cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
I spent most of April on a three week jaunt through England, chasing down spots where I thought three of my uncles might have spent some time before being sent on to France and Belgium.
There is little left of the grand camps that were set up to house American troops in 1942 - 45, grass covered farm fields that were quickly converted to barracks, tents and headquarters, and just as quickly returned to crop fields after the war.
This is not to say the Brits have forgotten. They have not and their appreciation that boys like Bobby, Clifford and Ray came here to fight for them continues across the generations.
Perhaps the most poignant spot on my journey was this, just outside Plymouth on the banks of the Severn River. The sign stands on a simple street corner, the main east - west street of the city intersects with a narrow road that makes a steep drop down to the river. Here on June 3 - 5 1944, 66,000 American soldiers marched down and boarded LSTs and transports and set off for Normandy. There's a plain stone marker opposite the sign and evidence, in the form of red poppy wreaths, that the local townspeople held a ceremony on Remembrance Day, 2015.
I think my uncles would appreciate the simplicity. Like Arron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man, written in 1942 to honor the citizen army America was beginning to raise, the monument is small and plain. You must bring your heart to see the magnificence of what took place here, your knowledge of history to make it important, and your memory of those common men to understand why they did what they did.
There is little left of the grand camps that were set up to house American troops in 1942 - 45, grass covered farm fields that were quickly converted to barracks, tents and headquarters, and just as quickly returned to crop fields after the war.
This is not to say the Brits have forgotten. They have not and their appreciation that boys like Bobby, Clifford and Ray came here to fight for them continues across the generations.
Perhaps the most poignant spot on my journey was this, just outside Plymouth on the banks of the Severn River. The sign stands on a simple street corner, the main east - west street of the city intersects with a narrow road that makes a steep drop down to the river. Here on June 3 - 5 1944, 66,000 American soldiers marched down and boarded LSTs and transports and set off for Normandy. There's a plain stone marker opposite the sign and evidence, in the form of red poppy wreaths, that the local townspeople held a ceremony on Remembrance Day, 2015.
I think my uncles would appreciate the simplicity. Like Arron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man, written in 1942 to honor the citizen army America was beginning to raise, the monument is small and plain. You must bring your heart to see the magnificence of what took place here, your knowledge of history to make it important, and your memory of those common men to understand why they did what they did.
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