You sure wouldn’t know it by what’s on television.
Not a single movie, documentary or anything. We watched “Oh, What a Lovely War” with a chaser of “The Americanization of Emily.” Garry scoured the listings, but no channel is showing anything related to D-Day.
Not like there aren’t plenty of movies and documentaries from which to choose. So, have we forgotten? Call me weird, but I think this is a day to remember. Always.
Here I am, cynical, skeptical and nobody’s flag-waver reminding everyone that this day was important. It was the beginning of the final stage of the most devastating war in remembered history.
The summary of loss of life, 1937-1945:
Military deaths: More than 16,000,000
Civilian deaths: More than 45,000,000
Total deaths for the war years 1937-1945: More than 61,000,000
I don’t think we should be allowed to forget so quickly, do you?
European border before the first World WarEurope just after WW 2Europe-circa 1970
Because when we forget, when the lessons we learned are lost. We stand in imminent danger of repeating history. I, for one, think that’s a bad idea. Oh, wait … we ARE in the middle of repeating history.
Lest we forget … this is how it all began. With a world just like the one in which we are living. Today. With leaders who think war is a fine idea.
The cemetery is in the center of the town, across from the dam and just a hundred or so yards from the river itself. It’s up on a hill, so it never floods, even when the rivers rush over their banks. The people who created that cemetery knew about the rivers. And flooding. They picked a beautiful spot. It has a perfect view of the dam and river, but it’s dry and safe for bones and memories.
An old cemetery, dating back to the early 1700s. It contains traces of many generations of those who lived and died in this town, this valley. Folks who lived along the Blackstone and its many tributaries fished in its lakes and streams. They fought in our wars and are buried here — Revolutionary War soldiers, Civil War veterans as well as those who fought in all the American wars since.
Every anniversary of the end of some war we fought, the cemetery blooms with bouquets and flags. The schools bring the children here, so they will remember too and traditions will be maintained. They bring bouquets of wildflowers or from the back garden. Lilacs and lilies, scarlet poppies … and always a miniature American flag. Even if there’s no special holiday, the cemetery always shows signs of caring, remembering.
Maybe it’s easier to remember here, with such a small population. Is that it? Or it’s just part of the air, the character, the history. Remembering is what we do in the Valley.
The cemetery is one of my favorite places. We’re newcomers after all, only living here 19 years. Our ancestors — Garry’s and mine — come from Sligo, Antigua, Minsk, Bialystok. We come from tiny villages in Ireland, England, the West Indies, and a wide variety of shtetls in eastern and northern Europe. Our people were always on the move.
Valley people have been here longer. Many came from French Canada in the late 19th century to work in the mills. Another large group formed the dominant Dutch population. They built churches, businesses and factories, dairy and truck farms, shops, horse farms, and sawmills. Their names are prominent wherever the rivers run.
Newcomers, like us, aren’t rare anymore but also not common. We have no ancestors in the cemetery, at least none about whom we know. Anything is possible in America.
The valley is the only place I’ve lived where the majority of families have lived in the town or in nearby villages for three, four, five generations.
“We’ve always lived in the Valley,” they say, meaning they have lived here as long as anyone can remember. If gently prodded, they may recall at some point, long ago, they came from somewhere else. Some can’t remember when or if it’s true.
I point out they must have come from somewhere because unless they are Native American, they came to this place, even if it was a long time ago. They get misty-eyed trying to remember old family stories handed down when they were young.
It’s hard to remember, they tell you. “You know, that was 75 years ago … a long time.” We nod because it was a long time ago. We can’t remember a lot of things from our “old days” either. So many years have passed and so much stuff has happened.
In the ground – Photo: Garry Armstrong
How many wars have we fought — just in our lifetime? I can’t count them anymore. It’s endless. We honor our dead. I think we’d honor them more by ending the cause of their deaths which I doubt it will happen. Peace is not in us, or at least not in most of us. Certainly not in the people who run our countries.
So another year passes and little flags and flowers bloom in the old cemetery in the middle of town.
The movie’s title is taken from a letter of Sir Francis Drake “There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the True Glory.”
Question: Which President won an Oscar?
Answer: No, not Ronald Reagan. The 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature went to its uncredited producer, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower didn’t merely produce the movie. He also directed the Allied forces of Word War II, a feat which deserved its own Oscar. So we gave him the presidency. It was the best America had to offer.
A co-production of the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, The True Glory documents the victory on the Western Front, from the invasion at Normandy to the collapse of the Third Reich.
The officially credited director was Garson Kanin. British director Carol Reed was not officially credited, but is listed as director on IMDB and other sources. Paddy Chayefsky is the officially listed writer.
