{"id":1408,"date":"2009-06-06T08:15:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-06T12:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningseditionists.com\/msblog\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2009-06-06T08:21:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-06T12:21:34","slug":"d-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2009\/06\/06\/d-day\/","title":{"rendered":"D-Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, D-Day was a big deal. Of course, we were a lot closer to the actual event (and the end of “The War”) back then, with the memories of those who survived still fresh. Now, 65 years after June 6, 1944, there aren’t many folks left who stormed the beaches of Normandy<\/a>, and even those who were kids back during WWII are getting a little long in the tooth. If Barack Obama wasn’t in Europe this week, I doubt it would merit even a passing mention in the news (I don’t see anything on the lo-cal news sites, which seem to be too enraptured with Sarah Palin’s visit to notice – not to mention the “Man arrested for buying drugs with slaughtered pig ” story). <\/p>\n

It always strikes me as odd when I think about the fact that, when I was in high school, WWII was in the history books, in the same way that Vietnam is “history” now. Hell, even the first Gulf War was a generation ago. There are kids serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today that weren’t even born when Poppy Bush formed his marvelous coalition, preserving the way of life of Kuwait’s Al Sabah dynasty, and making the Persian Gulf safe for global oil corporations (and, let’s be fair, preserving our<\/em><\/strong> way of life as well; we are one big dirty, oily bunch).<\/p>\n

When I watch movies like “Saving Private Ryan”, “Band of Brothers”, or “The Big Red One” (as in: 1<\/font>) about combat – especially D-Day – I’m always amazed by what these people did. And convinced that I never would have had the guts to do it (though I suppose when they drive your LSI up to the beach and drop open the front, you don’t have much choice but to go forward). <\/p>\n

I can’t imagine being told (no doubt after<\/em><\/strong> you were already on the way), <\/p>\n

“OK, here’s the plan. See that big wide stretch of beach, leading up to those cliffs with Nazi machine guns and mortars? If we don’t get blown up by mines or mortars, or flip over, capsize and drown, we’re gonna storm the beach, and anybody who still<\/em><\/strong> isn’t dead is gonna climb up the cliff and go kill all the Nazis. Any questions?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uh, yeah, just one. Are you fucking nuts?<\/p>\n

But, that’s what they did. An estimated 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy alone. <\/p>\n

I’m glad the world wasn’t counting on me, that day, and I’m glad I never had to go through anything like that. To the guys that did, all I can say is “thanks.” I might bitch, but I’m pretty sure things would really suck if the Nazis had been running the world for the past 60 years.<\/p>\n

And, I know it was a long time ago, but it sure seems like it ought to be worth at least a mention on the news.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, D-Day was a big deal. Of course, we were a lot closer to the actual event (and the end of “The War”) back then, with the memories of those who survived still fresh. Now, 65 years after June 6, 1944, there aren’t many folks left who stormed the beaches of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}