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D-Day Commemorations Begin as Veterans Feel Left Out

by Jordan Yerman | June 5, 2009 at 09:01 am

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Tomorrow marks the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, and fewer and fewer veterans of the invasion are around to commemorate.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hosting ceremony at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, the site of the Allied forces' first foothold onto Nazi-occupied Western Europe.

Prince Charles and Gordon Brown will attend a commemoration ceremony alongside the French and US presidents.

It seems that interest grows a bit each year to get these stories told while it's still possible to do so. There's also a pushback against the political grandstanding which surrounds events such as this, with veterans feeling that they've become incidental to what's become a sort of show. The schoolbook history is one of nations and armies, but in terms of living history, individual stories are all that truly remain.

About 800 veterans of the Normandy campaign will attend what is expected to be last such gathering ever held on the soil they liberated.

"They fired on us, but we took them out," says Marr, 91. The Arlington, Va., retired colonel is in Normandy again this week telling tales of combat where it happened to participants in an annual tour organized by the New Orleans-based National World War II Museum.

Waves rushed over his head, knocking him under water, as he struggled to the shores of Normandy. Like many soldiers who were part of the D-Day invasion, Albert Piper couldn't swim.

As the surviving veterans get older and travel grows more difficult, they speak of disbanding their association.

Ernest Chambers, 83, from Norwich, who served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, said: "It means everything. It is a pilgrimage, it will probably be the last."

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Pythiian1

at 09:13 on June 5th, 2009

It's still important to pay tribute to these veterans even though many can no longer travel on long distant trips.

Jess14 (not verified)

at 09:35 on June 5th, 2009

This is an inspiring collection of quotes...a lot of what is surrounding the D-day commemorations are political figures feeling high and mighty when really, it is about the soldiers.

Like this: http://www.newsy.com/videos/up_in_arms_over_d_day_anniversary

albertacowpoke

at 13:23 on June 5th, 2009

The 6th of June, D Day, also known as the longest day, should be all about the soldiers for sure. Many Allied Nations will have honour guard for the ceremonies tomorrow. I know Canada normally sends representative of active and some reserve Regiments to participate in a ceremony.

This is a day to remember all those war time cemetaries full of white crosses with inscriptions of young men. You don.t find too many where the soldiers were much older than 21.

Lest we forget.

Paschen

at 23:00 on June 8th, 2009

I can not remember one of those ceremonies where any ever thanked the Soviet for there part or D-day would have be disaster cost the lives of all debarking.

Never had any one raised a monument like in Strasbourg against war and in favour of life, we remember in every war murderers as Heroes half of those war could have been avoided had we not those Nationalistic illnesses still going around. There is no glory nor any honour in any war and would it not have been for a false sentiment of Nationalism and hunger the NAZI would most likely never have made it to power.

Have we learned any thing from it? We will have very soon a starving Africa, Middle East and Asia due to overpopulation, climate changes and pollution, will we help and pull together as one Humanity or find another pretext for another such wars as WWII was? After Afghanistan and Iraq I suppose the latter will happen. And we will build a new monument to glorify legal murder.