here it is 69 years later, and we could not save the world again,
if we had to.
True words for sure...very sad......
Hold on a sec, boys.
D-day was in 1944. But when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the start of WWII, the U.S.'s military power was arguably at the lowest point in our nation's history. It took 2 years for Roosevelt to hornswoggle us into the war, and 5 years to build up the military machine that successfully invaded Normandy.
My uncle Steve was there on D-day as well, a private in the 1st Canadian Parachute Regiment. He fought all the way to Germany, went back to England and married his sweetheart, and then returned to Saskatchewan where he raised 5 great kids. He died on June 6, 2001.
I talked with him in 1998 at my other uncle's funeral. "Saving Private Ryan" had just come out. He had previously been reluctant to talk about his war memories, but in his late years he had joined the Parachute Regiment's veteran organization, and was very active in contributing to their historical records. So he answered my questions.
I asked him about the horrific volume of fire the movie depicted as the GI's landed on Omaha beach, and asked him if that was realistic. He grimaced and said he was in firefights in Normandy and Holland that were ten times worse than what Spielberg portrayed in the beach scenes. He said that he had no doubt the reality of Omaha was much worse than portrayed.
I watched Saving Private Ryan again last weekend, and as ever, that long invasion scene wrenched my guts and brought tears to my eyes.
God bless the memory of the boys who took the Normandy beachhead.