I had no idea they did this.

Today is D-Day and at the American cemetery in Normandy, French caretakers will have collected sand from Omaha Beach and rubbed it into the gravestones to highlight the names of the departed.

They do this for all 9,388 soldiers who lay there.#DDay79 pic.twitter.com/dRrjG9MWQK

Michael Warburton  (@MichaelWarbur17) June 6, 2023

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Some people in Europe still appreciate the sacrifices Americans made to liberate them from the Nazis.

That's very cool

The French people that I met were extremely aware of what we did to free them from Germany.  I would go so far as to say they were more aware than most US citizens.

They will sing the American national anthem in their native languages. It's pretty moving.

God bless them, All... Very cool, and they take pride and show care in their efforts as well.

We were great once, weren't we???

That's amazing. I've been there and never knew that.

I've been to the cemeteries there a few times.  The locals who take care of them take the job seriously.

This french 20 something seems to understand ~5:00:

Just got dusty at my house.

That hurts but in a good way.

I've visited Arlington once as an adult. I took my daughter. I completely lost the ability to speak while there. Gardens of stone guarded by the ghosts of heroes.

In honor of my French heritage..

Awesome

Most US citizens under 30 aren't even aware of 9/11. Our education system is a complete failure.

RIP to the Heroes that were our fathers.

Another version..

Yes. Dont let anyone convince you otherwise.

To the departed, thank you, again.

That greatness still exists, but the shared national cultural values that embodies it is fractured and is dying. We are the witnesses.

Every time I see the Vietnam memorial I get about 3 names in and start losing it.

I’m probably gonna get burned for this, but this is one of the best renditions of our National Anthem at the Super Bowl.



And for reasons, there are times I fly my flags.

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I didn’t know that. Amazing

I didn’t know that. Amazing

Not all.  I was there in 2019 for the 75th anniversary and they didn't do my grandfather's headstone.

Your Grandfather was and always will be a Hero.

There are quite a few American and British cemeteries in that country

We (all Americans in the group) were at the location of the Colmar Pocket in the Alsace recently. We stopped at the site of what the locals call "Audie Murphy's Last Stand." A local crew was doing some landscaping work when one of them came over and talked to us.

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He said he and his countrymen were eternally grateful for what Americans did to free their country. It got a little dusty there for awhile. Must have been tree pollen or something.

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Wasn’t gonna drink tonight but now I’m in a loop of tube vids and these threads.

Nice.

And kids get told not to sing our national anthem in our nations capital building......

The French did help free us from the British so we might be even.......

My best friend was there last year and helped sand some headstones.

My name is William

I hope Major Richards is at peace.

We give the French a lot of shit around here sometimes, jokes about new rifles, only dropped once. But without them, we'd still just be a former colony, and they're one of the few culture's that still stands up for themselves.

I was several hundred miles from the nearest American cemetery on Memorial Day, so I went to pay respect at a nearby French memorial, ostensibly for WWI.  Little did they know when they erected that memorial that they'd be embroiled in another war barely a generation later.

Reading the names of the fallen, I recognized a number of family names, prominent family names from the valley that I recognized.  Prominent now, I suppose; at the time, perhaps merely smiths in the valley.

The memorial had since been amended with plaques for WWII and Algeria.

I had been in this town decades earlier, but never really thought about it all.  It wasn't until I was up at sunrise, out for a walk before most of the town got moving, that I had a chance to read into just a mere glimpse of what transpired on the ground beneath my feet, what went on just within my own second hand grasp.

Flying home, the flight passed over the sea closet to where my grandfather's ship went down in WWII.  Merely a blank spot in the middle of the ocean.  I don't know if I'll ever get any closer.  My grandfather seldom spoke of the sinking.  As a teenager, you don't think that you should be writing this down.   I've pull up the crew listings and found the names of many of the men of whom my grandfather spoke.

For many of these men, there was no more.  After their parents, after the men with whom they served, nobody left to say their name.   So, I do.  Same as I said the names of the men at the French memorial.

When I lived in Virginia, I would travel to Arlington on the same day in October, every year.  It went from burying friends, to burying men far younger than us.  For years, the walk amongst the headstones in Section 60 grew longer and longer, the birthdates on the headstones regrettably younger and younger.  I don't remember the year, or the years, as I choose not to think of numbers, but of the walks, the steps, the steps on those fall days.  There came a time when the birthdates became noticeably older, the birthdates of men who lived full lives.  A relief.  Almost something to celebrate, if we can celebrate such a thing.

Section 60 is a living place.  More so in the past, and with each passing day, less so.  Eventually, it will become a museum.  A somber thought.  Tended to by men who never knew the names on the stones from when they were men.

By golly, I forgot how much I like that song.  Thank you.
This should be the official anthem of Arfcom.

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My wife and I visited in 2019.  Very humbling.   We rubbed sand into the cross of someone from our small town that died that day.

Planting the US and French flags elicited an emotional response I've never experienced before.

More so than most americans today

RIP soldiers….

Somewhere online I had seen (damn if I can rember where) some of our dear leftist
congresscritters want to decommission military cemeteries... INCLUDING Arlington and
Gettysburg. The families will have two years to disinter and re-inter the deceased at
civilian cemeteries... AT THEIR COST. Any left will be cremated and buried at sea.

Can anyone confirm this perfidy?

Yet, Not a word from thatsonofabitch in the WH