2019-06-06, D-Day

Omaha Beach, Normandy, France

Good morning my friends!

I watched the live TV broadcast of the ceremony of the 75th Anniversary of the Normandy Landing held in France this morning.

There were many dignitaries sitting on the main stage. But I noticed that the presidents of both France and the U.S were sitting on the far sides. And those old veteran WWII heroes were sitting in the middle. I think the hosts of the event got it right. These old soldiers deserved to be in the center stage of the day.

Both of the presidents of the two countries gave their speeches. I was particularly impressed by the speech of the POTUS. He's over 70 years old. In the beginning, I was a little worried about whether his mind would slip during his speech since he appeared didn’t read from a manuscript.

I think a good speech is always personal instead of general propaganda. He talked about the history of the D-Day briefly, and then quickly started telling detailed stories of a few brave soldiers who participated in the D-Day landing and survived. And then he turned around and honored the same men who he presented in the stories and were sitting there in the ceremony.

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These heroes are real winners. Not only they fought the war for freedom and democracy and survived, but also they are still alive to see this day in their 90's. They received applause from the audience for several long minutes. It was quite emotional to watch.

I still remember vividly a big movie about WWII that I watched more than 30 years ago. It's probably called 《The Liberation》. It was near the end of WWII. Although there were great battle scenes and plenty of exciting moments in the movie, there was this small scene in the movie I would never forget. A small battalion of Russian soldiers forayed into a Nazi concentration camp and liberated a large group of Jewish prisoners. Since there were just a handful of soldiers, the prisoners invited the highest ranked Red Army corporal to gave a speech. And the young soldier came up to the makeshift stage didn't know what to say. As his audience applauded and cheered, he just said, "Ladies and gentlemen, go home!"

Free! "Freedom at last!" There is nothing compare to that feeling in the world.

Cheers!

The latest update for my friend 宁萌时光:

Guess what? I found out the name of the flower tree for you with the help of a Google app. It's called "Queen's crepe-myrtle", or "pride of India".

2019-06-06, D-Day

This app allows me to use my phone camera to take any live pictures and return with very detailed information on the object in the pictures. It also does language translations. Unbelievable!