On Friday’s 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, talk of war is afoot again — this time against a disease that has killed at least a quarter of a million people worldwide.
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On Friday’s 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, talk of war is afoot again — this time against a disease that has killed at least a quarter of a million people worldwide.
Instead of parades, remembrances and one last great hurrah for veterans now mostly in their nineties, it’s a time of coronavirus lockdown and loneliness, with memories bitter and sweet — sometimes with a lingering Vera Lynn song evergreen in the background.
For so many who went through the horrific 1939-1945 years and enjoyed peace since, Friday felt as suffocating as the thrill of victory was liberating three quarters of a century ago.
It sounded like a cry from some past, bellicose era or a Hollywood movie, but instead it was French President Emmanuel Macron speaking in a March 16 national address. He used the phrase “we are at war” six times to emphasize the threat of COVID-19 to his country as he announced a lockdown well-nigh unprecedented since World War II in its restrictions on personal freedoms.
Close to France’s Normandy D-Day beaches where he fought in perhaps the most momentous day of that war — the June 6,1944, landings of allied troops in Nazi-occupied France — former U. S. army medic Charles Shay was listening to Macron.
Now 95, he said surviving D-Day at 19 taught him this much. “When my time comes there is not much I can do about it.” Yet Macron’s comparison didn’t fully fit his experience.
“World War II was created by a madman who thought he could take over control of the world,” Shay said.
