Our flag flies every day and night, 365 days a year! I want everyone to know that we are patriots who love our country.
I am old enough to remember D-day. What I did not understand, my parents explained to me.
We felt blessed that the Allies invaded the beaches of Normandy. We knew that Hitler's regime was soon to end and if only we could hold on, liberation was close. The day that the American soldiers walked past our home on the Esplanade of Gmunden, Austria, my mother stood outside the door and cried. Those were tears of joy ..... Her comment was that God must have heard her prayers.
We still did not know where our father and brother were as they had stayed behind in the city, my Dad because of his job and my brother because of school. My mother, 7 months pregnant, my 2-year old sister, and I, were granted asylum in a small mountain village due to the frequent air attacks by the Allies. The days that followed were bitter-sweet ..... no access to food from stores .... they were all closed. Best of all, no air-raids!!! Some days we got word that there would be a supply of groceries coming in by train. During that time, I became the provider for food in our little family. So I took a pillowcase, turned it inside-out, in preparation for the food I was to secure for us. On one occasion, I remember seeing a barrel with sauerkraut. Of course, I filled the pillow case with sauerkraut which became a daily staple for at least a week.
After one week, my dad arrived at our house. He had walked 100 kilometers to get to our village, during which time he was frequently stopped by liberated, former concentration camp inmates, (one of the major concentration camps was located across the lake from our village) former criminals and political offenders, to take whatever items he had taken with him, -his watch, wedding band, a jacket he was wearing, and whatever little items he had on him. Only perseverance, grit and the desire to re-unite with his family, kept him going. That was our kind of liberation. We soon were able to return to our home in the city and even though life was still very difficult, schools that had been shut down for the past four months, resumed for all of us. Little by little, things became more tolerable. A tiny garden in the backyard of our home, literally saved our lives. The vegetables, prepared in every fashion possible, were our daily diet. To this day, I still hate green beans fixed in German style. Through all these trials, I never thought that my life was hard. Being hungry was a daily dilemma, wearing tattered clothing and some of my mother's or brother's shoes with cotton stuffed into the toe section in order to make them fit, never bothered me, but living free from the daily fear of a bomb attack was liberation to me and many others.
Having witnessed the television coverage of the liberation of the Nazi controlled areas of Europe, brought my memories back to that time. I feel so blessed to be a citizen of this great country. I lament that many in the media and its audience only voice their negative opinions about America, and I pray that, short of a disaster, my fellow countrymen will come to their senses and not only thank God daily to be blessed living here, but cease attacking this wonderful land that we call our home. My daily prayers always include America, the country that I feel so blessed to live in.
It was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. On June 6, 1944, more than 150,000 brave young soldiers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in a bold strategy to push the Nazis out of Western Europe and turn the tide of the war for good.
In planning the D-Day attack, Allied military leaders knew that casualties might be staggeringly high, but it was a cost they were willing to pay in order to establish an infantry stronghold in France. Days before the invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was told by a top strategist that paratrooper casualties alone could be as high as 75 percent. Nevertheless, he ordered the attack.
Because of bad weather and fierce German resistance, the D-Day beach landings were chaotic and bloody, with the first waves of landing forces suffering terrible losses, particularly the U.S. troops at Omaha beach and the Canadian divisions at Juno beach. But thanks to raw perseverance and grit, the Allies overcame those grave initial setbacks and took all five Normandy beaches by nightfall on June 6.
The first Allied cemetery in Europe was dedicated just two days after the D-Day invasion on June 8, 1944. And since that day, military officials and memorial organizations have attempted to come up with a definitive count of Allied D-Day deaths in order to properly honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the free world.
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation is one of those organizations. At its memorial site in Bedford, Virginia, there are 4,414 names enshrined in bronze plaques representing every Allied soldier, sailor, airman and coast guardsman who died on D-Day. That figure was the result of years of exhaustive research by librarian and genealogist Carol Tuckwiller on behalf of the Foundation, and remains the most accurate count of Allied fatalities within the 24-hour period known as D-Day.
John Long, director of education at the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, says that when the memorial was first being planned in the late 1990s, there were wildly different estimates for Allied D-Day fatalities ranging from 5,000 to 12,000. German casualties on D-Day, meanwhile, have been estimated to be between 4,000 and 9,000 killed, wounded or missing. The Allies also captured some 200,000 German prisoners of war.
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