Homage to the veterans

This particular blog entry is written as an homage to the veterans of D-day, June 6, 1944. Perhaps not even one of them will ever read this entry, but, hopefully, I am wrong.

Dear Veterans of D-day,

These lines of appreciation and gratitude will very likely not reach any of you. But despite slim chances of being read by a soldier who actually saw action on the Normany beaches, June 6, 1944, still I want to express my heartfelt thanks to you who bore the real costs of the battle. I want to salute you, the living, as well as the dead, your fellow GIs who died and never saw their homes again.

I am much too young to have any living memory of the war itself, which means that I cannot begin to grasp the horrors and the carnage that you experienced on that day. But I have from boyhood nurtured a profound interest in WW2, an interest sometimes bordering on a kind of obsession. I have always wondered how it must have been being a young soldier facing so many dangers, living through the days and nights of such a torturous conflict, having to deal with, in so many cases, the sudden and brutal loss of friends and family.

I am aware that many of you do not consider yourself heroes. You were under command, so you only acted upon the orders of your officers. You had a deeply rooted sense of duty, so you only did what you thought was to be expected of you. But observing how that sense of duty has crumbled and vanished among many of my contemporaries, it mystifies me how so few of you broke ranks in sheer panic on D-day, fleeing for safety. You certainly did not want to die. You were young and had a deep desire to survive. But still you advanced on enemy fire unflinchingly.

Generals have been praised in books. And many an incident of bravery where common soldiers were involved have been turned into feature films. In comparison, this blog entry will not amount to much, but still I want to thank you for your service to your country, for your acts of selfless bravery, and for your efforts that eventually secured victory over Nazi tyranny. After the war ended, other people picked up the baton and started the process of getting war-torn Europe back on its feet.

But they, and I, have this debt of gratitude. We owe our freedom to you. Yes, we must not ignore the movers and shakers, civilian and military, who masterminded the operation. But no leader can lead where there are no one willing to be led. You did not shirk responsibility. You did not run away. You witnessed horrible cruelty. You suffered and bled.

It must, to some extent, comfort you to have seen in your senior years that the peace you struggled so hard to win, has been perpetuated by later generations. Most of Europe is democratic now. And even the source of your agony, Germany, has long since left its beliggerent past behind.

Which leaves me with this thought: I am able today to enjoy peace; a peace that would not have happened were it not for the success of Operation Overlord, were it not for the outcome of your struggle, were it not for your sacrifice.

To each and every veteran of D-day: Thank you so very much.

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