81 years on; we doff our caps to them

[Paladin1962]

No idea if there's any D-Day veterans in the group, but there must be children and grandchildren of them in the ranks. Salute to those who went into battle for us all on that fateful day. By the grace of God all of my great uncles and my grandfather made it back from the war.

[geoberni]

Agreed, 'We Will Remember Them' whether they made it beyond that day or not.

....As you're in the USA (and I do realise it is a massive expanse where few people seem to venture very far), but have you ever been to the National D Day Memorial at Bedford VA?
https://www.dday.org/
I can recommend it, although as a Brit, I found it a little strange in it's approach....

There is a Landing Craft beachhead depiction at the centre of it, with 'bullet splashes' erupting out of the water.....

2008_1024Virgina_Road_Trip0256.JPG (230.95 KiB) Viewed 210 times

2008_1024Virgina_Road_Trip0235.JPG (457.34 KiB) Viewed 210 times

2008_1024Virgina_Road_Trip0226.JPG (495.52 KiB) Viewed 210 times

2008_1024Virgina_Road_Trip0247.JPG (474.71 KiB) Viewed 210 times

Surprisingly, the memorial was only constructed in the late 1990s; I visited there in 2008.
Apparently Bedford was chosen as the location of the memorial because Bedford’s D-Day fatalities amounted to a total of 20. In comparison with its wartime population, Bedford suffered the USA's highest known per capita D-Day loss.

[Paladin1962]

Funny you should mention that. I was born and raised in Amherst County and several of my relatives lived in Bedford. My Uncle George walked from Normandy to Berlin in 1944-45 and lived until 1981. My Uncle William owned a farm near Smith Mountain Lake and had two ships shot out from under him in the Pacific. My Uncle Fred was part of a tank destroyer crew and came home; Uncles Lawrence and Richard were respectively Navy and USAAF and came home. Granddad was a motor mechanic with a tank battalion and came home (obviously, since I'm here)....

[Bill_qaz]

We visited Normandy during the 80th anniversary and to see the standing with giants display, which we had seen at Stow, very moving.

20240611_141606.jpg (1.04 MiB) Viewed 189 times

20240611_140105.jpg (821.32 KiB) Viewed 189 times

20240611_134726.jpg (870.02 KiB) Viewed 189 times

[geoberni]

Funny you should mention that. ....

What a coincidence.
The odds were you would have never heard of it.
We lived in Nevada for 3 years and visited as many places as we could; encountering so many people who knew of little outside their own 'bubble', whether that be County, State or Timezone....

[geoberni]

We visited Normandy during the 80th anniversary and to see the standing with giants display, which we had seen at Stow, very moving.

We first saw those figures at Thoresby Hall, near Newark on Trent, in the summer of 2022.
Didn't know they were there; so totally unexpected to find them about 1/4 mile away across the grounds.

20220722_140555.jpg (1.66 MiB) Viewed 176 times

[Bill_qaz]

The longest yarn exhibition was also there for the commemorations .https://www.thelongestyarn.com/

20240610_135513.jpg (1.58 MiB) Viewed 163 times

20240610_140144.jpg (1.65 MiB) Viewed 163 times

The actual church with monument to paratrooper

20240610_163556.jpg (551.8 KiB) Viewed 163 times

[geoberni]

The longest yarn exhibition was also there for the commemorations .

My wife went with some friends to see that at Southwell Minster in September last year, she said it was very good.

The group responsible for it are now undertaking a similar project called Britain at War, covering September 3rd to VE Day, which is expected to be at Southwell this September.

[Paladin1962]

Sobering stuff.