D-Day and Vigilance: Eighty Years Later

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/biden-d-day-american-leadership/index.html

Eighty years ago on this day, my Uncle Mike gave his life for his country and to preserve broader Western principles such as democracy, collective liberty, and individual freedom.?

I never met my Uncle Mike – to be precise, he was my paternal great uncle, but he was ‘Uncle Mike’ to the English-speaking members of my extended family, and ‘Misha’ to the Russian speakers.? I am told that he had a wicked sense of humour – always ready with a joke or wry comment.? He also had a reputation as a bit of what was then called a lady’s man.

After Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on the US Navy in December 1941, America entered World War II.? Uncle Mike didn’t wait for the draft board to find him.? He enlisted in the US Army voluntarily.?? On 06 June 1944, Uncle Mike died on the sands of Normandy’s beaches, together with thousands of other US, UK and allied forces.? The circumstances during his final minutes of life must have been hellish.? I read somewhere that the average lifespan of first wave combatants (charged with securing the beaches for subsequent waves) piling out of the amassed cheek-to-jowl landing crafts, was 45 seconds.? Forty-five seconds.?

Russians and others often ask me: What are the major differences between Brits and Americans?? My answer has never changed:? The people of The United Kingdom know their history and traditions; moreover, the British live their collective cultural history by observing a full calendar of secular and church holidays.

I am, for the second day, glued to my television.? Yesterday, BBC carried an hours-long live broadcast of their 80th year D-Day commemoration ceremonies in southern England, near Dover.? Tout le monde anglais was in attendance, from King Charles III on down the pyramids of political and social élites.? Today, many of the UK’s powerful and influential have crossed the English Channel to participate in a similar ceremony at a British memorial site recently built among the British and Commonwealth graves which occupy vast hectares of gently rolling earth in northern France.

I had an opportunity to absorb the shock of seemingly endless miles of uniformly white crosses (and Stars of David) when my family went on a search for Uncle Mike’s grave.? The gently rolling waves of precisely placed stark, white crosses for as far as the eye could see might well induce a numbing or blunting effect – a natural product of the human psyche’s defence mechanisms.

But the gently rolling waves of perfectly planted white crosses soon becomes searingly personal when you reach the grave of a loved one, a family member.? With the efficient and polite assistance of the curators of these military cemeteries, we found Uncle Mike at Plot J, Row 1, Grave 23, Normandy American Cemetery, France.? Suddenly, D-Day became much more than the subject of a high-school history exam.

Why is America about to abandon the geopolitical mantle foisted on her?? Because Americans are not the British – not by a long shot.? On this auspicious day, even with a ‘happy ending’ suited to American tastes, try walking through any shopping mall in the US – let’s even make it an upscale mall – and ask a random sampling of shoppers: ?What happened today eighty years ago?? With luck, one out of twenty might know, and – who knows? – it might be a visiting foreigner.

To understand the present, it is imperative to apply historical perspective.? Like penmanship and learning poetry and famous speeches by heart, reference to historical context is a lost art in America.? It’s possible to have a debate only if both sides are fully equipped with their respective viewpoints and arguments.? If one party to a debate has no background knowledge of the issue in question, the art of debating suffers.

Stephen Collinson, an Americanised Brit, continues to bring sadly atypical intellectual heft to CNN’s web pages.? He brings with him a Brit’s sense of historical context – which might very well be lost on many of his readers, I’d imagine.? Describing, as he does so elegantly, the sources and dynamics of today’s Trump fetish, he lays bare the roots of America’s self-induced decline.