On 5 May 1945, Dad returned to the US Army. He had been a POW for 26 months.
Toward the last, they ate potato peeling soup. He and his best friend were so underweight that they had to buy clothing in the boys department. They both sustained severe lower back injuries as a result of being struck with rifle butts by the German guards.
He died at age 43 and his friend at age 48.
But on 5 May 1945, they were survivors of a lost battle in Tunisia and of the German POW work camps. They had known others who were not.
Interesting article with an unusually sharpened point: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vladimir-putin-victory-day-not-my-grandmother
“My grandmother, who had never liked taking orders from the Kremlin, died one month before Moscow convened its celebration of the seventieth anniversary of victory in what Russia calls The Great Patriotic War, which in Russian historiography began in June 1941, when Germany broke its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which had been its ally for the first two years of World War II.”
It is just and reasonable to take into account that the Soviet Union suffered millions of deaths in the road to VE day, indeed vastly more than the U.S. did. On the other hand they entered the war in Europe years after Britain and only entered the war in Asia in the very last months and then only to grab some islands from Japan.
History is rarely as simple as we would make it. Which makes ‘Never Forget’ a two or three edged sword.
I was in London on the Sunday closest to June 6th in the early 80’s. I came a cross a very modest but worthy memorial parade at a WW II memorial.
On 5 May 1945, Dad returned to the US Army. He had been a POW for 26 months.
Toward the last, they ate potato peeling soup. He and his best friend were so underweight that they had to buy clothing in the boys department. They both sustained severe lower back injuries as a result of being struck with rifle butts by the German guards.
He died at age 43 and his friend at age 48.
But on 5 May 1945, they were survivors of a lost battle in Tunisia and of the German POW work camps. They had known others who were not.
Interesting article with an unusually sharpened point:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vladimir-putin-victory-day-not-my-grandmother
“My grandmother, who had never liked taking orders from the Kremlin, died one month before Moscow convened its celebration of the seventieth anniversary of victory in what Russia calls The Great Patriotic War, which in Russian historiography began in June 1941, when Germany broke its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which had been its ally for the first two years of World War II.”
It is just and reasonable to take into account that the Soviet Union suffered millions of deaths in the road to VE day, indeed vastly more than the U.S. did. On the other hand they entered the war in Europe years after Britain and only entered the war in Asia in the very last months and then only to grab some islands from Japan.
History is rarely as simple as we would make it. Which makes ‘Never Forget’ a two or three edged sword.