Category Archive 'Normandy Invasion'

24 Jul 2019

Taki Looks at Generation Wuss

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Taki recently had some unkind thoughts about today’s rising generation, all their talk about trigger-warnings and microaggressions, their complaints about being made to feel “unsafe.”

[L]et’s [discuss] the young, or snowflakes, as they’re called nowadays. Last year I spent a week on the beaches of Normandy in the company of some military historians preparing their books for this year’s 75th anniversary of D-Day. We visited the first German bunker to be hit right on the edge of the beach about fifty yards from the sea. James Holland, the noted British historian, pointed out that the first Victoria Cross was awarded to a Scot grenadier who blew up the bunker, killing all the Germans inside. I pointed out to him that the defenders were mostly men over 50 and some youngsters of 16 and 17. They had a couple of machine guns and a Panzerfaust—bazooka—as weapons. Looking out, they had seen 6,700 ships or so firing their huge guns at them. No one had run. They had stood and died at their posts. It was not a popular argument—everyone was British—but the courage of the German soldier was not disputed. Nor, of course, of the invading American, British, and Canadian troops.

What does the above have to do with the hissy fits sparked by our youth of today? Everything! The men who fought on the beaches 75 years ago never saw themselves as worthy of special treatment. None of them were “offended” or “upset” when ordered to jump into the water under a hail of bullets and hit the beaches. Ditto the Germans when ordered to stand and fight against incredible superior odds. When the snowflakes complain about some rape scene in a long-ago-published book, and the fact they had not been warned about it, I wonder what the men who fought on those beaches must think. (Thank God for the brave men, very few are left alive to read such BS.) But dear readers, try to imagine these phone zombies, selfie addicts, and me-me-me gamers of today being ordered to attack or defend those beaches. They would expire before the first shot was fired. Long live us oldies.

06 Jun 2014

93-Year-Old WWII Veteran Jumped into Normandy Again

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JimMartin

93-year-old Jim Martin yesterday successfully parachuted into Normandy wearing all the same equipment he wore 70 years ago when he jumped as part of the preliminary bridgehead seizing operations leading up to the D-Day Normandy Invasion.

Click2Houston:

“I’m feeling fine,” Martin told reporters moments after landing in a French field. “… It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”

Martin was part of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division that parachuted down over Utah Beach in their bid to retake France and, eventually, the rest of Europe from Nazi Germany. They actually touched down in enemy-controlled territory a night before what’s referred to as D-Day.

His jump Thursday in the same area was different and — despite his being 93 years old now — a whole lot easier.

“It didn’t (compare),” Martin said, “because there wasn’t anybody shooting at me today.” …

Seven decades later, Martin did it again — not fighting a bloody war but at least reliving his role in a military campaign that changed the course of history. Others joined him in this now daytime jump, though he was the only one from his generation.

This time, he said that he wasn’t scared because, “once you get in the plane, you forget everything.” Bored would be more like it.

As he told reporters afterward, “To tell you the truth, riding around in the plane is boring. It’s when you get off the plane, that’s when it gets exciting … But there’s no fear to it. It’s just something you do.”

Martin admitted that he was motivated by “a little bit of ego, (to show that) I’m 93 and I can still do it.”


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