REMEMBERING D-DAY: WAS IT ALL IN VAIN?

By Bill Muehlenberg - Posted at Culture Watch:

Can the West any longer defend itself?

Eighty years ago (on June 6), young men (some just teenagers) hit the beaches of Normandy to stop the Nazi menace. Brits, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Kiwis as well as youthful soldiers from places like France, Holland, Norway, and Poland were all involved in seeking to defeat Hitler and liberate Europe.

What Churchill said in a wartime speech delivered to the House of Commons four years earlier certainly applies to that notable day of eight decades ago: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” There is plenty that can be said about what had transpired on that fateful day. Let me share just one quote looking at some aspects of it:

Planners had divided the landing zone into five separate beaches. The Americans landed at Utah and Omaha beaches. The British and Canadians landed at Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches. The fiercest fighting was on Omaha Beach where the enemy was positioned on steep cliffs that commanded the long, flat shoreline. Troops leapt from their landing boats and were pinned down for hours by murderous machine-gun fire that turned the beach into a vast killing field. “If you (stayed) there you were going to die,” Lieutenant Colonel Bill Friedman said. “We just had to . . . try to get to the bottom of the cliffs on which the Germans had mounted their defenses.” By midday, the Americans had surmounted the cliffs and taken Omaha Beach at a heavy cost: over 2,400 killed, wounded, or missing out of the total of approximately 34,000 who came ashore that day, a loss rate of more than 7 percent. By nightfall, about 160,000 Allied troops were ashore with nearly a million more men on the way that summer. 

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/d-day-allies-invade-europe

While the Allied forces did such an incredible job, showing so much bravery, courage and self-sacrifice, the question arises whether such a thing could be repeated today. Sadly, not only is there a strong anti-western sentiment among many living in the West today, but the notions of patriotism, duty, love of country, and a willingness to protect it are all fading fast.

Read more here.