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Not every year can be a milestone year for a given notable historic event. For better or worse, we ascribe extra meaning to years ending in 0 and 5 -- for example, the 80th anniverary of D-Day, which happened on June 6, 1944.
Astute readers may have noticed that the Associated Press has produced many more -- and we have tried to run many more -- stories for this anniversary event than is typical, even for a capstone year such as the 80th.
Frankly, the World War II veterans who remain are older -- perilously so.
In the D-Day anniversary stories in this edition of The Express, the veterans featured are 97 and 98 years old -- and posthumous.
Even a survivor from Normandy who is quoted -- six years old at the time -- is now 86.
Time comes for us all, afterall.
However, time need not come for their stories.
This may well be the final notable anniversary that many of these veterans will see. Perhaps a few will be around for the 85th, in 2029, but few if any are likely to make it to the 90th, in 2034.
It is incredibly important, then, that their stories be heard and preserved now.
While there certainly exists some somber movies and other media which relate the tales of those who lived WWII, many instead portray the war in a patriotic, glorious way.
Many who survived viewed the experience in a different light.
Consider General, later President, Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, who is often celebrated in relation to D-Day in particular.
On April 16, 1953, Eisenhower gave a speech in Washington D.C.
An exerpt is reproduced here:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
History is littered with similar quotes from generals and privates, kings and tyrants, scholars and serfs: Eisenhower was far from alone in his sentiment.
On this anniversary of D-Day, we should listen to our WWII veterans.
Not merely hear. Listen.
We may not see their like again.