A little something to read and remember.

[ThreePedalTapDancer]

Tomorrow we remember.

[Duey_C]

Thank you for that Ray. Real Americans of any age will always remember.
I have never seen that letter before. Was in Normandy some years ago in Arromanche and on point du Hoc.
Today in '42 was the second day of the battle of Midway and would last another two days. We busted their chops in the Pacific.

[frontyboy]

It is often said " they were the greatest generation. I have toured several WW2 cemeteries in Europe including the battle of the bulge. A little known fact about these cemeteries are actually US territory given to the US by the countries where the battles took place. This was done so those US military's fallen men and women would always remain on United States territory.

These resting places are manicured to the nth degree and these graves are always under the American Flag flying proudly. While it is a very humbling experience to walk through these final resting places of our very brave solders, it makes one very proud to see how well cared for their final resting place is.

Respectfully,

frontyboy

[OilyBill]

It has always surprised me how many local volunteers they have as guides and as groundskeepers at those cemeteries. The local people there really remember, and a lot of them are now 3rd generation volunteers in taking care of American graves. I had always assumed they just had a group of paid guys, walking around taking care of things. That is not the way it is at all. I was very touched. A lot of Americans hardly remember WWII, but they and their children have not forgotten, not even one iota.
They are taking very tender care of our dead.

[Kaiser]

Personally i am very humbled by the fact that so many small town americans came over here to help us fight for our freedom.
As a young kid i played in places that were battlefields a mere twenty odd years before, we found lots of evidence of the fighting and we boys all had our coveted relics of that, in our young kids minds, exiting time.
We lost friends to unexploded amunitions, we dug up grenades, mortars, bayonets, you name it.
Still standard procedure in large parts of the country when building projects start is a thorough search for buried amunitions, whole provinces have a ban on metal detector treasure hunting because of the danger involved.
For most schools a field trip to one of the concentration camps is mandatory for all.
So for a lot of Europeans the first and the second world war are still very much 'alive' in more ways than one.
The whole idea behind the European Union was inspired on the 'This Never Again' idea.
And i guess that is why there are so many volunteers who step up to show their gratitude in one way or another to americans, australians, new zealanders and other people from 'overseas' who come here to visit the cemetaries and battlefields of Europe.
Thank you all for giving the greatest gift possible for our freedom

[Wayne Sheldon]

Some of us too young to have been there or even remember the days from our "safe" distance do remember from our common histories. I recognized what I was reading within the first sentence, and lovingly reread the whole thing.
History, and understanding it is important.Always has been. Always will be. Maybe now more than ever.

[david_dewey]

My father was one of those in the European campaign. I just sent this email to my family about him. Thought I'd share it with y'all too.
David Dewey

A bit of family history and world history. I’m sending this out to not only the immediate Bob Dewey family, but also the cousins whose email I have and a few close friends.

“Today is the 76th anniversary of D-Day. The men and women of the Greatest Generation earned their name as such after the bold and risky storming of the beaches in Normandy, France during the morning hours of June 6, 1944. Brave Americans rose to answer the call to fight back against the Nazis, crushing those evil empires who wanted to conquer the world. Over 160,000 allied troops participated in D-Day.”

Your Father/Grandfather was not one of the men to go this day because of an ear infection. Instead, he went in on D-Day plus 4, at the Battle of St. Lowe. He never talked about it until quite late in his life. At that time, all he remembered about the landing was that he didn’t have to wade ashore. That night, nestled down in the Hedgerows he reported seeing the largest fireworks ever as we shelled the area. He was one of the lucky ones, as due to shifting winds on the marker smoke bombs, we bombed many of our own troops. He told me that we (the Allies) had dropped leaflets the day before so most of the German forces had already left, so much of the destruction was unnecessary; but in those days we had no way of knowing that. I have seen some of his photos, which I believe are still in the crate he shipped back from France. They are pretty devastating pictures of destruction and some strange pictures of his group sheltering. Shortly after that he was sent to a resupply depot south of Paris, where he spent the rest of the war. He had been given an aptitude test and this changed the course of his service. Most of the men he originally trained with did not survive the D-day event. Some of them apparently resented his re-assignment, but it wasn’t of his doing.
So on Tuesday, think of Robert E Dewey, probably private at that time, although I believe he mustered out as a Staff Sargent; arriving at St. Lowe facing the Nazi fighting forces.

