D-Day

The German Chancellor mentioned it when he was meeting with Trump in the White House yesterday. Trump's repy: "That didn't work out too well for you, did it." with a smirk/half chuckle.

The man is disgusting.
 
ToSlow said:
Funny how this forum never mentioned it

Oh well

In the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, American and Allied forces stormed a 50-mile stretch of beach in Normandy, France, winning a crucial victory that turned the tide of World War II and changed the course of history.1
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Kudos for remembering. Three uncles went over but only two came back.
 
I have a great uncle somewhere in a field in Belgium. I suspect almost every family that’s been Canadian for one hundred plus yrs can trace back to a relative that served in one or more of the great wars and lesser events .


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I was at the 70th Anniversary of D Day on a tour of Normandy organized by Canadian author Ted Barris. Got to meet Steven Harper at the Canadian cemetery. Also got to go in the house you see in this clip when the ramp drops on the landing craft, the current owners open it to the public every June 6. Ted is very well connected and took us to a retired dentist’s farm. This guy has one of the biggest private military collections in Europe in an outbuilding on his property. Absolutely mind blowing the equipment this guy has been collecting over the years . A crashed Typhoon fighter, Bren gun carrier, the amphibious “Duck” The King Of England used to land on the beach on day 6 I think as well as hundreds of German, American, Canadian and British arms. One thing that struck me was how organized and dug in the Germans were, they weren’t planning on going anywhere without a fight. Most of the fortifications are still there perfectly intact, it would cost a fortune to break up all that concrete and get rid of it, many have been converted to wine cellars. We were on a street corner one day and Ted was describing where a skirmish had taken place between the French Resistance ( my favourite oxymoron) and some Germans. He said that the French were behind this house we were standing in front of and the Germans were across the the street. As he’s describing this, an old French woman leans out her window and says in French, “ Your wrong, the Germans were over there” and points down the street. Someone with us that spoke French asked how she knew and the woman replied “I saw them”. There was also an older couple with us on the tour. The husbands name was Jim Jenkins, he landed on Juno beach on the second day and spent the rest of the war heading to Germany on a half track with some kind of howitzer on the back. He told me that the first thing they did when they pulled into a village or town was to take out the church bell tower, that’s where the German snipers and observers liked to hide. He was 92 years old and started a chain of small hardware stores , Bannister and Jenkin’s Hardware, in Toronto when he got back.
 
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Speaking of D-Day, does anyone recognize this old 'Dak?

1749419949367.png

For anyone interested, if you're even remotely into aviation and have some time to spend watching the YouTube series, this was an epic undertaking, rescuing an abandoned D-Day veteran DC3 that was in Quebec and making her airworthy again to fly on the anniversary of D-Day a few years ago. You get invested in the videos quick and it's pretty darned magical.

I was lucky enough to have been there to watch that first flight.

www.youtube.com

Plane Savers Season 1

In Season1 of Plane Savers, we are racing against the clock to get a WW2 veteran DC-3 ready to fly on the 75th anniversary of D-day! (This DC-3 dropped parat...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
I think there’s one of those that flies out of the Hamilton Airport, I’ve seen it over my house in Brooklin. I think it may land at the Oshawa Airport occasionally.
 
If anyone hasn’t been and is thinking of making it into a trip then that part of France is really very nice indeed. The food is great, tons of history (Joan of Ark etc etc). You can see the Bayeux Tapestry nearby to the landing beaches.

The cemeteries are very sobering just for the sheer size of them.
 
JC99 said:
If anyone hasn’t been and is thinking of making it into a trip then that part of France is really very nice indeed. The food is great, tons of history (Joan of Ark etc etc). You can see the Bayeux Tapestry nearby to the landing beaches.

The cemeteries are very sobering just for the sheer size of them.
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Absolutely, the countryside in Normandy is beautiful. They know how to eat there, cream on everything. Not like the cream here, it’s very sweet, they must feed their cows chocolate. Language can be a problem there though. Most people anywhere in Europe speak English but not so in France, I think it’s a pride thing, they just don’t. Despite popular belief I did not find Parisiennes to be as rude as I’ve been led to believe.
 
