Thanks Sapper,

I now a little of how you feel. I spend time teaching students about the Normandy invasion and the lack of knowledge scares me sometimes. But very occasionally you find a group of students who really do have an empathy with what happened. So dont give up hope yet!

I go to Normandy every year with a university trip and I hear the same thing every year. The students always find the most memorable part of the trip the visits to the cemetaries. Even after countless visits it still has an effect on them and myself. I have never known one person not to be effected in some way by those places. My young brother, who is 14, recently visited the WW1 cemetries and he found it very moving. Though perhaps the most emotional cemetry I visited was the British and Dominion Cemetary on Crete. It was so peaceful and in such a beautiful location. But there were so many 'Unknown', it was heart rending.

So dont despair, some of us try our hardest to keep memories alive, of all those who fell and gave their lives in the service of their country. Every year I go to Normandy I alsways visit one particular grave. That of Alan Whitehead, a British Paratrooper killed on my birthday. I always spend a few moments with him on every trip to Bayeaux.

I apologise for my response I was having a very stressful day so it was rather over the top, but I have spent my life trying to learn a little of what it was like. As a young boy I used to listen to my Granfathers stories of Dunkirk before he died. We also took him back to visit it in the early 80's and we spent sometime in Dunkirk and also at Dieppe. He dindnt say much for the entire time we were there. Just the odd comment on so and so 'copt a bullet here' and 'thats where so and so died'. I think he found it very difficult, he certainly never got over what happened in those days in 1940. I think he felt alot of guilt in having survived when so many of his close friends from his pre-war service died there. I always find it such a ahme that he died when I was so young and I never got the chance to really talk to him, he was not a well man and never recovered from the wounds he recieved at Monte Cassino, he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. If I could talk to him now, I would have a better chance of understanding him. I like to think it may have helped him deal with some of his demons.


Yours

Piers (RED)

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.