The Longest Anniversary

You know, we've had so many D-Day commemorations over the past twenty years that we're getting to the stage that the media will start having commemorations of the commemorations.  They'll be interviewing people like me to ask us about our memories of the fiftieth anniversary commemorations.  Don't get me wrong, I believe that D-Day is worth commemorating, but these days it seems like they are having some huge event every other year.  My memory might be faulty but, as I recall, for the first forty nine years after the event, the closest you ever got to a commemoration of D-Day was a screening of The Longest Day on or around 6 June.  Or, if you were unlucky, a showing of D-Day: Sixth of June, one of the most tedious war movies I've ever seen and, with its crass depiction of a Hollywood England in which the American 'hero' spent his time shagging his British counterpart's girlfriend whilst the poor guy was off fighting in the desert and Sicily, (when said 'hero' wasn't denigrating Britain's war effort, that is), must have set Anglo-US relations back more than the War of Independence. 

But with the fiftieth anniversary of the event, by when a lot of the poor buggers who had survived the invasion, were dead, they decided to make something of it. Which was fine.  It was all done on a huge scale, befitting the event it was commemorating, and was very tasteful and respectful. Indeed, many veterans' groups disbanded after the fiftieth anniversary, realising that their inevitably declining numbers meant that further large scale commemorations were unlikely. But then, ten years later, the powers that be decided to do it again, but on a smaller scale - it all seemed very half-hearted and forced.  Now we're at the seventieth anniversary and they are trying to ramp it up again, despite the fact that there are even fewer veterans left.  I can't help but feel that these subsequent commemorations are as much politically motivated as they are designed to acknowledge the contribution of the veterans to the eventual ending of World War Two.  This year, of course, many European leaders have a vested interest in evoking the spirit of co-operation which lay behind the victory in Europe.  For the likes of Cameron, there's value in invoking that wartime spirit of austerity and national pride to justify their economic policies and keep UKIP at bay. 

But then again, maybe I'm just a cynical bastard.  Hang on, David Dimbleby is here asking me what my memories of the D-Day fiftieth anniversary are - got to go.