Sixty-six years ago, the beaches at
Normandy were the site of one of the largest invasions in history, as the Allied Forces began the slow recovery of Europe from Germany and the Axis. Interviews with veterans from last year's celebrations, such as the one in the
Telegraph with SGT Ken Scott (UK: 50th Div, Durham Light Infantry), say it all:
'"There's no hatred left, none at all," he says. "We have to move on and forget, but I felt it was my duty to come back and be reverent. There are no stains on the beach now, no bodies being washed up. The tide has cleaned this beach but it is the same beach we came up on. ... What was it like? If you were not there you will never know. Go to a cemetery and look at every cross and think of each one as a son or a husband or a father of children and count them, and then you might know a little."'
By
Fox News with Jewish Veteran, Arthur Seltzer (4th Sig BN):
'Not that Arthur was alone in his endeavors. He was one of tens of thousands of young Americans who on June 6, 1944, took part in the D-Day landings, an unprecedented invasion that took so many lives, but ultimately saved the world from being crushed under the Nazi jackboot. ... Arthur did stay alive, and later on that fateful day he saw the sergeant whose idea it had been to sign the dollar bill, a dollar bill Arthur has kept to this day. "He says, 'You and I are the only two survived from that landing craft,' and I said to him. 'You mean you lost your whole squad?' and he says, "Yes I lost my whole squad." ... Arthur Seltzer's war did not end on D-Day. He went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, forever known as the greatest battle of the war, and on April 29, 1945, Arthur, who is Jewish, was with the American troops who discovered the Dachau concentration camp. Arthur describes the scene as, "Dead bodies all around, naked skeletons, people dressed in these uniforms with black stripes, they were half starved, the odor was so bad you could hardly take it. The odor of death."'
May we never forget.
