Seventy five years since the armada sailed from the ports of England to attempt to release Europe from the grip of the German Nazis…
Seventy five years since the young men died on the beaches of Normandy, neither quietly, nor heroically…neither was it ‘dulce et decorum es pro patria mori’. They were conscripts, not volunteers, sent on a gamble on the weather against troops well dug in on Rommel’s Atlantic Wall
British, American. Canadian, French and many more…they died in their multitudes attempting to get ashore to take the fight to the enemy.
Think of them if you can…the men sent in by gliders who drowned in the marshes of the River Orne….the frightened boys plunging into the sea as the ramp of their landing craft crashed down…those killed in their droves on the beach as they sought to advance…
Think too that it was not just one day…the campaign that was to free northern Europe was only just beginning and the fighting was to be hard, on the Eastern where the Russians had taken the brunt of the work so long as well as the Western front.
You ask yourself how they coped…how they bore the hardship, let alone the fear…and I think the answer lies in the speech from a D Day veteran.
‘We were there for each other’.
If we carry any message from the ceremonies it should be this one, to try to heal our societies which seem so riven asunder.
We seem to see ourselves as members of a group rather than members of a society…we are black, women, homosexual, transgender, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist, young, old, disabled, rich, deprived – Leavers and Remainers in the case of Britain – and we defend our group’s interests and demand its rights.
I suggest that if we want to enhance the chances of our group we start by building a society where all can feel secure….decent housing which is genuinely affordable…jobs which offer a real living wage….education which encourages children to think for themselves and emphasises that vocational training carries an equivalent value to academic studies….a police force which concentrates on real crime and a justice system which works.
All to easy to propose it…but how to achieve it?
By being there for each other, by pushing our differences into the background to work together to break the party system, to have the confidence to elect people who are really independent – not self described community leaders – to local and central government and to realise that, despite the legacy of the Thatcher years, there is a vital role for the state, one that no private sector provider can supply.
And perhaps, if we can start to see how destructive it is to see our group as in some way special…different…..we could start to see that every person is special and different and needs a safe society in which to be able to blossom to the benefit of all.
Let’s be there for each other…..but in peacetime, not just in war.
The Venomous Bead 