"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I've been reading (listening to, mostly) to a good many books about the Second World War in Europe. Today especially, it seems to me worth remembering the tremendous upheaval and destruction that took place  ~ 70 years ago.

Standard estimates are that about 20,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen were killed or wounded just in the one or two days of the Allied invasion of Normandy that began on the night of 5 June and continued throughout the day of 6 June. That, of course, doesn't count civilians, and its estimate of German losses is sketchy. Allied air and naval forces brought over 150,000 men across the English Channel and landed them on the shores of Nazi-occupied Europe. No one was sure that the invasion would work. Innumerable things went wrong. Most of the German defenders fought back tremendously hard. If the landings had been defeated, it would have crippled Allied morale, cost countless lives and a huge amount of materiel, and the war (and Nazi control over Europe and all that entailed) would have gone on for many more years.

The invasion was successful, but the war still continued for almost another year.

There's a lot of talk these days about sacrifice and protecting "our way of life". I think that's a lot harder to be sure about with some of the murky wars we've been fighting in the last decade or two. But I think there can't be a much starker contrast between the world that America, Britain, Canada, France, and all our allies in World War Two were fighting to preserve (despite all its manifest faults) and the world that Hitler and his ilk wanted to construct.

God bless, chaps.

I'd not seen this before, but I like it.

War is not a good thing, but those who serve their country in war and peace deserve, in my opinion, respect and thanks.

My family doesn't have a long tradition of peacetime service, but my Paradise grandfather and his brother served in the Great War, and my father and his brothers served in World War Two. Spoors served in the Civil War, in the War of 1812, and in the Revolution. My thoughts were with them this morning, with the other veterans who have given so much, and to those now serving.

Thank you, service men and women, past and present. At the best of times, you give up a great deal and get little enough recognition. And this is hardly the best of times.

On a recent walk around Denver's Fort Logan National Cemetery, I am struck, not by the lives cut short by war, a tragic consequence of military service, but by the long lives of many who served and the great blessings they brought to us. I imagine them, like my parents, young people who leveraged their country's investment in them to transform America. Veterans raise expectations, not just for themselves, but for their children and their children's children, and, in the process, for us all. I imagine the Fort Logan vets as entrepreneurs, teachers, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, builders, engineers, and even lawyers. I imagine them as mothers and fathers. I see the life you and I live as defended and enabled by their ideals.

Jim Thomas on Huffington Post

Today I will be remembering my father, Kenneth Franklin Spoor, and his brothers Don and Jack, who served in World War II, and my grandfather, Nathaniel Burton Paradise, who served in World War I.