Obxgirl, I don't know what more I could have said to make it clear I wasn't trying to stir things up. Although having been around as loong as I have, I guess I should have realised it was inevitable.

Personally, I think that the biggest part of travel is learning about different cultures. And this is where I interface more than anywhere else with Americans.

I think artstuff and cigalechanta have answered the question; and I think them for it.

The BBC showed a special called just "D-day" last night. It was an amazing documentary with acted recreations interspersed with interviews with veterans from the US, the UK and Germany.

The concept of a war where we put up with half a million dead in three months is utterly mind blowing. Thank God.

Sheila,

CBC in Canada has had shows about D-Day on all week. They were all heart-wrenchingly sad, fascinating, amazing, mind-boggling... but I have to say the celebration in Arromanches was impressive with the pictures shown on the big screens, Patricia Kaas' singing, the dancers/singers finishing their performance by rushing up to the front-row veterans and handing them their bouquets, and Beethoven's 9th playing while they showed the people of Normandy lining up on the beach. I hear veterans sometimes say that nobody cares anymore but we do. I do.

Hi,
I have been to Normandy beaches several times and since my last visit I now fear that the area is evolving from a huge memorial to the brave people from many different nations who gave their lives for this cause as it so rightly should be to a huge money spinning exercise by people who are perhaps too young to have specific direct involvement but now see it as an opportunity not only to make enough money to maintain things but to make a financial killing too.
This disapoints me. The Area of Normandy is really quite huge but all the main line UK TV journalists and news presenters were all at Aromanches.
This place is difficult to get into normally it must be a nightmare this week.
So my message to the French people who do a wonderful job maintaining the war sites, is this please don't turn it into Blackpool or Coney Island.
Give it the respect it deserves as you do so well with the war graves
Muck

Sheila, I know you were not trying to stir things up by posting on this important, and very moving subject. I'm glad you did. The D-Day anniversary is just too huge to ignore.

I agree it is huge and it has not been ignored but with all the recent very hypocritical posts about keeping the topic to travel and apolitical (and then the very same people are blabbering on and on about Reagan) it is understandable why some folks might be reluctant to post about "other topics."

sheila, I don't think you were trying stir anything up. To the contrary, your's is the sane voice.

My family includes WWII veterans, US and British. For us, days of remembrance are noted with quiet ceremony and reflection.

>The concept of a war where we put up with half a million dead in three months is utterly mind blowing. Thank God.<

I couldn't agree with you more.

I haven't bothered to read all the posts in this thread but--last week we had more coverage of our Memorial Day than I can ever remember. And much of it had to do with D-Day. An excellent presentation on NPR called Lest We Forget done by the oral living history project of WWII, narrated in excellent fashion by Max Cleland, a triple amputee ex-congressman. There was much other coverage and last night there was also. Why would the original poster ASSUME that no one "remembered" just because it wasn't posted on this travel board.