80 years ago in Normandy, France, the allied troops stormed the beaches of the French coast.
To celebrate the 80th anniversary of this date, some country leaders such as Emmanuel Macron, the French President, Joe Biden, the US President and King Charles III reunited on Normandy’s beaches to commemorate the events and all of the courageous soldiers that helped liberate France from nazi Germany’s control.
By dawn on june 6th, 1944, despite the fog and bad weather that had already postponed the overlord operation (better known today as d-day), the general Einsenhower gave the go-ahead and the operation overlord started.
156,000 allied troops successfully stormed Normandy beaches. This makes the d-day landings one of the biggest (if not the biggest) landing operation. Sadly for those 156,000 troops, 10,000 casualties were counted and 4,000 up to 9,000 persons were confirmed dead.
D-day led to the first town captured by US troops : Carrington on June 12th. Later on the allied troops (composed of Canadians, Americans and British soldiers) led a new operation called dragoon operation which led to most of Sourthern France being liberated by August 15th and finally around 10 days later on August 19th Paris was liberated. As nazi Germany coutinued to lose and the future stopped looking bright and shiny for them, Adolf Hitler Germany’s leader, committed suicide on April 30th, 1945. A few days later Germany surrendered less than a year after d-day landings.
So to celebrate those events the leaders of countries that participated in World War II met to remember. During the day Joe Biden delivered a speech in which he compared the Russian invasion on Ukraine and the Israeli-Palsetinian war to WW2 events. And while the situation couldn’t be more different we can’t help but notice some similarities in those wars and as our thoughts go to the soldiers dead during d-day they also go to any person suffering war and its consequences in their country just like we did 80 years ago.
Zoé Ganiayre Marre.