Other writers not officially credited are Harry Brown, Frank Harvey, Gerald Kersh, Saul Levitt, Arthur Macrae, Eric Maschwitz, Jenny Nicholson, Guy Trosper and Peter Ustinov. So many people were involved in this remarkable documentary — which received the Oscar for best documentary in 1945 — it’s impossible to list them all.
General Eisenhower speaks with members of the 101st Airborne Division on the evening of 5 June 1944 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The film was brilliantly edited down from more than 10 million feet of film taken by hundreds of war photographers, none of whom are credited.
The editing involved is extraordinary. During one long segment of film, there must have been thousands of cuts, each less than 2 seconds in length, most no more than one second long. That is a lot of splicing. It’s beautifully done, professional all the way.
You have likely seen many propaganda films from World War II. This isn’t one of them.
I’ve seen a lot of war movies. This is a real war, not a Hollywood redo.
Senior American military officials World War II.
The effects were not done with a computer. The bodies of the dead are human bodies. Soldiers, not actors.
The guns are firing ammunition. No special effects were used. The ships are on the seas and the aircraft, pilots, bombardiers are the real deal.
The battles are life and death. In real-time. It gave me the shivers.
As the movie progresses, there are maps so you can follow the progress of the various armies. It’s the first time I actually understood where the Battle of the Bulge took place and why it was called “the bulge.” It was like time travel for me, listening to Dwight D. Eisenhower. I grew up when Eisenhower was President. I remember his voice as the voice of the president of my childhood.
Perhaps it’s a good moment to ponder whether or not Eisenhower displayed his Oscar in the White House. My guess is, he didn’t. After you’ve been commander-in-chief of the Allied forces for a world war, the Oscar isn’t as big a deal as it might be for someone else.
If you have not seen this movie and you have an interest in World War II, you should see it. It’s remarkable.
It is available on a 2-disc DVD. The set includes the European war, the Italian campaign, and the battles in the Pacific.
There are many good movies about the war, but this set of documentaries has the most remarkable footage I’ve ever seen.
Seeing it without any Hollywood manufactured footage is seeing the war for the first time. This is not a movie about the war.
Memorial Day has come and gone. We brought out the barbecue and flipped a few burgers. Today, along with many other countries, we observe the anniversary of D-Day, a day to honor our military heroes, war veterans, and all soldiers living and dead.
War is more than battles, invasion, victories, and defeats. War is ultimately about destruction. The annihilation of nations. Laying waste to the lands where wars are fought. The slaughter of millions of civilians, young, old, and in between. All the war casualties who never wore a uniform and probably didn’t carry guns. There are no medals for them. No parades. No holidays. They’re just gone.
Most of these casualties — collateral damage — were people living uneventful lives until by ill fortune, they were caught in the backwash of war. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong race, wrong religion. Believed the wrong stuff, belonged to the wrong political party. Espoused an unacceptable philosophy.
The demagogues who lead the wars usually escape its wrath. They are talkers, not fighters.
I honor our soldiers. It’s an ugly, dangerous, and often thankless job. But I think we need to remember the unlucky millions caught on a battlefield they called home.
The number of military and civilian casualties in World War I totaled more than 37 million including 16 million dead and 20 million wounded. It ranks among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. The Entente Powers (the Allies) lost close to 6 million soldiers. The Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million civilians died from disease. Six million went missing and are presumed dead. American military deaths total 53,402.
World War II fatality statistics vary depending on who and how they are being counted. The estimates of total dead range from 50 million to more than 70 million, making it the deadliest war in world history in absolute terms — total dead — but not in terms of deaths relative to the world population. Our American Civil War holds that distinction.
Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead range in estimate from 22 to 25 million. These numbers include deaths in military prison camps — about 5 million prisoners of war.
Death Camps
In addition to soldiers and collaterally killed civilians, between 3 and 4 million Jews were murdered in Nazi death camps. In the USSR, the Einsatzgruppen mobile killing groups slaughtered another 1.4 million Jews. Jewish deaths in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe total around 700,000. Yad Vashem has identified the names of four million Jewish Holocaust dead.
Not merely was European Jewry wiped out, but Jewish culture was utterly destroyed. The Nazis were very thorough and highly efficient. They set out to destroy the Jews and they succeeded.
Although the Holocaust specifically targeted Jews, it did not target only Jews.
Roma (Gypsies), handicapped person, political prisoners, intellectuals, ethnic Poles, and Slavs were slaughtered too, bringing the total number of Holocaust victims to between 11 and 17 million.
At least 1 million people died in wartime gulags or by deportation. Other wartime deaths resulted from malnutrition and disease. Both Stalin and Hitler were responsible for these deaths. The biggest mass murderers in human history may never have personally killed anyone. They had others to do the job for them.
