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To: The Mayor; All
Notable D-Day Quotes:

"Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"

General George S. Patton - (addressing to his troops before Operation Overlord) - 5th June 1944

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"We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too.
Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit."
(sorry - couldn't resist bolding that!!..:))

General George S. Patton - (addressing to his troops before Operation Overlord) - 5th June 1944

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"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely"

General Dwight Eisenhower - 6th June 1944

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"At the present time, it is still too early to say whether this is a large-scale diversionary attack or the main effort"

German C-in-C West - Morning Report for the 6th June 1944

35 posted on 06/06/2005 1:33:04 PM PDT by LadyX ((( To God be all praise and honor and glory -- )))
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To: All; JohnHuang2; WVNan; mrstank; MEG33; Dubya; TexasCowboy; Brad's Gramma; STARWISE; Lakeside; ...
As you know, I had just turned 10 years old a month before D-Day, and remember it very well.
Long attuned to any and all events of the war on all fronts, we were glued to the console radio (no TV then), getting updates, and to newspapers and magazines, and at the movie theater, Fox Movietone film coverage.

Nearly everyone had a loved one, friend or neighbor involved in the war, and flags with the appropriate stars were hung from many windows all over America, indicating a loved one at war - or one or more who died in action.

My father served in WW I at Kelly Field in Texas, instructing Army Air Corps pilots on airplane engines.
At 42 when Pearl Harbor took us into WW II, he could not enlist, but as an engineer, was based in Atlanta with The War Production Board, responsible over the seven Southeastern States.

Any war production plant with a 'problem,' meant his flying there to "fix it."

At age 7 to 9, many is the time I went to the Miami Airport to meet his plane, home for a weekend, or taking him to fly back to Atlanta.
I vividly remember being tired one day, sitting on the floor and struggling to get on frilly pink socks and my Sunday patent shoes, and Mom hurrying me..:))

The next door neighbor's son was the age of my older sister, and was in the Air Corps -- Bill was sent to England, and had many missions over Europe as a tailgunner in a bomber, trapped in that little bubble with no way to escape enemy fire...just pray and hit the trigger first, and don't miss...

After the war, Bill and Anne married, and he went to work for Eastern Airlines in Miami, eventually promoted to a desk job.

Seven years and two little daughters later, he was stricken with both spinal and bulbar polio, and was treated at Children's Hospital there; after a year, able to be home on a rocking bed they provided. All costs were borne by The March of Dimes, including twice weekly taken by ambulance for treatments.

In November of 1953, however, he worsened and was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami to a ward for seriously ill and totally paralyzed polio patients.

Among several men there, many who had no one or whose loved ones seldom or *never* visited, Bill shared his love of the Lord, and was to many a sustaining force.

A True Hero to the very end, in January 1954, his life was honored by
a full half side of the page editorial in The Miami Herald, dedicated to his life and efforts.

Heroes were the norm then, and I still hold Bill in my memories and heart.

40 posted on 06/06/2005 3:25:32 PM PDT by LadyX ((( To God be all praise and honor and glory -- )))
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