mom4melody]

They were? I wonder why....effects of the depression or war maybe? I have no clue.

I’m at the tail end of the Boomers (1959) but I was raised by foster grandparents who were born in 1900 and 1902, and my friends parents were born either pre-war or early 40’s.

Not much political interaction with the “Greatest” group.

[skeeter]

Pls lets not turn this thread into another intergenerational turd flinging contest. They are a colossal waste of bandwidth and serve no purpose other than create hard feelings.

[CodeToad]

“create hard feelings.”

Then grow thicker skin if the truth hurts.

[Tublecane]

“It’s too bad they raised a generation of hippies and socialists”

Although they weren’t “hippies,” though they were things they had other words for, “swinger,” or something. I haven’t done the proper research, but, believe me, they existed. There definitely were a lot of socialists. Not so much amongst the general population, then again general boomers weren’t hippies and socialists either. In both cases, it was much more prevalent amongst the cultural and popular cultural elites. It’s just that in the 60s the more outwardly leftist vulgarity was considerably more successful.

[Tublecane]

“They are a colossal waste of bandwidth and serve no purpose other than create hard feelings.”

You know what’s a waste of time? Labelling any particular group of people who happened to be born around the same time the “the Greatest Generation.” Leaving aside for the moment the preternatural greateness of the couple or more generations of the Founding and the greater challenge faced by the generations of the Civil War era, we didn’t survive the depression and win WWII because the people who came of age in them just so happened to be better than the rest of us.

[mom4melody]

Well, all I know is that I was 9 in 1968 and learned everything I needed to know about Hippies....and that I wasn’t going to be one.

I suppose I tend to lump them all together...hippies, liberals, leftists, socialists, democrats, etc...all the same to me.

I hated them then, I hate them now.

I raised my kids “right.”

[Stonewall Jackson]

I saw one of my grandfather’s friends the other day and he told me about his life as an infantryman in Europe during the War. In January, 1945 his platoon was on patrol near the Ardennes when they ran into a German armor column and were captured. He ended up spending the next three months in German hands before being liberated by a Canadian force. It was quite a harrowing story.

[muir_redwoods]

Remember this, the so-called greatest generation, included amongst their oldest cohort, the folks who allowed the nazis to violate the terms of the treaty of Versailles and build up the military infrastructure that resulted in the greatest physical threat humans have ever had to deal with, the introduction of nuclear war and the enslavement of half of the world for decades under the East Bloc.

Thanks, I guess

[skeeter]

Personally I could care less what anyone who makes such sweepingly ignorant generalizations thinks.

I'm simply pointing out that its counterproductive.

If that how you want to use this resource, knock yourself out.

[skeeter]

Take it up with Tom Brokaw.

[ansel12]

The boomers have spent their lives trying to roll back what their parents and grandparents did to America from 1935 to 1975. It is impossible because of the irreversible demographic change from when the “greatest generation” rewrote the immigration laws to replace the American people with third world foreigners, but they have made massive changes since they came of age in the late 80s, and they slowed, diluted, and even stopped the decades of massive, totally reformative legislation that the left passed from about 1935 to 1975.

[Tublecane]

“Take it up with Tom Brokaw”

I have, inside my head. Unfortunately, his voice never sounds quite as ridiculous in there as on my tv.

[Linda is Watching]

I disagree with Brokaw’s characterization of the WWII Generation as the “Greatest” Generation, but there is no doubt they did some great things. I’ve had generations on my mind recently because of the Huffington Post’s new site “Huff/Post 50”, which has had a very weak launch, and is generating a great deal of anger because of the disingenuous way it is presenting Generation Jones (between the Boomers and GenXers). I know some are urging a boycott of H/P 50 for now, and trying to get the new editor—Debra Ollivier—fired unless GenJones is treated accurately. In any event, the WWII Generation had its great and not so great moments, like all generations.