From: proustsingsmud@hotmail.com   
      
   Sunday Telegraph   
   (Filed: 06/06/2004)   
      
   Max Hastings, the celebrated military historian, reports from Arromanches on   
   yesterday's moving scenes on the beaches of Normandy   
      
      
   This is a day for old men to be honoured for what they did when they were   
   young, and for young men to be remembered for what they did before they were   
   cut short. The least important people here in Normandy on this June 6 are   
   the West's political leaders, whose presence is, in some cases, an   
   embarrassment. The most important are the old soldiers, sailors and airmen   
   who began the liberation of western Europe on these beaches 60 years ago.   
      
   A British war veteran is overcome by memories of the D-Day landings   
   They are here in their hundreds, revelling as they richly deserve to in the   
   sensation of being the stars of the show. For once in their lives, these   
   splendid old men have an audience hanging on their every word. "I 'ope the   
   mayor's there to greet us," said an elderly gunner on the ferry, as he   
   pinned on his medals. And, of course, the mayor of Ouistreham was indeed   
   there - along with an array of military and naval brass that would impress   
   Dwight Eisenhower.   
   Half the visitors to Normandy today seem to be young Englishmen in fancy   
   dress - disguised as American generals, British paratroopers, even French   
   commandos. There are more impeccably restored Willys Jeeps on the invasion   
   coast this weekend than there were on the same day in 1944. I can't make up   
   my own mind whether the dressers-up add to the dignity of this occasion or   
   diminish it. A little the latter, I fear. But there are so many fine things   
   to be seen and heard in Normandy today that it would be churlish to make too   
   much of it.   
   From the hill above Arromanches, we can see the big, black British Army   
   landing craft, their ramps down on the sand, while the great concrete   
   caissons of the old Mulberry artificial harbour provide an authentic   
   historic backdrop. Off shore, a column of warships are a token of the vast   
   fleet that once filled these waters, while on shore, vast crowds of   
   spectators mill around in holiday dress.   
   If yesterday was a guide, the weather this weekend is a vast improvement on   
   God's contribution for June 6, 1944 - the Channel wholly benign; the sun   
   shining. The green corn waves across the rolling hills behind Arromanches   
   exactly as it did on D-Day itself, providing shelter for so many dead men.   
   The Norman hosts always behave generously on these occasions, but we should   
   never forget how difficult such times are for the French. First, their   
   people died in tens of thousands as a result of the Allied bombing that was   
   necessary to make D-Day possible. Second, there is still much anguish among   
   Jacques Chirac's people about the memory of this period, when more French   
   men carried arms for Vichy and the Axis than for the Allies. To this day,   
   the nation has never dared attempt to write an official history of la   
   deuxieme guerre mondiale, such as all the other victorious powers possess.   
   Today, the whole Normandy coast is en fete to receive its flood of visitors,   
   both grand and obscure. Yet I remember a resident of the devastated city of   
   Caen who wrote, soon after its liberation: "We have been reproached - at   
   least by those who regard the battle of Normandy as a military tattoo - for   
   failing to throw ourselves on the necks of our liberators. Those who say   
   such things have lost sight of the Stations of the Cross that we have passed   
   since June 6."   
   If triumph on D-Day was a vastly exhilarating sensation for the victors, the   
   price of liberation for those unfortunate to inhabit the battlefield should   
   never be forgotten.   
   Yet we, the British and Americans, welcome the opportunity to celebrate this   
   anniversary because it represents something we know we did well.   
   Sensible people today acknowledge all the caveats we must enter: the   
   Russians did most of the bloody business of destroying Hitler's armies; the   
   British were much more hesitant than the Americans about D-Day, because we   
   knew how hard the Germans were to beat; the odds on June 6 overwhelmingly   
   favoured the invaders because they possessed overwhelmingly greater   
   resources than the defenders.   
   When all this has been said, however, it remains right to marvel at what was   
   done. Landing an army from the sea is a very hard thing. Hitler never dared   
   do it. If the weather had gone wrong - and forecasting in 1944 was even more   
   unreliable than it is today - the Channel alone could have wrecked the   
   invasion.   
   Above all, consider the stakes; the consequences of failure. If the Allies   
   had been driven back into the sea, Hitler could not have won the war, but it   
   would have persisted for much longer. It is impossible to believe that   
   another D-Day could have been launched before 1945.   
   The Nazis would have been given time to build new weapons, shift 50   
   divisions eastwards in the certain knowledge that France was safe for a   
   year, and cause infinite pain to the British by raining V-weapons on   
   southern England. Millions more of the captives in Hitler's hands, whose   
   survival depended on liberation, would have died before rescue came. The   
   Russians would have driven much deeper into Europe, and would surely have   
   proved very difficult to evict once Hitler was destroyed.   
   All this, Eisenhower and his commanders knew full well at dawn on D-Day.   
   What a burden to carry for a man who, only three years earlier, was a mere   
   colonel in the War Plans Department of the US Army, while his Soviet   
   counterpart, Zhukov, was already directing the defence of Leningrad.   
   Much has been said in recent weeks - all of it just - about the achievement   
   of the soldiers who landed in Normandy on June 6. But we should also raise a   
   cheer for the unsung army of staff officers who planned this dazzling   
   achievement of logistics and organisation. We, the British, should   
   especially celebrate General Sir Alan Brooke, who was head of the British   
   Army yet today is vastly less well known than Montgomery, Alexander or Slim.   
   It was Brooke, the dour Ulsterman who hated war, who formed with Winston   
   Churchill a brilliant partnership in the direction of Britain's war effort.   
   He had borne the strain of defeats and of working beside Churchill's erratic   
   genius since the dark days of 1941.   
   In 1944, Brooke was haunted by fear of failure. "I am very uneasy about the   
   whole operation," he wrote in his diary on June 5. "At the worst it may well   
   be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war. I wish to God it were safely   
   over." Brooke was exasperated that his prime minister, who had earlier   
   shared all his apprehension, was suddenly seized on June 5 by a surge of   
   exultation about its prospects, which his military chief could not share.   
   We may smile at Brooke's unfulfilled fears. Yet today, as we celebrate   
   success, we might also think of the dictum of that great historian Sir   
   Michael Howard: "We should never forget that there was a time when events   
   now in the past were still in the future."   
      
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