The arrangements for the 65th anniversary of D-Day have received a fair amount of unfavourable press comment about the Queen not being invited.
These comments are deserved. The British, Canadians, Poles and Norwegians certainly pulled their weight on 6 June 1944. In the American sector (Utah and Omaha beaches) total US forces numbered 73,000. In the British and Canadian sectors (Gold, Juno and Sword beaches) the numbers totalled 83,115, of whom 61,715 were British. Of the personnel assigned to the huge naval operation on D-Day, 'Operation Neptune', 52,889 were American, 112,824 were British, with another 4,988 from other Allied countries. Britain's contribution to the six long years of World War II was also none too shabby. Winston Churchill, in preparing the second volume of The Second World War for publication in 1949, had a table prepared "to make plain the scale and force of the contribution which Great Britain and her Empire, whom danger only united more tensely, made to what eventually became the Common Cause of so many States and nations." The detailed account of this prodigious contribution, on land, on the sea and in the air, is on pages 4 - 8 in the Cassell edition. As far as 6 June 2009 is concerned, my wife and I will be welcoming Angelos T. Chatas at a special ceremony on a small street named after him at Utah Beach. Chatas was a frogman with the USNR. He was one of the first Americans to reach French soil, landing at Utah Beach at 5 a.m. the morning of June 6th. He is 88 years old. Amazingly, he has received his doctor's approval to make the long journey from Dallas. Meanwhile President Obama will be at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer. He may possibly have time to pay his respects to the gravestones of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., TR's eldest son, and Quentin Roosevelt, TR's youngest son, which stand side by side. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt died on 12 July 1944, five weeks after landing at Utah Beach. Quentin died on 14 July 1918 when his plane was shot down over enemy lines. Jim Lancaster --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ChurchillChat?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
