pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- D-DAY D-DAY Today is June 6th. Aside from some assinine marketing ploy of a creepy movie, that date used to have far more significance. One, it was usually the last day of school, but moreso, it was a day that celebrated the turning fortunes of WWII and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. It was called "D-Day". During the war, some 54,780,000 people were killed. Of those, 38,540,000 were civilians. In the initial first days of the war, the U.S. suffered substantial casualties in the 3,000 to 4,000 person range. It lost virtually it's entire Pacific fleet. During the first two years of the war, we encountered setback after setback. By the end of those two years, we had experienced almost 130,000 casualties without a victory. On D-Day, on that FIRST day, June 6, 1944, the U.S. alone experienced 10,000 casualties. And what isn't well known is that Britain sustained more casualties than the U.S. in the entire war (mainly because they were in it longer). Many of these GI's were away from home for anywhere from 2 to 4 years during the war. None of them complained. They had a job to do. Most of our WWII veterans are now in their 80's. They and their stories are dying out. D-Day, that daring idea put together by the allies and overseen by then-General Eisenhower (he went on to be President) is no longer something taught with pride in our schools. It was Freedom's finest hour and it's slowly becoming a forgotten statistic. Now, I just have to wonder the entire war would be portrayed if we sent today's journalists back in time and they started to give us daily body counts. Would we have won the war or would we have pulled out mid-way? I don't know if the people of that era would have tolerated a "defeatist press" like we have now, finding every excuse to make the military look bad - for ratings. If you compare the numbers, though, it kinda makes Iraq look like a duck shoot. 5:10 p.m. - 2006-06-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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