Tag Archives: World War II
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.
Tim Conway
Wonderful comedian. I was a great fan of The Carol Burnett Show when I was a kid, and I fondly remember Tim Conway as the old man, and Mr. Tudball, but I think this skit is one of the absolute best. So delightful to watch Lyle Waggoner try to keep a straight face.
VE Day Eve
Today is as good a day as any to remind you to visit my other website.
Passover
Night Witches
How has this not been made into a movie yet? And if it has, please send me a note and let me know.
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.
“Villanelle” for Vera Brittain
Beautiful poem written by Roland Leighton for Vera Brittain. It was April 1915 and he was serving in France. He was killed by a sniper eight months later. (I dearly wish I had some of my uncle’s poems to his fiancee, Christine, but any letters she received, of course, stayed with her. If she kept them, perhaps her children have them – I have a hope one of her kids will see my other site and contact me, but it is possible she may never have told them about Norman.)
Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange they should be blue,
Blue, when his soaked blood was red,
For they grew around his head:
It is strange they should be blue.)Think what they have meant to me –
Life and hope and Love and You
(and you did not see them grow
Where his mangled body lay
Hiding horrors from the day;
Sweetest, it was better so.)Violets from oversea,
To your dear, far, forgetting land
These I send in memory
Knowing you will understand.
Sir Winston
Lello di Segni
I posted earlier about the 75th anniversary of the deportation of Rome’s Jews – and now the last survivor (and one of the few survivors) of that raid has died. Read about him and what he leaves behind, here.