Tag Archives: World War II

The Versailles Treaty

When I was in high school, I had a history teacher named Mr. McGrahan. He was mean to me. He was always mystified when I did fabulously well on a test, which was EVERY TIME I WROTE A TEST. He just did not like me. But he said one thing that was useful – he told us that the Versailles Treaty was not unjust, that it was not a cause of World War II, that the Germans had no justification to whinge about it. As I went on to study history at university and on my own time, I came to the conclusion that he was correct, though the received wisdom was always that the Versailles Treaty was unfair to Germany and a cause of the war. This is my very long-winded way of saying that I was thrilled to come upon this column in the Wall Street Journal, written by Joseph Loconte: The Versailles Treaty Gets a Bum Rap. 

I think you should read it!

Another D-Day Story

I found this story particularly poignant.

D-Day veterans have returned to the beaches where they landed 75 years ago to lay crosses and remember their fallen comrades.

Trooper Albert Price, 93, was an 18-year-old gunner with the Royal Dragoon Guards when he landed on Gold beach on D-Day.

He took Betty – his wife of 67 years – by the hand and walked with her on to the historic beach for the first time today.

Read the whole thing and enjoy the pictures. As the kids say, “relationship goals.”

D-Day 75: the Second Front

My uncle’s letter to my grandfather on June 8th, 1944, mentions DDay. He and his Algonquin Regiment comrades were still in England training, and would join the battle in July. But you can see from this letter that the invasion had quite an impact on morale – a positive one. Excerpts:

I am well, of course, and quite happy. Also, of course, excited, for the Second Front is still in the process of being established. You have only a small idea of what it has done to our morale over here. It’s given everything a new meaning, and at day time we watch planes going south, and say, “Ahha!”, see them coming north and nod at one another, watch them going east & west, and murmur excitedly. We see huge convoys going in all directions and wink. We see the Higher Paid Help riding by in their command vehicles and say, “I’ll bet….”

But for the last few weeks you couldn’t imagine the air activity that was going on. Absolutely terrific, and something Canada has still to see. Every sort of plane has gone over us, in all sorts of combinations, by day and by night. We’ve been awakened at night by them, prevented from lecturing by the noise of them, and kept dizzy counting them.

At this date everything seems to be going well on the beachhead, tho’ it’s hard to say from here – just as hard, if not harder, here as it is at home. We get hourly reports, newspapers, radio reports, and all the latest rumors. All of which also make us dizzy.

Read the whole thing and other letters here. 

D-Day 75, a Few Stories

Impossible to overstate the significance of this date. I have a few links about soldiers – all but the last D-Day veterans, all men who served with honour: Windsor veteran going to the commemorations, likely his last; Ninety-nine-year-old veteran reflects on D-Day;  the D-Day experiences of the recently deceased fighter pilot Jack Henry Hilton, via The Memory Project (these folks do wonderful work); Louis Levi Oakes, last of the Mohawk code talkers, dies.

Beryl O’Links

Or, barrel o’ links. (Beryl O’Links is an Irish lass, she is!)

As we wind down 2018, a few links of interest: the death of Georges Loinger, may his memory be a blessing; trove of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems found; kitties domesticated themselves; and, Hijab in the House, by the brilliant Bruce Bawer. In regards this last story, I mentioned to one of my sisters this summer that I was concerned about the anti-Semitism of some of the rising young “stars” of the Democratic Party, and she insisted that anyone openly espousing contempt for Jews would never be elected. I was like, yeah, we’ll see. Cough.