This week we have had the incredibly significant 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. I say incredibly significant, not just because it is 75 years ago yesterday, but the fact that every single year that passes is incredibly significant to remember this event that changed modern history forever.
I have been very fortunate in that I have been to the beaches of Normandy. I have walked the sands that 75 years ago were stained with the last life’s blood of so many young men.
Let’s just take a moment to let that sink in...
It’s been 4 years since I got to visit the Normandy beaches, but the one thing that stuck in my mind, and haunts me every time I think about it is the sheer magnitude of the beaches. The distance from sea to dunes is vast. Now imagine you are in a landing craft and the doors are being dropped, with this huge void between you and any semblance of safety. It’s an absolutely horrific thought.
150,000 British, American and Canadian men stormed the beaches of Normandy on 06th June 1944. There were 4,414 confirmed deaths amongst them. 34% of the young men that woke that day never returned to a peaceful slumber, not that day, not ever.
I guess the thing is we all have the debt to take a moment every year to remember. But why should it be every year? We should wake every day and be thankful that we get to do so, and pretty safe in the knowledge that will do so again tomorrow, and the next day - and the days after that.
We owe it to the 4,414 to live every day. To ensure that as we retire every night we are fully appreciative of the freedom we have and the comfort we find ourselves in to be able to take the time to read these worlds, let alone whatever we find ourselves doing during our waking hours. And none of it in terror. Not like so many that woke on 06th June 1944, the abject fear of the task in hand.
We owe it to them, and we owe it to ourselves to be alive and living our lives.
I’ve been alive as long as I can remember - but how long have I been living?
Happy Damn Friday Peeps! x
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