D-day + 70

I remember it as if it was yesterday. We all knew it was coming, of course, a land-based assault on what the Nazis called Fortress Europe, Festung Europa, was inevitable. The radio,  the Australian Broadcasting Commission, was tactful and circumspect, but its star reporter, Chester Willmott, was redeployed from North Africa to London, to be on the spot when the great day dawned. I was 15, itching to be involved more directly than as a distant bystander. That feeling got stronger when the first hard news reached us - on June 5, because of the time zone difference we were 10 or 11 hours ahead of GMT. Chester Willmott's broadcasts, like David Halton's for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, were brilliant - literate, full of human interest, no trace of jingoism, tinged with regret that Australian forces were not landing on Normandy beaches along with the Brits, Yanks and Canadians - although they had been prominent, of course, earlier in North Africa. A RAAF squadron was engaged in the air assault. Now, 70 years on, it all looks so different, so peaceful in glorious summer colours, in contrast to the grainy, jerky black and white we saw endlessly on cinema screens. The lined, aged faces of the veterans, now in their 90s or above, tell a different story. Many whose faces I saw on TV today had tears running down their cheeks. I had a hard time controlling my own emotions. All the memories are so fresh. How can we infuse our emotions in the bellicose youngsters who would have us do it all again?