Now that national demagoguery is back in vogue, are Americans going to be the next mass murderers? The kind of rhetoric I’m hearing cannot help remind me (and I’m sure lots of other people) of other murderous demagogues and the slaughters they perpetrated.
In tallying up the costs of war, soldiers are not the only casualties. “Collateral damage” sounds so benign, a kind of verbal cleansing. But no matter what you call it, the dead remain dead.
June 6th came and went and there was nothing in the news, nothing on television, nothing on Facebook. I guess remembering D-Day is a bit too old-fashioned for modern media.
The next day, when we went to Manchaug, we were happy to discover at least one place remembers the day. The flags were flying. Memorials were decorated and a bicycle race was in progress.
It was reassuring that a tiny town, just around the corner in our valley, took the time to celebrate the allied invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944.
You sure wouldn’t know it by what’s on television. Not a single movie, documentary or anything at all. We watched “Oh, What a Lovely War” with a chaser of “The Americanization of Emily.” Garry scoured the listings, but no channel is showing anything related to D-Day.
Not like there aren’t plenty of movies and documentaries from which to choose. So, have we forgotten? Call me weird, but I think this is a day to remember. Always.
Here I am, cynical, skeptical and nobody’s flag-waver reminding everyone that this day was important. It was the beginning of the final stage of the most devastating war in remembered history.
The summary of loss of life, 1937-1945:
Military deaths: More than 16,000,000
Civilian deaths: More than 45,000,000
Total deaths for the war years 1937-1945: More than 61,000,000
I don’t think we should be allowed to forget so quickly, do you? Because when we forget, when the lessons we learned are lost, then we stand in danger of repeating history. I, for one, think that’s a bad idea.
The movie’s title is taken from a letter of Sir Francis Drake “There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the True Glory.”
Question: Which President won an Oscar?
Answer: No, not Ronald Reagan. The 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature went to its uncredited producer, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower didn’t merely produce the movie. He also directed the Allied forces of Word War II, a feat which deserved its own Oscar. So we gave him the presidency. It was the best America had to offer.
A co-production of the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, The True Glory documents the victory on the Western Front, from the invasion at Normandy to the collapse of the Third Reich.
The officially credited director was Garson Kanin. British director Carol Reed was not officially credited, but is listed as director on IMDB and other sources. Paddy Chayefsky is the officially listed writer.
Other writers not officially credited are Harry Brown, Frank Harvey, Gerald Kersh, Saul Levitt, Arthur Macrae, Eric Maschwitz, Jenny Nicholson, Guy Trosper and Peter Ustinov. So many people were involved in this remarkable documentary — which received the Oscar for best documentary in 1945 — it’s impossible to list them all.
General Eisenhower speaks with members of the 101st Airborne Division on the evening of 5 June 1944 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The film was brilliantly edited down from more than 10 million feet of film taken by hundreds of war photographers, none of whom are credited.
The editing involved is extraordinary. During one long segment of film, there must have been thousands of cuts, each less than 2 seconds in length, most no more than one second long. That is a lot of splicing. It’s beautifully done, professional all the way.
You have likely seen many propaganda films from World War II. This isn’t one of them.
I’ve seen a lot of war movies. This is real war, not the Hollywood version.
Senior American military officials World War II.
The effects were not done with a computer. The bodies of the dead are the bodies of soldiers, not actors. The guns are firing ammunition, not special effects. The ships are on the seas. The aircraft, pilots, bombardiers are the real deal. The battles are life and death in real-time. It gave me the shivers.
As the movie progresses, there are maps so you can follow the progress of the various armies. It’s the first time I actually understood where the Battle of the Bulge took place and why it was called “the bulge.” It was like time travel for me, listening to Dwight D. Eisenhower. I grew up when Eisenhower was President. I remember his voice as the voice of the president of my childhood.
Perhaps it’s a good moment to ponder whether or not Eisenhower displayed his Oscar in the White House. My guess is, he didn’t. After you’ve been commander-in-chief of the Allied forces for a world war, the Oscar isn’t as big a deal as it might be for someone else.
If you have not seen this movie and you have an interest in World War II, you should see it. It’s remarkable. It is now available on a 2-disc DVD. The set includes the European war, the Italian campaign and the battles in the Pacific.
There are many good movies about the war, but this set of documentaries has the most remarkable footage. Seeing it without any Hollywood manufactured footage is seeing it for the first time.
This is not a movie about the war. This movie is the war.
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
Here I am, cynical, skeptical and nobody’s flag-waver reminding everyone that this day was important. It was the beginning of the final stage of the most devastating war in remembered history.
