A toast to the brave men who assaulted the beaches at Normandy 67 years ago today.
Hear hear.
I’ll raise my glass to that.
+1
The “greatest generation” for sure!
Those years produced some hard-working people, my Dad one of them. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
My wife and I visited the WWII Museum in New Orleans Saturday. They were pretty busy with lots of old men in uniforms and equipment on display, even outside.
(Off topic, but we had lunch in the cafe there, which is a John Besh restaurant. Everything was themed to WWII, down to the soup service. They brought the soup from the kitchen in what looked like an old soup can, then poured it into your bowl at the table. The kids’ box lunches were in replicas of 40’s era lunch boxes - they even had little toy army men inside. Volunteers were wondering around in WWII uniforms with fake rifles and canteens.
Food was excellent. Best fried oysters I have ever had.)
Check out the museum outside Bastogne some time. They still have a Sherman tank in McAuliffe Square in downtown Bastogne too. Oh yeah, there’s some breweries near by too.
Raising a glass to the fallen and the survivors. That’s when we fought wars to win and we did.
My grandfather served and was there at that time.
Hats off to those brave souls.
I’ll raise a pint!
Those guys that did that had to be some of the bravest men that ever lived. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to do that. The world is a much better place because of their service and sacrifice!
Here’s to! My recently passed grandfather served during WWII. He was a guard on a ship that delivered one of the atomic bombs for testing at the Bikini Atoll. We have the pictures he took of the mushroom cloud from the ship. Amazing stuff.
[raises figurative glass to be followed by literal, later in the evening]
One of my grandfathers was a Major in the military police, and received the Bronze Star for his part getting the Queen (Wilhelmina) of the Netherlands out of country. However, I was told this ages ago by relatives and have only very faint details…I could have this wrong. As I read the history she evacuated continental Europe long before the US was involved, so maybe this had to do with her 1945 trip to Allied-occupied territories. My other grandfather was a waist gunner on a B-17, served in North Africa and Italy, if not more places. I remember him telling me of the first time he saw a Messerschmitt ME-262 jet interceptor. Quiet, mild-mannered, gentle man that raised his family well; he passed on last year. What’s so striking is that having this kind of heroism in one’s family tree is not rare, almost everyone has relatives of that era that served in the war in some capacity. Quite a universal conflict that was.
My FIL was one of the guys who hit the beach at Normandy. He doesn’t talk much about it, but some of his stories are almost beyond belief. At the end of the war, he ended up guarding Weihenstephan, where he developed a taste for good beer!
Gordan, my wife’s dad was in the 17th Airborne, which came up with Patton’s 3rd Army from the South. He went to McCuliffe’s headquarters (now on a Belgian army base on the edge of town) to get orders on Jan. 3rd. They then went north, and faced Panzer divisions that Hitler had ordered in. Brave guys, those paratroopers with carbines and bazookas taking on Panzers.
In Houffalize we stayed at a small hotel when the wife and I went to A’chouffe. There is a PKW V Panther in one of the squares there. At the hotel they had a picture of it upside down in the river, where it was blown off the bridge as the German retreat went on. They said it was the only German tank in Belgium. Picture on this page a little down on the left.
That would be a very cool photo to see (hint, hint) 
My Uncle Larry died when the USS Juneau CL-52 was sunk at Guadalcanal
My Dad served aboard the USS Douglas A. Monroe DE-422 in WW II. He is a plank owner. He is 85 and as feisty as ever. We went to a Tin Can Sailors’ Association gathering aboard the USS Missouri BB-63 in Pearl Harbor in 2005, commemorating the 60th Anniversay of the Japanese surrender. Everybody treated him with such respect, like he was royalty. The Commander of the Pacific Fleet came up to him, shook his had and thanked him for his service. My dad was blown away by that. He said, “I was just a kid doing my job… It wasn’t anything fancy, we just did what we had to do to stay alive”
I don’t think I could have ever been prouder of my dad.
No D-Day vets, My Uncle flew B17’s. The one story I remember was after the war. He had loaded, make that overloaded his plane (he was the flight engineer, it was HIS plane) with POWs from one of the death camps They were so moved by the condition of the men they had to overload. They were so loaded they couldn’t lift off the ground on take-off. They ended up raising the landing gear at the end of the runway so it wouldn’t hit anything before the end of the runway.
My Grandfather was an airplane mechanic in England during the war, and helped many planes for the D-Day invasion get off the ground. He knew many pilots and crewmen who never came home. His brothers, one a Marine, was killed in Guam, and the other a sailor, was killed at Midway.
Freedom has a flavor, that for those who have fought and served to protect it, the protected will never taste…
Here, here!
My grandfather enlisted in the mid-thirties and was a wireless radio (Morse code) operator aboard Hudsons (sub-hunting aircraft) for a good portion of the war. One story that will always stick with me was when he was stationed in near Halifax and got a call from one of his men in the middle of the night - when he went to investigate, there was a U-boat in the harbor! They had chains across the harbor preventing them from getting too close, but felt he needed to investigate anyway - he talked a fisherman into taking him out into the harbor in his dory. The whole time the U-boat had its spot light trained on them so my grandfather pretended to play out the fisherman’s nets and got their assess back to shore.
I think I’ll go pour myself another in honor of those that landed on Juno Beach and Operation Neptune.
My pop’s a Pacific Vet but I’m drinking wine today.
My second cousin on my dad’s side was a fighter pilot doing escort runs into Germany. He had originally signed up with the AAC but flunked ground school. Got himself transferred to the RCAF (I have his uniform in a closet somewhere) where he passed with flying colors (har har). The AAC must have felt pretty sorry about their decision and bought him back from the RCAF for something like $1,000. We’ve got his AAC flight suit at my dad’s house along with his service pistol, 1911A1 Colt .45. That’s a hell of a gun. Anyway.
Puna, another of my relatives on my mother’s side was on the Arizona when she went down. Also related, one of my first projects as a developer was buliding/launching the Pearl Harbor Survivors’ Project. Check it out when you get a chance, there’s some cool stuff. Also my great uncle on my mom’s side was in the Pacific on a battleship for most of the war there, I don’t know which ship though.
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More relevant to this thread, I’ll try to find and post my pics from my two trips to the beaches at Normandy. When we went there with my dad in October we stayed the night near St Mere Eglise, the place where Red Buttons got stuck on the church steeple. Our chambres d’hôtes was partially destroyed by German tank fire when the airborne was trying to take the town. It was also across a bridge from where something like 100 paratroopers drowned to death in the swamps created when the Germans flooded the land surrounding the area. Again I’ll try to post pics of that.
Edit: found a few photos but not all, unfortunately. You can check out the Veteran’s Day post from last year for st mere eglise and others: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=4542.msg52411#msg52411