Posted on 06/06/2014 5:52:04 PM PDT by servo1969
This past weekend British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss accompanied by numerous volunteers, took to the beaches of Normandy with rakes and stencils in hand to etch 9,000 silhouettes representing fallen people into the sand. Titled The Fallen 9000, the piece is meant as a stark visual reminder of the civilians, Germans and allied forces who died during the D-Day beach landings at Arromanches on June 6th, 1944 during WWII. The original team consisted of 60 volunteers, but as word spread nearly 500 additional local residents arrived to help with the temporary installation that lasted only a few hours before being washed away by the tide. (via Lustik)
I suppose they were trying to pay tribute or something. It is as 2 dimensional and shallow as Obama’s brain.
The blood that was shed and the young men’s lives lost cannot be fathomed. This representation is yet again an artsy way to be what sympathetic. Solemnity requires honor to be silent. This presentation is, to me, just slightly above obscene
Yes. I was just thinking that the best thing about this project is that the next tide will wash it away.
They certainly meant well. But. . . .
And, "...stark visual reminder of the civilians, Germans and allied forces..." -- pffft, why the Germans? they were why our soldiers & the civilians died! Someone didn't think that one through.
What are the large concrete artifacts, are they remains of MULBERRY?
It’s about ‘Peace Day’ or something so I guess it’s really meant as a protest against war.
At least there is some remembrance in that presentation, whether it be artsy or solemn. I graduated HS in Ottawa, Canada in 1980. At that time, several of my similarly aged cousins from a small town HS outside of Ottawa. None could identify what June 4, 1944 represented, nor could they tell me what D-Day was. They could not even identify the significance of, ‘the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month’ in 1918! They are not stupid people, only the result of a socialist education system.
See “Hallowed Grounds” on PBS. This is an education on the price of liberty.
http://www.pbs.org/program/hallowed-grounds/
I’ll give them credit for trying to honor these men but it falls short of achieving that. Then again, what doesn’t?
I am sure it was a typing error. I am sure you meant June 6,1944.
Part of one man’s account:
(SNIP)
Dodging sniper fire, Baumgarten made for the rally point — the road leading to Vierville-sur-Mer.
“At 1 p.m., I joined up with 11 wounded guys,” he said. “I didn’t know them, but one was a Ranger because he had that insignia on the back of his helmet.”
“So 12 of us, the walking wounded, went up the wall, past the trenches and moved west,” he said. “We took on two German strong points.
“One was a farmhouse with a wall around it.”
With rifle fire and hand grenades, they took the farmhouse. The hodgepodge group also took out a machine gun position manned by four Germans about 4:30 p.m.
At 5 p.m., Baumgarten was wounded again, shot in the foot.
On the road, Baumgarten and his now six remaining comrades decided to take shelter for the night and made for a ditch when they were attacked by a machine gun. Baumgarten was hit in the face again.
“I landed on top of the Ranger when I got across the road,” he said. “All of them were fatally wounded, they stayed alive for a while and I heard, ‘Help me Jesus,’ and all that stuff.”
At 12:30 a.m. on June 7, Baumgarten gave himself his last shot of morphine. Though the Germans behind the machine gun came later looking for cigarettes, he was passed over.
“I felt a hand on my shirt and heard someone say, ‘You’ll by OK, Yankee.’”
Baumgarten was taken by ambulance and put on board a hospital ship hours later, one of only two survivors from his boat.(END SNIP)
Not only that but it also memorializes the Nazi defenders - all part of the 9,000.
My father-in-law, Oskar Py (I know, not a German surname), was a German soldier in WWII. He was a small cog in the vast machinery of the Eastern Front. Oskar was lucky, he was taken prisoner by the Russians, and spent over three years as their "guest." Oskar was a good man. He later raised two good daughters. It was my privilege marry one of them, and to share 43 years of life with her. I lost her in August of 2011.
Germany produced honorable men who were then our enemies. Among the best known, or perhaps just the highest ranking, was Erwin Rommel, but, there were many others. (Rommel was forced to commit suicide as a result of his participation in the attempt to assassinate Hitler.)
Interesting post, and I’m sorry for your loss.
My post addressed this odd remembrance of those who rained death down on our troops on a day when we honor and remember our dead. It is like memorializing those who brought down the twin towers (tho that was tried, too).
I understand your point, and am not finding fault with your words. I almost added in my first post that during the near four years I lived in Germany I also ran into a few of the nastiest examples of mankind I’ve ever met. Listening to people when they don’t think the listener understands their language can be an eyeopening experience.
I hope we never have the necessity for another “Normandy.”
Yes. My Fat fingers and lack of sleep over night!
The graves of Canada's war dead are tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. This is an intergovernmental agency made up of representatives of UK, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa. Annually, they repair gravestones and also replace approximately 7,000 gravestones that cannot be repaired. Even yet, they bury several mostly WWI vets whose bodies are discovered each year.
Here is a video of someone's visit to Bény-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, where over 2,000 Canadians killed in Normandy are buried, including those who surrendered and were murdered by Kurt Meyer's 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend.
If they wanted to honor or remember the fallen on those beaches, what they should have done is rebroadcast Ronald Reagan’s speech from the 40th anniversary.
“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men of the cliffs”
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