Yesterday the 6th June was the 82nd anniversary of D Day, that auspicious but bloody time when Allied troops landed back on Continental European soil to take the fight to an enemy that had enslaved vast amounts of Europe.
Thousands upon thousands of young men from all the Allied nations stormed beaches at Normandy in France to take the fight to the Germans. Thousands left heaving, wet and foul smelling landing craft and advanced up the beach. Thousands got off the boats but thousands also didn’t make it back. Too many of those who stepped out to take the fight to the enemy on beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Sword, Juno and Gold, died in the fighting to regain that foothold on continental Europe.
We should remember what so many people did that day and in the run up to it. Remember those who fought and those who lost their lives and remember also those who didn’t fight but were vital to the mission. Remember the metrologists, the code breakers, the men who turned German agents and got them to send false information to Germany, the radio amateurs contracted by the Govt to listen to German radio frequencies but who probably never knew they might have helped with D Day and those who created the massive and magnificent deceit that misled the Germans into thinking that the Allies would enter Europe via Calais.
The D Day landings forced the Germans to fight on too many fronts at once. This sort of fighting is disastrous unless the country that is fighting on many fronts has a solid base of resources both human and materiel or alliances with friendly resource rich countries and secure trading and transportation routes. Germany didn’t have that.
D Day was the beginning of the end of the Germans it was a turning point in the War and that is why it is rightly remembered decades on.
Those who fought at D Day bought a great prize with their lives and their efforts. They freed many people from many nations from murderous tyranny. That prize was the freedom of millions.
Most of those who fought but returned from the Normandy Beaches are now long gone and have passed from presence into memory. However we should still honour them and still be inspired by them and not let that great prize that they won in our name be squandered by today’s politicians.
