Journal: News & Comment

Sixty

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Five thousand Canadian soldiers stormed the beach at Dieppe in France on August 19, 1942, and hundreds of others flew over in fighters and bombers. German forces (not including my grandfather, who was on the Russian front) took some 2000 prisoner, and killed over 900 more. In one company, over 500 soldiers landed. Not even 30 were fit to serve the next day -- the rest were dead, captured, or injured.

Most of those men were young, many just out of high school. Today, they are old, and only a couple of dozen are alive and well enough to travel to Dieppe for the sixtieth anniversary of the event. Imagine yourself graduating from grade 12 (or maybe lying about your age and enlisting before that). A few months later, you're lying in the muddy sand on a French beach, watching your friends and peers killed and maimed around you.

On another note, only 13 of the 18 e-mails I received today were spam. It doesn't seem very important, though.

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