Remembering D Day
WW II Memoirs
TG Normandy
Originally published in 2009
Normandy-Oh Say Can You See…
I remember singing the national anthem, loudly, proudly, passionately feeling the lyrics, my adolescent tenor soaring over the voices of the other 6,000 students in the Brooklyn Technical High School assembly.
Then there was Vietnam and most grotesquely and dishearteningly the faux patriotism in the aftermath of 9//11. The wearing of American flag pins by venal politicians who had connived or bought their way out of Vietnam but shamefully sent our children to Iraq, ill-equipped and poorly trained-to die or be mutilated and then compounded the felony by criminally neglecting them when they came home. The VA hospitals are a disgrace.
Irving Berlin’s GOD BLESS AMERICA, his homage to the country that welcomed and inspired him and millions of other immigrants, including my son Rudy, is now obligatory at 7th inning stretches of Major League baseball games. Don’t even dare to not stand with the faithful.
Rudy had solemnly strode onto Omaha Beach towards the Channel while I waited on the site of the flags of participating nations. He found a spot where he could gaze, reflect and collect sand in a Ziploc bag to share with his son. We didn’t discuss the invasion, Normandy, the American cemetery, filled with Carerran marble crosses and Jewish stars and the formerly blood-soaked beaches that defy words.
But I know that he was remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944 and the 3,000 American boys who had fallen in the surf, on the beach or scaling the cliffs and Robert Capa who had inspired him with his shots of the landing as he too tumbled out of a landing craft and into the nightmare around him.
Then the silence and reflection were pierced by the taped opening bars of The Star-Spangled Banner, accompanying the raising of the American flag. Rudy turned and gazed in silent respect and I once again felt the emotion of that 16 year-old high school student.
5 PRC Members will win a book-not a member? Join today
On the 80th anniversary of the war's end, 5 classic memoirs capture firsthand the shock, terror, and courage of the American fight against the Axis powers in Europe
"The emotional environment of warfare has always been compelling," writes J. Glenn Gray in his incomparable World War II memoir and mediation, The Warriors. "Reflection and calm reasoning are alien to it." The struggle to make sense of the experience of war, to find some meaning in the savagry and senseless destruction, animates the five brilliant and unforgettable memoirs gathered here.
On the Beach
An epic battle that involved 156,000 men, 7,000 ships and 20,000 armored vehicles, the desperate struggle that unfolded on June 6th, 1944 was, above all, a story of individual heroics—of men who were driven to keep fighting until the German defenses were smashed and the precarious beachheads secured. This authentic human story—Allied, German, French—has never fully been told.
Giles Milton’s bold new history narrates the day’s events through the tales of survivors from all sides: the teenage Allied conscript, the crack German defender, the French resistance fighter
The Podcast
A Conversation with the author Giles Milton
Ravensbruck
5 Paris Readers Circle members will win a copy
Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror for those with knowledge of this infamous all-women’s concentration camp, better known since it became the setting of Martha Hall Kelly’s bestselling novel, Lilac Girls. Particularly shocking were the medical experiments performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80 percent of its inmates were political prisoners, among them a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance.
Join our community of passionate bibliophiles and start winning books!
Reader's Comment
Hi Terrance, You couldn’t have chosen a more happy recipient! I thank you so much and always check out every book you recommend.If you are an Agatha Christie fan and have the opportunity to see HICKORY DICORY DOCK dramatized and directed by Anthony Horowitz with David Suchet as Poirot ( season 6) it is so worth the time. Plays on britbox here, Amazon and Acorn. Such an eye for detail and more complex writing.Thank you again! Can't wait to curl up with it. Michele
Coming Tomorrow
More about The Corsican Cruise
Not subscribed the Food & Wine issue?
Mes ami(e)s
I love my work of sharing French culture with you and the appreciation and respect you have shown for my efforts by your contributions.
I am a one man New Yorker of French culture and your support enables me to seek out and deliver fresh content daily-Please Contribute today-you'll feel better for it and I will appreciate it.Terrance
Your newsletter and website are must reads!
Kelle Ruden, Westport, CT