Posted on 06/04/2019 5:50:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
In my capacity as a certified, government-inspected old coot, I have taken particular interest in the bubbling excitement over the 75th anniversary of D-Day. It takes me back -- not to D-Day itself, when I was in knee pants, but to the 18th anniversary thereof in 1962. Darryl Zanuck's "The Longest Day" brought to stirring cinematic life on that occasion Cornelius Ryan's D-Day book of the same title.
I still find great satisfaction in Zanuck's film, but here's what I remember about 1962. We -- well, a lot of us -- who went to see it wore coat and tie or heels. It seemed the thing to do. As the house lights went down, the sound system roused us with "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- the real one, with trumpets and drums and no swaying hyper-inflected nightclub singers. We in the house rose as one, with hands over hearts. Many sang. It was a big deal, in keeping with the occasion celebrated and the sacrifice required to liberate Europe from evil.
By coincidence, the other day, I learned from The New York Times the present locus of evil in the world. Times columnist Maureen Dowd identified the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, as the "perfect villain" of the Mueller report saga. More than a mere villain, it seems: "devious-devising," "crooked-counseling" and, at the end of the day, "diabolical."
I stared at that last one. I continue to stare. Barr, by Dowd's account, is diabolical, as if glowering before a Salem tribunal. He revealed his horns, it appears, in his hourlong CBS interview with Jan Crawford last week. We were hungering -- weren't we? -- for an account of Donald Trump's knavery. What did we get? Barr's insistence that evidence didn't support unconstitutional behavior on the president's point. Grrrrrr. Snarl.
To this we have come in our national life since 1962. Honest differences of viewpoint are inherently dishonest: as viewed from at least one side. The rope -- get the rope! As Barr commented to Crawford: "We live in a hyper-partisan age, where people no longer really pay attention to the substance of what's said but as to who says it and what side they're on and what its political ramifications are." "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- who'd leap to his feet for it now?
Possibly more Americans than we would suppose. What I am inclined to call D-Day nostalgia has its heartening side. And why not? There was no fun in Operation Overlord. You were likely to get your head blown off. Many did. But many more kept coming and fighting in the face of it all. And they won! They won! Stephen Ambrose, in his own D-Day book, quotes Sgt. John Ellery of the 16th Regiment, 1st Division, after Omaha Beach: "The first night in France I spent in a ditch beside a hedgerow ... But I felt elated ... I was ten feet tall ... I had made it off the beach and reached the high ground ... I had walked in the company of very brave men."
It was once upon a time more natural -- say, in 1962 -- to applaud courage and sacrifice than, culturally speaking, it soon became. Many of us certified old coots are glad we were around then. We jumped to our feet for "The Star-Spangled Banner." America was beautiful. Ditto, freedom. Ditto, the idea of surrendering human existence for the well-being of others. The beauty was paradoxical: Death turned into life, suffering into fulfillment, battlefield noise into the quiet of peace. Something holy was in it -- something the very reverse of satanic.
Which is perhaps why D-Day nostalgia -- evidenced by all the excitement of the last reunion of the survivors -- finds, it would seem, a secure place among the victims of the fear and explosive emotions of the past half-century when it became necessary, seemingly, to hate and despise fellow Americans, to detect on their garments the fumes of sulfur.
Here's to the boys of Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach and the whole panoply of destruction that lives in an admiration that gives hope of eventual recovery from the wasting disease of hatred.
Oh, say, we can see -- never mind the barriers so many work to place in our sightlines.
Well said!
It bothers me so much when the Left scoffs at Trump and claims “We were never great”.
We were. And we will be great again.
I somehow can’t believe the release of the Longest Day was 1962.
I was in college in 1962. I do not remember going to see it. As students, we were movie fans because a movie was a quiet time away from the books and labs.
I am a great fan of the movie and I suppose can quite some lines before uttered.
What happened?
Kennedy’s 1965 immigration bill.
The Uniparty.
God out of the schools, Marxists in.
The pill, abortion. Hookup culture, no fault divorce,
children’s destructive services.
All designed to destroy the family.
I hadn't seen "The Longest Day" before I went to Normandy and worked the 45th Anniversary of D-Day while assigned to USEUCOM. Upon completion of that week, I drove over to Caen and went to the D-Day Museum there, while watching the D-Day documentary in the theater, I noticed how one of the Rangers scaling the cliffs bore a striking resemblance to a young Robert Wagner. Only after seeing the movie did I realize they'd interspersed "The Longest Day" footage with actual film.
Except for World war 2, all American wars have had serious protest movements. The reason WW2 didn’t, was because National Socialist Adolf Hitler began a Socialist civil war against World Socialist Stalin. Democrats and other leftists did everything to save their hero nation the ussr.
For reasons I can't even explain to myself, that saddens me.
Never saw the movie until it hit TV, but I did read the book before the film was released. I was amazed to find (according to the book) just how close we had came to failure that day.
Exactly.. it was very much in doubt, so much so that Gen. Eisenhower drafted a letter to the nation accepting responsibility for its failure. Fortunately, he never had to deliver it.
Incidentally, the Battle of Midway began June 4, 1942.
77 years ago today.
ICBW, but I believe I read that message a couple of years ago when it was made public.
My dad dropped me and two of my buddies off to see the film when it was first released. We were in the third grade and it was the first time I had ever been to a movie without my parents. We were admonished to “behave”. My dad was in the Screaming Eagles in the late 40s, though so I imagine he thought it would be a good thing for young boys to see. I remember afterwards thinking that someday I would have to be a soldier and take the same risks. Boy, did I get lucky. My “Lottery Number” in my 18th year was 356. I was Commisioned in Med School. I went to Jump School to show my dad I was tough as he was. My orders as Battalion Surgeoon for the Rangers that Jumped into Grenada were superseded by another assignment. My orders to Panama for Just Cause got me there three weeks after it was over. I never got orders for Kuwait “because I was already deployed”. When I returned to CONUS I replaced guys going to Somalia. When I ETS’d I got orders for Haiti which I promptly threw in the trash. When they started talking about sending civilian employees to Afghanistan I figured at my age it was time to hit the civilian sector. I figure I am about the luckiest soldier ever.
Not many young people today would stand and salute the flag of a country they were taught has brought untold evil in the world, including slavery, racism, white supremacy, various phobias, misogyny, nuclear weapons, environmental catastrophe, and genocide of native peoples. This is what they are taught, and their response - lack of respect for the Star Spangled Banner - should not be so surprising...
The greatest generation that saved the world from Nazism has been displaced by the Generation y and z who think they are the greatest generation after accomplishing ????????
Piper Bill Miller played himself in the film
Bill Millen sorry fat fingers
The filming on the raid at Ouistreham was one of the most incredible scenes ever filmed, you could almost swear they used drones.
“I figure I am about the luckiest soldier ever”
Nope. My dad. 1942-1945 and never fired his weapon. Did a tour in North Africa and a tour in the Pacific. His war flashbacks involved the payroll being late.
The pill, abortion. Hookup culture, no fault divorce, children’s destructive services. All designed to destroy the family.
Feminists responsible for the majority of your list.
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