Bobo said:
Absolutely, the countryside in Normandy is beautiful. They know how to eat there, cream on everything. Not like the cream here, it’s very sweet, they must feed their cows chocolate. Language can be a problem there though. Most people anywhere in Europe speak English but not so in France, I think it’s a pride thing, they just don’t. Despite popular belief I did not find Parisiennes to be as rude as I’ve been led to believe.
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Chantilly cream, and you can visit the chateau of Chantilly too!

Normandy cider is famous and delicious.

It’s not that far from Normandy to the Champagne towns of Epernay and Reims to try the worlds best champagnes too.
 
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JC[emoji[emoji6][emoji6]][emoji[emoji6][emoji6]] said:
If anyone hasn’t been and is thinking of making it into a trip then that part of France is really very nice indeed. The food is great, tons of history (Joan of Ark etc etc). You can see the Bayeux Tapestry nearby to the landing beaches.

The cemeteries are very sobering just for the sheer size of them.
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We went in two thousand and nine. Rouen, Bayeux, Calais, Dieppe, Juno Beach, Strasbourg (my ancestors come from Alsace-Lorraine) and Paris.

Wonderful trip.
 
robertv19 said:
We went in two thousand and nine. Rouen, Bayeux, Calais, Dieppe, Juno Beach, Strasbourg (my ancestors come from Alsace-Lorraine) and Paris.

Wonderful trip.
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Alsace is amazing too. We visited Natzwiller Stuthoff concentration camp up in the Vosges mountains on one trip.
 
JC99 said:
Alsace is amazing too. We visited Natzwiller Stuthoff concentration camp up in the Vosges mountains on one trip.
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When I was a kid in 1972 I did a tour of Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, absolutely horrific. Fast forward a couple of decades and I had been working for a very successful Hungarian Jewish man for over 25 years . I use to work at his house quite often. We would occasionally chat, I remember telling him my family was from Austria. He told me that he had spent some time in Austria, near Vienna at the end of the war and what a beautiful place it was. He made it sound like he was sitting at a cafe eating pastry and drinking coffee there. Found out very recently that he had spent a good part of the war at Mauthausen and was liberated by the allies there. Very nice man, he came to Canada with a suitcase and today he owns a huge business and easily hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial real estate in Toronto, couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. He’s still alive today in his 90’s.
 
Bobo said:
the French Resistance ( my favourite oxymoron)
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Calling that an oxymoron is an oxymoron. The French Resistance was substantial. It included a number of very agro women like
Simone Segouin


laemlein_frenchresistance-4b.jpg
 
FullMotoJacket said:
Calling that an oxymoron is an oxymoron. The French Resistance was substantial. It included a number of very agro women like
Simone Segouin


laemlein_frenchresistance-4b.jpg
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Germany overtook France in less than 6 weeks with virtually no resistance.
www.historyskills.com

Why it only took six weeks for Hitler to defeat France in 1940

Learn how Germany's Blitzkrieg, Allied miscalculations, and the fall of Dunkirk led to France’s rapid six-week defeat and surrender in 1940 during World War II.
www.historyskills.com www.historyskills.com
 
Bobo said:
Germany overtook France in less than 6 weeks with virtually no resistance.
www.historyskills.com

Why it only took six weeks for Hitler to defeat France in 1940

Learn how Germany's Blitzkrieg, Allied miscalculations, and the fall of Dunkirk led to France’s rapid six-week defeat and surrender in 1940 during World War II.
www.historyskills.com www.historyskills.com
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That doesn't change the fact that the French mounted a fairly effective resistance movement post invasion.
 
FullMotoJacket said:
That doesn't change the fact that the French mounted a fairly effective resistance movement post invasion.
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Yes but it would have been more effective during the invasion. Once they were settled in resistance was futile. That cafe where the Germans are sitting still exists, I was there about 8 years ago. I can verify that those Germans have left.
 
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Bobo said:
Yes but it would have been more effective during the invasion. Once they were settled in resistance was futile. That cafe where the Germans are sitting still exists, I was there about 8 years ago. I can verify that those Germans have left.
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Big difference if your government capitulates though.

One of the most poignant/sad things I’ve seen was in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris when I went to look for Jim Morisson’s grave site (along with a host of others). There was a memorial to resistance fighters there with bullet holes where they were shot. The bravery of these people was astounding.
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