“Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you….I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.”
Order of the Day, 6
June 1944
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
How many of you remember this day? How many of you have met people who landed at Omaha beach or Point Du Hoc? How many of us still think of this day and those men who charged the machine guns of the Germans? My great uncle landed on D-Day +6 and I have had the opportunity over my life to meet many people who made the landings there and in the pacific, including my Grandfather. He made the landings at Okinawa and Saipan. However, history takes a decidedly personal note when you meet someone who was a child watching when Europe was truly brought into the war.
Ron and Jane Lang are great friends of mine and my family. Many of you know them. Ron has been here at the lake for a while, selling real estate. He’s a Brit and a proud one! Always willing to defend the Queen and tell me how good of a car the Jaguar really is! A while back I had lunch with the Langs. Ron, now 92-years-old, and I took the opportunity to truly talk about his childhood. Ron was a child when the battle of Britain got started and lived thru air raids, aerial combat taking place above his home, bombing runs and Werner Von Braun’s rockets destroying his home. He remembers the evacuation at Dunkirk and Winston Churchill’s addresses to the British people. It’s an amazing story and one I was thankful to hear from him.
Imagine being 9 when Hitler invades Poland. Think of being a teenager during the height of the war in Europe and walking the streets of London to not see really any men over the age of 18. What kind of impact does that have on you? Ron tells stories of his school years when the rockets would start falling and the kids would be put in bomb shelters and for something to do, they would knit blanket squares for the soldiers.
Once coming of age, Ron begins his professional life in the 1950s as a surveyor, helping to rebuild London, England, India, and later to develop real estate in Britain when they began transitioning to our model of malls etc. For those who don’t know, a surveyor is kind of like an old architectural engineer here in the states and a building inspector combined. What was fascinating to me is Ron and the people he started working for had a special love for the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren. He was the man who built St. Paul’s Cathedral as well as many other famous Church of England buildings in and around London in the middle to later part of the 17th century. His work is truly beautiful and some of the best of that and later English architecture.
Ron also told me of his father and his time serving in Northern Ireland. He served during the Troubles. While walking beside him one day his friend was murdered by the IRA.
If you wish to remember the people who came before us, the best way is to learn their stories. I’m grateful to have heard Ron’s impactful story.
