D-day 70th anniversary.

[merehazle]

As second world war veterans, and our allies gather.  Any thoughts and memories?

We owe them so much. These totally amazing people, who achieved something enormously important and unbelievably difficult. We owe them so much.

As we often see the landings on those flat open beaches how utterly exposed these guys were as they came off the landing craft. It is simply amazing that any of them made it off the beach. And most were very sea sick.

[ed_blackadder_1]

Utmost admiration from me, I doubt if a lot of our youngsters could cope with that nowadays, but then it is a whole different world now and another war would be fought in a different way.

I will try and catch up with the tv later, I am sure it will be very moving.

[saasher2012]

Wholeheartedly agree with you both!

[rose2008-2008]

Im thinking of my dad today who has now passed on but he served in the navy on HMS DIDO. He did his part for King and Country and im very proud of him!!. . No doubt his many friends who are still here are going through their many memories happy and sad today!. God bless you.

[evoman3957]

To give your life for another, even when it's your own Flesh and Blood; is something exceptional. To do it for people, who you have never met, so they may live to enjoy the freedoms that you will never see, is to deserve immortality in the hearts and minds of all who follow.

[saasher2012]

Wonderful sentiments & oh so true, very moving! Thank you!!.

[5129frederick]

By God's Grace, we live in peace.  

[tommy.irene]

ITV News

3 hrs · Edited · 

Police said his care home wouldn't let him go to Normandy - so the 89-year-old appears to have hidden his medals under an overcoat and made the trip anyway.

Missing 89-year-old WWII veteran found commemorating D-Day on Normandy beach

A pensioner who went missing from a nursing home in East Sussex has been found safe and well - commemorating the D-Day landings in Normandy.

ITV

[tommy.irene]

ITV News

1 hr · 

And here he is! Bernard Jordan, now 89, who snuck away from his care home in Hove to attend a D-Day service in Normandy.

Veteran missing from care home found at Normandy service

An 89-year-old veteran reported missing from a nursing home was found in France marking the anniversary of the D-Day landings.

ITV

[tommy.irene]

[merehazle]

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@saasher2012 wrote:
Wonderful sentiments & oh so true, very moving! Thank you!!.

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Yes, I thought that too.

On a note of humour...  I only heard this today that a soldier Bob Millins, on leaving the landing craft walked up and down the beach playing his bag pipes. And they say the Germans did not shoot him because they thought he was stark raving mad. Well... its hardly surprising they thought that with hundreds being shot dead all around him. And yet he walked up and down and played on. Bless him.

Just goes to show you that the Germans soldiers had hearts too. Oh, he survived, and was awarded a medal. What a wonderful man.  He has died from a stroke at 88.   R.I.P Bob.

[saasher2012]

lol. Yes true grit & many more stories like that, the one that Tommy has posted, that grand old chap had every right to go to France & even at his age showed courage & determination to stick his fingers up to the establishment & make his own way there ,
This is what this country is lacking men & woman who won't take no for an answer.

[elliottsofyorkshire]

Well done Mr Jordan.  With your spirit of course the war was won.  I'm going to send him a Well Done and Welcome home card to the nursing home tomorrow.  Surely if the nursing home was concerned about him travelling alone they could have arranged for someone to accompany him. 

[merehazle]

@5129frederick wrote:

By God's Grace, we live in peace.  

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Sorry, but only by God's Grace?  

We might have avoided the second world war if Germany had not fooled the Allies in the years after the First World War and secretly rearmed while pleading poverty.  Adolf Hitler came to power with a fixed determination to extend Germany's borders...of Versailles.

No country questioned his breach of the Treaty of Versailles; they backed down and his prestige grew, it made him very popular in Germany - it reduced unemployment, it made Germany strong, and he had defied the hated Treaty of Versailles.

Conscription was specifically forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles,  but rearmament had been going on secretly since 1933, but in 1935 Hitler rearmed. 

One thing that's certain is that they should never have been allowed to rearm with even a water pistol. No matter what it cost (but a tiny, tiny fraction of a war surly) it should not have been allowed to happen?  They lost the first world war, and as if that wasn't enough to make sure they could not start another one (difficult, but could have done) was absolute madness. All the first world war sacrifices, suffering, destruction and deaths were not for much then. What absolute madness to let them out to attack the world again.  

Look and Remember what the Russians (USSR) did? They lost at least ''25 million people''. And without them what chance would we have stood? 

My God we,like and most other countries certainly did our bit, and certainly could not have done much more. But the figures certainly show they did more.  That's a fact. 

[merehazle]

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@elliottsofyorkshire wrote:

Well done Mr Jordan.  With your spirit of course the war was won.  I'm going to send him a Well Done and Welcome home card to the nursing home tomorrow.  Surely if the nursing home was concerned about him travelling alone they could have arranged for someone to accompany him. 

---

Oh well after more than a day, fred is not about it seems. So we move on.   Well...we might you never know (wink).

Elliot -

Yes, we will do that too.  Nice to see the fantastic response at his return on the news.

Makes us very, very proud to say he is  OURS.

I have a feeling that our Bernard Jordan, who is already a hero, will be celebrating much, much more soon.

See you soon. We hope.

[sir_arthur_strebe-grebling]

Yes, we owe so much to those people, especially the front-line servicemen but also all the people of Britain in the 1940s, who worked and fought for our freedom, many of them paying the ultimate price.

But thank goodness it was then and not now. Most of the qualities that enabled Britain to win the war have been destroyed. Patriotism, doing one's duty, even the notion of keeping things secret, all have been lost. Let us hope they will never be needed again because those vital qualities will surely be impossible to re-create in the modern Britain.

[evoman3957]

Sometimes I wonder if people didn't see that coming, arthur, that's why modern Warfare would be fought from a control room; pushing buttons..............takes people out of the equation, to a large extent.

[merehazle]

 Sir A,  #12:

Yes, I think of the thousands of men and women that gave their lives to keep Britain out of German hands during the last war. The great pride we had as a nation to stick together and get on with things. All this was destroyed by New Labour. People run scared with political correctness. 

We have people in our country who stand up and shout hate towards our culture and our beliefs. An unfair benefit system that bends over backwards for immigrants but leaves the elderly and the vulnerable just to get on with it. OUR people did not die so OUR people would suffer.

What a strange country we live in, where MPs, Police, Media, bankers comply with different rules. When they break the law they get to have a long inquiry. When the rest of us break the law the police are making an early morning raid the next day. 

We have had decades of politicians setting the agenda and leading from the front and the demise of the UK as expressed the culture of its people and its institutions continues relentlessly.  

[merehazle]

Well  Book hunter???

[bookhunter2007]

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@merehazle wrote:

Well  Book hunter???

---

Well….It does seem rather ironic you complain about those who “shout hate towards our culture”, yet you've somehow managed to use the anniversary of D-Day to have yet another mindless rant against “immigrants”.  That's the sort of guff the British Union of Fascists used to spout about Jewish refugees in the 1930s.

merehazel wrote: We have people in our country who stand up and shout hate towards our culture and our beliefs. An unfair benefit system that bends over backwards for immigrants but leaves the elderly and the vulnerable just to get on with it. OUR people did not die so OUR people would suffer.

Use of myth & the scapegoating of minority groups at the expense of “OUR people” into an "us and them" mentality is the kind of rhetoric which helped to empower the Third Reich in the first place.

It's not uncommon for Far-Right groups and their supporters to exploit D-Day as an excuse to push their twisted interpretations of "British values": http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/news-opinion/jade-wright-says-think-twice-7230185

They have more in common with Hitler than the brave folks who risked and/or gave their lives in the D-Day landings.