This year is the 75th anniversary of the D-Day
invasion. Admittedly, that is a LONG time ago, but the fact of the matter is
that it happened just a few years before I was born.
Am I really THAT old?
Although the D-Day invasion was one of the most important
events of my lifetime, not every U.S. president has spoken there on the anniversary
of the invasion. Surprisingly, Jimmy Carter was actually the FIRST president to
speak there, which he did in 1978. Reagan was next in 1984, followed by Bill
Clinton is 1994, and Barack Obama in 2009 and 2014.
In the years immediately following WWII, many veterans were
reluctant to talk about their brutal experiences, so the invasion became a
topic to be avoided. Dwight Eisenhower, the man who organized the event, only
wrote a short note on the 10th anniversary in 1954.
Donald Trump will be making the trip this year. Obviously, I
am not a fan, and I doubt that his speech will be as eloquent as the speeches
given by his predecessors, but I WILL give him credit for at least making the attempt.
To all the folks who are part of the “baby boomer” generation,
the details of the invasion, and the events leading up to it, are well known.
Sadly, many of today’s college students are painfully ignorant about WWII in
general.
In 2013, a
Pennsylvania woman set out with a video camera to learn what college students
in her state know about the Holocaust -- and discovered an incredible lack of
knowledge not only of the genocide of the Jews, but of basic facts about U.S.
history and World War II.
Truth be told, the students interviewed can’t truly be blamed
for their ignorance, since training about the Holocaust is only mandatory in
six states (California, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, New York, and Michigan).
It’s also not mandatory in every country either. As you might
suspect, teaching about the Holocaust is mandatory in Germany, but it is
mandatory in only 7 other countries (Austria, France, Israel, the Netherlands,
the United Kingdom, Poland and Switzerland.)
The fact that teaching about the Holocaust is not mandatory
doesn’t mean that today’s high school students get no training at all. I’ve
been in numerous classrooms in Arizona where “Slaughterhouse-Five" was required
reading, and I have also been in classrooms where Elie Wiesel’s “Night” was on the
required reading list.
There have been some excellent movies made about D-Day, and
all of them are worth viewing:
In my opinion, though, the most realistic movie is “Saving
Private Ryan”, which was released in 1998. The Omaha Beach scene comes closest
to depicting the horror of war:
You’ll notice that this article is the 5th in a
series. Earlier versions can be found in the links listed below:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2014/06/
(the video in this one ALWAYS brings
tears to my eyes.).
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/06/thoughts-on-d-day.html
(this video will ALSO bring tears to your eyes).
Next Thursday, take a moment to remember the sacrifices made
by our men in uniform long ago in a country far away, as well as the sacrifices
that some of them are still making today.
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