Saturday

[stewey]

.....is the 65th anniversary of D-Day. I don't know if that number has any special significance; however, seeing as how you guys live so close to France, are any of you going over there to visit the sites of the British landings? In fact, have any of you been there on a previous anniversary?

[craft1948]

No stewey....my father was in the RAF during the war and survived so wasn't involved on the beaches themselves. I have visited the Canadian World War 1 memorial though at Vimy.........absolutely fantastic place.....

[stewey]

N, Zacs, I haven't. It's a little to far away for me, but if I lived in England I think that I might pay a visit.

[stewey]

Craft, Canadian historians consider the winning of Vimy Ridge to be a major event in the formation of a unified Canadian national spirit.

[lil'frog]

I live in England now but I come from Normandie, and this anniversary is the first one I am going to miss! It's always a pretty weird time in the region - I grew up a couple of miles from Utah beach, so my school organized cool stuff for us kids to do every year - meeting veterans, going to ceremonies etc. (my tiny village is home to an English/Canadian military which Princess Anne visited for the 50th celebrations - we got to take pictures with the Royal Guards, it was a lot of fun!). But on the other hand it can be pretty tedious for the locals, when high-profile personalities come along. From the middle of April onwards you can see weird men in black riding in black vans and checking out the sites for security, access, etc., and it's kinda spooky (or it was for me when I was growing up), not to mention all the tourism the event attracts, the main roads closed for a week during the whole thing (for security purposes I presume) and the fairly constant background sound of helicopters flying over the region, which make everyone feel a bit claustrophobic.
But the commemorations themselves (providing you can get to them) are very interesting and emotional. I've never been over excited by the celebrities and media circus but getting to practice my English at the age of 10 with some of the WW2 veterans who had liberated my village is something I will never forget. They shook our hands and signed autographs for every pupil in my class, and my teacher had taught us sentences to tell them our admiration and gratitude. And the same year my grandma got reunited with a paratrooper who had landed on her parents roof and whom she hid in a barn for a few days while he recovered from a leg injury...it was so heartwarming.
In a nutshell, what I am trying to say is, the politics and media stories are kinda bleh, but the personal stories you can come across are priceless.

[lil'frog]

woops forgot a word, should be "English/Canadian military cemetary"

[stewey]

After reading your interesting response, lil'frog, I think that if I had the chance to visit the area(s), I would do so at a time far removed from June 6th.........a quieter time.