[Milsurplus] D-Day

[Bruce MacMillan]

Even up here in Canuckistan we've heard of Sgt York (maybe it had to do 
with the movie).

I had the opportunity to do a two week tour last fall of WW1 & WW2 
Commonwealth war graves, memorials and battlefields in France & Belgium. 
What I noticed was the amount of school kids that were bussed in on 
tours not only from France but England as well. It seems to be a part of 
their studies because they numbered in the hundreds. They visited not 
only their own country's sites but others like Vimy Ridge & Thiepval. 
Focus seemed to be WW1 more than WW2.

You're right Mike in that the people there remember the price paid more 
so than at home. Just google Menin Gate Ceremony or the battle of the 
Somme where Britain suffered 60,000 casualties in the FIRST day.

Perhaps it was so horrific the vets themselves wanted to forget.

Bruce   ve7mt

On 6/6/2011 11:59 AM, Mike Morrow wrote:
> For example, who remembers the more than 26,000 US battlefield *deaths*
> and other casualties numbering 100,000 from the six-week WWI Meuse-Argonne
> campaign (most of which occurred in a 20-day period)?  It is THE campaign
> most costly in life in ALL of US history.  Who has ever even heard of
> Meuse-Argonne?  Don't feel bad if you haven't.  It was forgotten by the
> 1930s even in the military academies...no movies were being made around it.
> Only the French keep it in their memory at the associated military cemeteries.
> Unlike WWII US military cemeteries in France, WWI US cemeteries in France get
> very few visits by Americans.  Those forgotten boys from WWI had folks who
> loved them and lives that had meaning just as much as those from WWII.
>
>
> Mike / KK5F
>