D-day Commemoration.

Jun 06, 2014 13:34

I have been watching some of the TV coverage from Normandy both yesterday and today ( Read more... )

grateful, history, reminiscing, family

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curiouswombat June 6 2014, 18:12:38 UTC
I am not really surprised that Hollywood mainly shows the American side of the war, as if it only started when they arrived. Although it would be helpful if they didn't keep changing history to make it look as if everything was done by Americans such as the film that showed the capture of the enigma machine from a submarine by an American vessel... When in reality, it was British personnel from HMS Bulldog who first captured a naval Enigma machine (from U-110 in the North Atlantic in May 1941), before the United States had even entered the war.

Considering how thin the U.S. was stretched at the time with the war in the Pacific, I am surprised they were able to send so many!

But then there were also something like 150,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers fighting there, too, as well as airforce and naval personnel. Or do they not mention them in America?

But how good that we learn all the time - I hadn't realised there had been rationing in the USA - thank you for telling me about it.

Many of my teachers had been in the forces, too. But it was something they rarely mentioned, just like your maths teacher. Our headmaster did used to have his DFC after his name on formal documents, though!

And I do think that if we do not keep reminding everyone about the horrors of such total war, where everyone, whether old or young, male or female, is involved, we are likely to repeat it. So I am sad to learn that the history of the causes and losses of WW2 is not taught in your schools as it is in ours.

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curiouswombat June 6 2014, 19:52:28 UTC
Yes, there was rationing in the U.S. but I am talking about rationing in England where I was born and lived until I was 21.

To be honest I don't remember them teaching us about the war in school, probably too soon after the fact.

I do remember my uncle talking about heating tins of what they thought was stew of some kind only to find on opening them that they had a nice tin of melted butter! He was in Italy for a time. My dad was in the signal corps when young but developed a hearing impairment, the head phones were not as well made as they are now and he had infections in his ears that damaged to canal and he had to rely on bone conduction to hear.

Yes, that's right the U.S. did not enter the war until November of that year after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lynda

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curiouswombat June 7 2014, 09:53:59 UTC
Your story of the tin of melted butter reminds me of some of the stories my Uncle Eric told us.

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