Linda & David Dewey

[Burger in Spokane]

My friend and mentor, Alby, went ashore at Omaha in the first wave. I never knew this
until some old hens happened by as we sat and talked and told Alby what a hard day they
were having. This really set Alby off and he gave me a good earful about how "no one has
the right to say they are having a bad day", and proceded to tell me how 06 June, 1944
went for him and thousands of other young men. His message to me was "Don't be a whiner, a
and have some #@! gratitude ! .... we have it SO good in America !" Pretty potent stuff to
a 12-year-old, and something I never forgot.

[Fordwright]

I was fortunate enough to have known a few WWII veterans before they died, and I always enjoyed hearing their stories. The magnitude of what they were expected to deal with is almost unimaginable today. But somehow they dealt with it mostly in good spirits and optimism.

More than a few old vets were still bitter about how the Canadians were used as cannon fodder and never got the recognition they deserved for their accomplishments. Apparently the British and the Americans were equally bad for taking the credit on the backs of the Canadians. Montgomery was a dirty word to some of the vets I knew.

[Scott_Conger]

Leo

my granfather was in Corregedor before and after it's fall. He survived the march; the camps, a death ship to Japan, and incarceration there, too. Due to his captors confiscating most of the Red Cross supplies sent there, since He was an MD, he had to walk the beds and decide who might survive the night with morphine and who was unfortunately going to die without it. I was told that he read them the Bible every night, but never went to church again after the war, with the exception of seeing my parents wed years later

He never said a word about it while I was alive and only learned details from a fellow surviving camp companion met by pure accident years later, and then reading a treasure-trove of correspondence found after his passing.

Anyway, I addressed this to you, because I remember much correspondence between him and two servicemembers from Netherlands who he treated and remained in contact with after the war. They secretely traded Tulip Bulbs for tobacco. I cannot imagine what your country and countrymen endured, nor can I begin to imagine fully the horrors my grandfather and others survived. Very humbling stuff.

[Kaiser]

Thanks Scott,
Well most people here know about the concentration camps and the terrible hunger in the winter of '44 and other barbarian acts brought on us by the Nazi's, but what happened in our former colonies in Indonesia under the Japanese is a less known fact, and on top of that on liberation day in the Pacific theatre another war for independence started in Indonesia, which meant that the Dutch who were incarcerated in the Jap camps in Indonesia had to stay there for their own safety with the Japs acting as guards but now to keep the indonesian 'freedom fighters' from massacering the Dutch inmates, mostly Women and children, as most men were put to work in Birma and other places in Asia.
Dutch men who were just liberated from work camps in Germany or from the Jap work camps were pressed into Dutch Army service and put on ships to fight another war on the other side of the world, a war that lasted until august of '48.. imagine that
After the Indonesian independence was declared official, hundreds of thousands of indonesian people who had worked with or for the Dutch were considered collaborators and had to get out ASAP so a lot were 'repatriated' to the freezing Dutch climate where they had a really hard time adapting to the ways of the Dutch and finding jobs etc.
And only now, now that generation is almost gone,now stories emerge about the terrible hardships the survivors had to endure, because a common thing among their generation is that they never talked about it and they never complained...
And THAT is the most astonishing thing about it all !
That is what makes me very humble indeed.

[DLodge]

... the freezing Dutch climate where they had a really hard time adapting to the ways of the Dutch and finding jobs etc.

And after around 300 years of colonization (as the Dutch East Indies), there were a lot of people who were descended from mixed marriages. Calling themselves Indos, they had Dutch names, spoke Dutch and considered themselves Dutch. Not welcome in the newly-independent Republic of Indonesia, they went "home" to Holland. After a couple of years in that "freezing Dutch climate," they emigrated to the United States, where a majority ended up in California (no surprise - it's warm there).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxdJg4xOo7o

[Kaiser]

You're absolutely right Dick, about 25000 of them immigrated to the US.