Posted on 06/06/2004 2:41:02 PM PDT by Clive
ONE OF the more demanding, yet obligatory traditions of the media is marking important anniversaries - like D-Day.
Today is the 60th anniversary of D-day which, to quote Winston Churchill, was truly the "beginning of the end" of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Nazi rule.
Aspects of D-Day and "the war" should always be kept fresh in our minds, if only to remind those who came later what their countrymen did to defend freedom and ensure security and peace.
These rather grand concepts are easier to see in retrospect than at the time. While repetition tends to blur or diminish their meaning, it's important to keep certain truths in perspective.
For example, an argument for never forgetting the Holocaust is the hope of curtailing future holocausts. That hasn't worked too well (Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, etc.), just as remembering WW I failed to prevent WW II, and WW II has failed to prevent other wars, though it has resulted in preventing WW III.
A revival of interest
In the last decade there's been a revival of interest in WW II and appreciation for those who fought it.
It's hard for the post-Vietnam generation to understand the attitude rampant in WW II. I was a kid, then, and probably typical of my generation.
My father was a career soldier, who in WW I went from a private in the Black Watch to a captain in the Motor Machineguns at the war's end. For most of the between-wars years, he was a captain in the Princess Pats and founded the Canadian Armoured Corps.
I was 12 years old when WW II began -- and a sub-lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm when it ended. As a 17-year-old around D-Day I enlisted in the navy.
A dread of teenagers of that era was that the war might end before we could "join up." It was the thing to do in English Canada.
Most of us didn't know the background, and didn't much care. We were at war with Germany -- again -- adventure beckoned, and we were oblivious that there was less enthusiasm among Quebec's youth.
When casualty lists expanded after D-Day, and sending "conscripts" overseas became a big issue, a mystery to some of us was that anyone might not want to go.
Those who rejected overseas service were known as "Zombies" a loathed epithet of that time.
When my one-time best friend, Ted Wallace, was killed in France, I felt sorry for his bad luck, but still felt immortal. Getting killed was beyond imagination -- primarily because none of us had ever been shot at. We sometimes envied those who'd been slightly wounded, and therefore had status.
Feeling invulnerable
In the navy in WW II, I was never shot at. Later, as an infantry soldier in Korea, the feeling of invulnerability persisted, but not to the degree it did as a 17-year-old. Caution and daring are soulmates in war, and invaluable for survival.
Enlisting to go to war wasn't an act of patriotism so much as "just the thing to do." It was a call to adventure for the young -- different from, say, the attitude of those who were married, with jobs and families. They went dutifully to war, realizing the sacrifice and consequences.
War is for the young. Until I returned to Korea and visited the UN cemetery at Pusan, and saw the tombstones of soldiers I knew, it had never occurred to me how young they were.
The emotions were pangs of nostalgia for one's lost youth.
Some 340 of the 42,000 Canadians who died in WW II were killed on D-Day's Normandy's beaches. Their first great "adventure" in war, was their last great adventure.
Looking back, it is not something anyone who has been there wants their children, grandchildren or countrymen to experience again.
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bttt
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