The one true story that makes me really proud is that of my mother. She was 16 by the time the war ended, and during the course of the war she lived in Nazi occupied Italy (in Friuli, where apparently the Nazi’s were particularly brutal.). During this time, my Mom found an escaped POW (an Australian) and instead of turning him over to the Nazi’s she sent him to the local parish priest who arranged to hide the POW at a local farm as a farm labourer. Took guts on the part of my mom; had she been found out, I would not be here to tell the story.

The story has a cute ending. Turns out the farmer had a daughter and she and the escaped Aussie POW fell in love and Married. My Mom was Maid of Honour at her Wedding. I remember meeting this woman when I was a teenager.

My dad must have had some horrible stories during the war; he too lived in Nazi occupied Northern but was urban working class. When he said he starved, he literally meant it. He never told the horrible stories, but told some funny ones.

Cheers
Andrew

my father manned the amphibians when they invaded iwo jima. i lived for his stories and his mind. he has passed he would have been 83 this year.

UK and USSR stubbornness, American wealth, and Nazi stupidity[1] had made that inevitable by the time of the Normandy landings.

They were still vital however.
I. They helped show democracies could fight tough fights.
II. They fufilled diplomatic promises to the USSR that helped add a little trust to USSR-Western diplomacy. (It was not exactly trusting after the war, but before WWII worse.)
III. It “saved” a lot of Western Europe from the USSR, which would have been a disaster for WE, The USSR (overstretch), and the remaining Western democracies (who would have felt a tad outnumbered at that point).

[1] Just mentioning dominant stuff. All the involved nations had wealth, stubbornness and stupidity in great quantity.

Actually, I don’t remember High School History ever teaching a detailed account of D-Day. It was pretyy much covered genericly. However, when I was a teenager, I was an avid wargammer. I mean the kind you played on a board face to face with actual people. (Quaint, I know).

It was with games like Squad Leader (and Advanced Squad Leader), Third Reich, Afrika Corps, D-Day, Panzer Leader, PanzerBlitz and the like where I learned a lot about WWII history.

There was one game I remember called “Gold, Juno, Sword” made by (IIRC) Avalon Hill that specifically treated the three non-American beachheads.

And you attempted to not repeat Montomgery’s mistakes (which actually wasn’t all that difficult).

Anyway, it was through these strategic, operational, and tactical level war games that I learned quite a bit about WWII.

And of course I read a bunch.

re family: No one on the beaches at Normandy, but one great uncle fought at El Alamein and another was evacuated from Dunkirk. The latter had some interesting stories, and I have a slide-rule that he swiped off a desk before heading for the beach. One grandfather was a radio-operator in the RAF and the other built aircraft. IIRC, my grandparents hosted some children evacuated from London.

My Uncle Fred was on Ambon when it was overrun by the Japanese. Instead of surrendering and being taken prisoner, he and a couple of his mates stole a rowboat and a few supplies and headed out to sea. They were rescued by a passing merchant ship three weeks later, barely alive. My mother showed me a newspaper clipping about it when I was small and told me how for a couple of years after the war Fred had to sleep in a separate bedroom to his wife, because he had attacked her in his sleep thinking she was a Japanese soldier.

How comely it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long opprest,
When God into the hands of their deliverers
Puts invincible might.

I need a drink.