50 years ago

FOR a handful of Hamilton district people, today – the 30th anniversary of D-Day – holds special significance. Hopefully, the other thousands in the district, particularly those topping 50, will need only this prompting to remember and appreciate. Two o’clock this morning, 30 years ago – Operation Overlord was put into action with the landing of paratroopers just behind German coastal defences in northern Normandy, France. Three million Britons and Americans, French and Australians, and others, were directly involved in the tense, bloody victorious hours, days and months that followed 2am, June, 1944. The beach landings, the naval assaults, the aerial bombarding, the transportation of incredibly vast supplies of ammunition and equipment, the Resistance work, the terrible losses – just facets of the greatest military invasion the world has seen.