I doubt there would be too many D-Day veterans left today. The waves of Brits, Yanks and Canadians who swept ashore at Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches and jumped from transport planes and landed in gliders would be very old men by now and time would have inflicted casualties that legions of German Panzer-Grenadiers could not.
D-Day is not only important for the strategic effect it had on the course of the second world war but also was a catalyst for what followed in the ensuing 50 years.
There is plenty of reason to believe that the Soviets would have kept coming from the east and that the whole of western Europe to the English Channel would have been under the hammer and sickle for the next half a century. D-Day at the very least precluded that possibility.
In very real terms the western world has lived under the blanket of security provided by the United States ever since. Because of the strength, authority and perceived power of the United States, peace has reigned in Europe between the great powers ever since the guns fell silent in August 1945.
US servicemen, along with their NATO counterparts have held the line in Europe ever since. Tens of thousands of Yanks have died in Asia fighting Communism and today they are still shedding their blood to stem the rise of Islamic Jihadism.
I hope on this day of great historical significance that some people will take a second to think about those Doughboys, Dogfaces, GI’s, Leathernecks, call them what you will who are serving overseas, still providing that blanket of security that we have come to take for granted.
Speaking of current military operations I see a poll on the weekend suggesting that Australians are war weary and want to see an end to Australian participation in the Afghan Campaign. It got me wondering how many Australians actually know anyone who is serving in the Middle East. I doubt there would be too many as the force we have over there isn’t particularly large. The war itself has almost no impact on Australian life and the only time we ever hear anything about it is when there is a fatality. For the most part life goes on at home and the war has no effect on the general populace. It’s 2011 not 1916. 26 fatalities in 11 years is of course a significant sacrifice but when you consider that on average 1700 people die every year in road crashes in Australia the casualties are negligible. Too bad people aren’t weary of that!
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 