A D-Day salute

[pdcorlis]

A moment to reflect on all those who's blood was shed on this and many other days before and after.

[English Bloke]

Lest we forget.

[Jock Scot]

We will remember them.

[randal]

There's a reason this was known as the greatest generation. I'm a former Navy Corpsman and my hero from that generation is PH2 John Bradley. He was one of the flag raisers on Mt Surabachi on Iwo Jima and also a Navy Corpsman. In fact, he is the only Sailor in the picture all others are Marines. His son wrote a book about him and they made it into a movie...Flags of Our Fathers.

[Pleater]

My dad went over to France on the a few days after D day - he was working on an airfield near Caen that was just the sand with metal grids laid over it for a runway and dispersals for the different squadrons, all sharing the same small area.

They really were not certain that there was not going to be a counter attack. The ground crews had gone over in Dakotas, I think, and would have no official means of escape, but the pilots said that they would remove the radios from their planes and rely on the RFF signal, and carry the groundcrew back in the empty radio compartments.

Oh - that is the 'recognition friend or foe' signal, a signal separate from the ordinary radio intended to prevent planes being targeted if they should be unable to make voice contact to identify themselves.

From details revealed after the event, it was a close thing - it really could have gone either way in the first couple of weeks after D day.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Sionnach]

I salute them all and in particular my maternal grandfather, Robert Gulbransen, now deceased but who was there on Omaha Beach and returned home to his family in Salt Lake City, Utah after the war. Son of a father from Norway and mother who was born of Scottish Immigrants to Utah in the 1850's. To him and all who were there my heart goes out.

[Bigkahuna]

A Toast to all our Brothers in Arms. Past,present and future.

[ohiopiper]

We sleep peacefully in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.

These were men who walked out of factories, farms and cities into a hell on earth that engulfed the entire globe in a conflict that defies the imagination even today. Hundreds of millions killed. They finished their work on the battlefields, then those left alive returned from whence they came and resumed their lives. That in itelf is an amazing feat. Saving the world from madmen bent on destruction and domination was all in a days work for them.



I was in Pearl Harbor for the fiftieth anniversary of the japanese surrender and the topic of the day was asking all the "old timers" where they were on Dec 7. I was out on the Arizona Memorial at the time and asked one old gent who was bent over with arthritis where he was. He leaned over the rail, pointed to a gun mount and said "There". Then he pointed to the wall with the names of the lost inscribed and said "With them".

[dfmacliam]

a salute to my grandfather Gerald Farmer, who left Dublin to help with the war effort... I was told he survived a few sinking... but kept at it... and to the little old Brit chap I met yesterday in Groveton, Texas... he mentioned he knew what he was doing, back then... He was on a British ship firing on the beaches for the landing..... you never know when you meet the most interesting people... or where... Groveton has a population of about 350 people.. a typical small town in East Texas..