63 years ago today
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
I caught this doco yesterday with two Americans who stormed Omaha and a German who defended it meeting up on the beach as friends. Very touching and hearing the stories first hand was something.
June 6 in our town of Winchester VA, celebrates the trinity tri-fecta of Turner Ashby day (a confederate), Confederate Memorial Day, and D-DAY.
We have a huge cemetery, a silent city of buried "war of northern agression" (civil war to outsiders) heroes where a ceremonial is conducted to a crowd that used to be 7000 down to 200 last night, not including the re-enactors in full dress who can't breathe if they can't tell you something about this history.
1860s musical instruments by the horn band provided the mood. A bucolic setting.
A speech about the ardor of the past.
Another speech about the Shenandoah valley campaign of Jubal Early.
A salute to ancestors of the South and one WWI veteran who is 106 years old who lied at 16 to get into that war. We didn't enter until 1917. Over There... Over There..
Glory and pain.
Silence.
Mute sentries.
We got a tour conducted by an 88 year old veteran of the Battle of the Bulge in Europe this September. Check out www.cwea.org
We have a huge cemetery, a silent city of buried "war of northern agression" (civil war to outsiders) heroes where a ceremonial is conducted to a crowd that used to be 7000 down to 200 last night, not including the re-enactors in full dress who can't breathe if they can't tell you something about this history.
1860s musical instruments by the horn band provided the mood. A bucolic setting.
A speech about the ardor of the past.
Another speech about the Shenandoah valley campaign of Jubal Early.
A salute to ancestors of the South and one WWI veteran who is 106 years old who lied at 16 to get into that war. We didn't enter until 1917. Over There... Over There..
Glory and pain.
Silence.
Mute sentries.
We got a tour conducted by an 88 year old veteran of the Battle of the Bulge in Europe this September. Check out www.cwea.org
Would D-Day ever have happened ???
Just so happens in Winchester, D-Day is also Confederates' Memorial Day.
After war between the states, people used to say the United States "are." After, the United States "is."
Historians theorize, had Lincoln wearied after a possible truce might have been conducted in Canada, that the North and the West would have split into 3 countries or confederations, and that by WWI, perhaps all 4 countries would have loosely allied in various degrees of intensity to help.
In any case, it is very possible we might have avoided the hubris that runs our foreign policy ever since the end of WW11 .
In fact this case is one of many ironic twists of history whereby the cause of eradicating slavery created a super nation whose ego began to forget the lessons of the forefathers who warned of foreign entanglements.
Who is also to say what other problems would have arisen had the United States split into five different confederations, New England, MidAtlantic, Midwest, West Coast and the South ?
Or to the present conflict in Iraq. Would Saddam living 10 more years confronted the world with something worse than the hell we created now ? Who knows ? I would guess that an UN-disunited States may not have gotten entangled on that and many other excursions from the Cold War on. Our ego would not have magnified the enemy to whip up the mood.
Just so happens in Winchester, D-Day is also Confederates' Memorial Day.
After war between the states, people used to say the United States "are." After, the United States "is."
Historians theorize, had Lincoln wearied after a possible truce might have been conducted in Canada, that the North and the West would have split into 3 countries or confederations, and that by WWI, perhaps all 4 countries would have loosely allied in various degrees of intensity to help.
In any case, it is very possible we might have avoided the hubris that runs our foreign policy ever since the end of WW11 .
In fact this case is one of many ironic twists of history whereby the cause of eradicating slavery created a super nation whose ego began to forget the lessons of the forefathers who warned of foreign entanglements.
Who is also to say what other problems would have arisen had the United States split into five different confederations, New England, MidAtlantic, Midwest, West Coast and the South ?
Or to the present conflict in Iraq. Would Saddam living 10 more years confronted the world with something worse than the hell we created now ? Who knows ? I would guess that an UN-disunited States may not have gotten entangled on that and many other excursions from the Cold War on. Our ego would not have magnified the enemy to whip up the mood.
I was a little girl, and my brother was over there, Belgium/France/Holland, he came home wounded, but recovered fully.
I didn't really realize the magnitude of the war till I was older. I remember asking him how many
germans he killed, he didn't really answer me, I guess I was about 7 or 8 then, what a stupid question,
but typical kid thing.
It was huge for all of us, imagine if Hitler had continued through England and on and on. Very scary
thought.
I didn't really realize the magnitude of the war till I was older. I remember asking him how many
germans he killed, he didn't really answer me, I guess I was about 7 or 8 then, what a stupid question,
but typical kid thing.
It was huge for all of us, imagine if Hitler had continued through England and on and on. Very scary
thought.
I was five years old on that day. I had an older brother in that war who also lived through that.
It was quite a day. 50,000 Americans and about 75,000 Brits and Canadians. About 12,000 were killed on the first day.
